Retail Mixed-Use Project
Providing an alternative to the glut of high-end condo towers in Miami Beach typically hermetic, single-use structures sealed off from any relation to context or climate - the design for building 82% intensifies urban, programmatic, and spatial permeability. Exploiting the desirability of outdoor space in South Florida, the designs for the project amplify the possibilities of regional architectural strategies - balconies, terraces, atria, courtyards, and breezeways - by recombining them in unexpected ways to maximize the connections between interior and exterior space. Specifically, the design opportunistically manipulates the fact that only eighty- two percent of the available zoning volume for the site could be filled with built volume according to the floor area ratio (FAR) limits. Rather than locate this extra volume as a private interior courtyard, the extra volume is located around the public exterior, producing an undulating elevation with depth and a greater variety of interior views. In a sense, Le Corbusier’s Domino diagram is eaten away by the free plan and free facade.
1683 WEST AVE, MIAMI BEACH , FL 33139
Conceptual Diagram
1.The maximum FAR, with standard ceiling heights, filled 82% of the maximum building volume. Rather than placing the extra volume in an interior courtyard, the 18% is moved to the public face.
2.The extra volume forms a series of vertical cuts in the facade, choreographed to increase light to and views from the building.
3.Miami code allows a 5’ zone around the building’s perimeter. The slabs of each floor plate extend to this legal limit, producing a continuous exterior terrace. Undulations in the glazing envelope generate variation in dimension, forming a series of outdoor rooms, while the vertical courts provide property divisions between units.
WATCH THE PRESENTATION
WEST ELEVATION, SECTION 1 AND SOUTH ELEVATION
EXPLODED DIAGRAM
PROGRAM DIAGRAM
STRUCTURAL DIAGRAM
NORTH ELEVATION, SECTION 2, AND EAST ELEVATION
GROUND LEVEL
PARKING LEVEL 2
3RD FLOOR
RETAIL / P3
4RD FLOOR
ROOF
CIRCULATION DIAGRAM
Stairs located within each court provide circulation from the lofts to the gardens below. Near the major street corner, an over-scaled urban stair folds down to connect the plinth to the street to the elevated landscape and residential units.
3D SECTION
Perimeter courtyards carve inward from the building edge, producing multi-level atria that establish property divisions among balconies, define living and working zones within units, and create visual connections between residential volume, the plinth. And the street. Variable translucencies in the window wall provide privacy and limit visual access between units.