Ronny Eckels, AIA, is the founder, owner, and principal of Texas Architecture Workshop ("Tex'"), a San Antonio-based design studio he leads alongside a team of architects, artists, engineers, and fabricators. A born-and-raised Texan, Ronny graduated from Texas A&M University in 2011 before earning his master's at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) in 2013. He brought that training home, founding Tex' in 2022 as a bespoke design outfit that has since grown into a full-service practice spanning master planning, architecture, landscape, interiors, branding, and fabrication.

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One of Tex's core projects for the last three years has been COTALAND, a 30-acre, ground-up amusement park rising alongside the Formula 1 track at Circuit of the Americas in Austin - one of the only greenfield park developments to open in the United States in recent years, with more than 30 rides and five roller coasters slated for its 2026 opening. Ronny and his team have worked across nearly every discipline of the practice on the project: master planning the park's zones, managing the thematic overlay and installation of attractions such as the Circuit Breaker coaster and the Soggy Logger flume ride, and developing themed interiors like Bobby's Diner and the T20 Sports Bar. Tex' has also carried the project through construction, managing consultant coordination, submittals, and RFIs, tracking progress with industry-leading project management and site-monitoring tools, and documenting site conditions building by building as COTALAND has moved from drawings to steel and concrete.

 

Ronny and Tex' bring additional large-format entertainment expertise in their work with the Travis County Expo Center, where they are leading concept planning and redesign. This overhaul includes renovation of the existing Ludecke arena, a new 15,000 seat arena, and 600,000 square feet of expo hall space for multipurpose civic use.

Ronny's Texas roots also run through The Pearl, San Antonio's celebrated brewery-turned-mixed-use district and now one of the city's most-visited destinations. The Pearl draws over 3.4 million visitors a year to its campus. Ronny has been involved in the district's ongoing redevelopment, focusing on 1100 Springs Plaza and the Credit Human and Oxbow headquarters. In 2021, Ronny also contributed to The Pearl's public art collection through Egg-Delier, a hanging porcelain-and-aluminum sculpture at the Oxbow Building, created in collaboration with artist Ryan Takaba and metalsmith Robert Diaz de Leon.

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That same collaboration - credited together as "R&R&R" - has gone on to produce and install some of Texas' highly visible new public art: Big Texas Sky, a suspended acrylic-and-aluminum sculpture installed at Houston's Hobby Airport in 2022 through the Houston Arts Alliance, and City Lights, a pair of illuminated cast-concrete-and-steel sentinels unveiled at San Antonio's City Tower in 2025 through the city's Department of Arts & Culture - work that, true to Tex's ethos, treats architecture as a civic act as much as a private commission.

Ronny's relationship with TexasLand goes back to the project's earliest days: he participated in one of the original focus groups in 2023. After maintaining a relationship with the TexasLand team through the years, he began formally consulting the project in 2026.