UT Austin East Memorial Mall

The Precursors – We Are Texas is a commemorative landscape project for UT Austin’s East Mall, honoring the first Black undergraduates to desegregate the university in 1956 — making UT Austin the first major southern university to do so.

The design draws on the Balcones Fault Zone at Waller Creek, using fractured stone imagery to represent the Precursors’ struggle and impact. Wedge-shaped bronze pillars, each inscribed with a Precursor’s name, are set into a granite seating wall, referencing an old stone-splitting technique symbolizing connection and division. New base grading also resolves longstanding drainage issues.

The old fountain is being replaced with a reflecting pond that both commemorates the Precursors and serves as a gathering space for game days, graduations, and campus events.