The BIG-designed Grove at Grand Bay is now complete, becoming an new architectural icon for South Miami. Residents will now put the finishing touches on the units before a grand opening and move-in next month. The two twisting 20-story towers have been completely sold out, and mark BIG’s first completed condominium building in the United States.
“Coconut Grove is a special place with a well-defined soul, so it was important that Grove at Grand Bay respond to its community through a design that was respectful and distinctive,” explains Bjarke Ingels. “By creating twisting towers that rise side-by-side but never cross paths, we were able to optimize views, outdoor spaces and the flexibility of our floor plans while allowing the buildings to interact with one another.”
Developed by the Terra Group and rising 20 stories over the bay-front, Grove at Grand Bay contains 96 expansive residences, ranging in size from 1,300 square feet to a 10,000 square foot penthouse with a 5,000 square foot terrace and private pool. Each condo features panoramic views as the two towers twist up from ground and clear the surrounding buildings, readjusting their orientation to ensure each unit receives sightlines to the marina to Miami skyline.
Property amenities include a rooftop pool on each tower, a 5-star spa and fitness center, a private dining room for residents and a pet spa. Units over 4,000 square feet are accompanied by a private 2-car garage; the South Tower penthouse with a 4-car garage. All units feature 12-foot high ceilings.
From the architect. Arcadian Food & Drink celebrates the dining experience as theater, setting a dynamic stage within an existing building where guest are both audience and cast. This adaptive reuse restaurant, located in Cleveland, Ohio’s recently revitalized Gordon Square Arts District, resides among several theaters, galleries, and local shops, helping to further activate the existing street-scape. Offering premium quality beverages and entrees, the Arcadian Food & Drink provides diners with a unique architectural Experience.
Portions of the existing facade have been preserved while others have been adapted to enhance three distinct forms. An existing yellow masonry structure housing the kitchen, a new red masonry structure framing elongated views into the dining space, and a new monolithic white wedge, veiled by a perforated metal screen, contrast and complement the existing street-scape. Pedestrians walking along Detroit Avenue view the chef’s stage as sustainable seafood and entrees are prepared through the large glass opening in the yellow masonry. Guests entering the vestibule are offered a brief glimpse of the bar as they pass through the white veil of triangles on the walls and floor, making their stage entrance.
As the audience members join the cast on stage within the restaurant, the distinct spaces begin to unfold. Greeted by views into the active kitchen area, the role of the guest waivers between audience and cast member. At a multiplicity of levels, the architecture is conceived to enhance and express a dynamic sense of movement while the materials utilized have been deployed to offer solutions that enhance the dining experience. Boundaries between spaces are blurred as the contrasting forms intertwine, folding and creasing to envelop the guests. The two story bamboo wall acts as a backdrop to the bar, unfolding to form seating in the dining area. The white ceiling folds in response to the localized structural constraints of the existing building, creating an intimate dining experience. As the surface penetrates the two story space above the bar, it folds to become a drink rail at the upper level. Guests transiting to the upper level, move along the perforated metal screen dividing the bar and stair. At the upper level, the bamboo and white surfaces frame the windows looking through the corrugated perforated screen of the facade creating a dynamic surface that changes with orientation of the view. As guests enjoy their meals their view is reoriented towards the street-scape, the city becomes the stage and theater, and the guests become the audience.
Last week, Architectural Record released their list of the top 300 Architecture Firms in the US, based on architectural revenue from 2015. But what can we learn from those numbers and the firms generating them? In this post for ArchSmarter, Michael Kilkelly dives deeper into the figures that have made these firms so successful, comparing numbers based on firm type, firm location and project location.
His conclusion?
“If I were starting a firm today and wanted to end up the top US firm by revenue in the near future, I would start an EA firm based in California, preferably LA or Pasadena. I would make sure no more than a quarter of my revenue came from architectural projects. Of those architectural projects, 80% or more would need to be domestic projects. At least, that’s what the number say.”
Check out the full piece featuring graphs and visualizations, here.
From the architect. The Opposite House, is a commissioned private residence located on the Scarborough Bluffs, closer to the east edge of the Greater Toronto Area. The clients, a professional couple who both work from home and enjoy an active home entertainment lifestyle, were looking for a modern dwelling that would offer everything they might need and more, including enough space to transition into, if their family grows at a later time.
The new build sits partly on an old bungalow’s footprint, close to a quiet back-street, with a 2.7 acre site sloping down to the shore of Lake Ontario. To the northern street side, the house presents a purposely low, dark-brick profile – just a single, unobtrusive 146-foot long storey [equal to the length of an Airbus A321, the most efficient single-aisle jetliner ever built]; its stretched fuselage – measuring 146 feet], allowing for an unimpeded lake view from all points even in the north end of the property. To the southern lakefront, the home’s face opens into a 10-foot curtain wall, lozenged in white. The house’s interior is 6,400 sq-ft; though massive in size, it feels quite human in scale, the result of the space’s precise geometric parsing, something the architect refers to as “mathematical poetry.”
Diagram
Diagram
Both outside and in, the Opposite House is at once familiar yet different, spectacular yet comfortable, private as well as public – presenting a study in subtly rendered juxtapositions. Two concepts are at work here: Louis Kahn’s “servant and served” maxim, wherein private, back-of-the-house functions are placed on one side, balanced by public relaxation on the other; and the “phototropic” nature of plants, which remain rooted in the earth while their heads blossom towards the sun – interpreted here as a north side wrapped in dark-black, textured brick and a south side presented in bright glass and smooth white stucco.
The main hall of the Opposite House forms a central nave that runs like a spine, east-west, along the home’s entire length, bracketed at either end by outsized windows. The foyer, with its 49-square-foot skylight, acts as a north-south transept, intersecting this main line, and descending via a stadium-stairway to the lower level. When the clients wish to entertain, guests can lounge on the agora seating and either admire the view from a dropped 20-foot double-height curtain wall or watch a show on the roll-down movie screen. The central nave and the north-south transept divide the building program into four main zones: 1- the garage, mudroom and storage, 2- a guest-room with an en-suite, 3- home offices/secondary bedrooms, bathroom facilities, and 4- the master bedroom, kitchen, dining, and living areas.
Last week, Architectural Record released their list of the top 300 Architecture Firms in the US, based on architectural revenue from 2015. But what can we learn from those numbers and the firms generating them? In this post for ArchSmarter, Michael Kilkelly dives deeper into the figures that have made these firms so successful, comparing numbers based on firm type, firm location and project location.
His conclusion?
“If I were starting a firm today and wanted to end up the top US firm by revenue in the near future, I would start an EA firm based in California, preferably LA or Pasadena. I would make sure no more than a quarter of my revenue came from architectural projects. Of those architectural projects, 80% or more would need to be domestic projects. At least, that’s what the number say.”
Check out the full piece featuring graphs and visualizations, here.
Florida is a state in denial. Miami is in the midst of one of the largest building booms in the region’s history. Dense crane canopies pepper the city’s skyline as they soar over forthcoming white, gold, and aqua clad “high end” residential and hotel towers. This massive stream of investment dollars is downright paradoxical considering the impending calamity that surrounds Southern Florida: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts that the sea level could likely increase almost 35 inches (0.89 meters) by mid-century. If current trends continue, that number is anticipated to rise to up to 80 inches (2.0 meters) by the year 2100, threatening the habitability of the entire metro area.
Given that harrowing scenario, Miami is either refusing to acknowledge the inevitable, or desperately trying to become relevant enough to be saved—not that saving the city is actually feasible. The region sits on extremely porous limestone which pretty much rules out the option of a Netherlands style sea wall. If the Atlantic couldn’t make any horizontal inroads, the rising tide would simply bubble up from below. Miami’s pancake topography doesn’t stand a chance.
The current governor of Florida, Rick Scott, has overseen an economic recovery in the wake of the Great Recession. Unfortunately, the anti-regulatory, pro-development politician is a fierce climate change denier. Infamously in 2015, according to the Miami Herald, employees from his Department of Transportation, Health and South Florida Water Management claimed that they were instructed not to use the phrases: “climate change” or “global warming” (the Herald also reports that despite the allegations, the governor repeatedly denied their validity). Scott’s inaction continues as circumstances become increasingly dire.
Emerging out of the ideological stew of the purple state’s real estate boom is Dezer Development’s Porsche Design Tower which, barring Zaha Hadid’s posthumous and stunning One Thousand Museum Tower in downtown Miami, is arguably the most significant high rise under construction in the Miami area. In 2016, Porsche—a name traditionally associated with superior automobiles—now graces everything from exorbitantly priced external hard drives to $80 t-shirts. Partnering with established developers to construct the swankiest condominiums in the Sunshine State was the logical next step for the Porsche Design Group. The much-anticipated construction is a $560 million skyscraper nearing completion in Sunny Isles Beach, a few miles north of Miami Beach. This 57 story, 641 foot (196 meter) tall structure will consist of only 132 units. Ranging from 3,800 to 9,500 square feet (350 to 880 square meters), these will undeniably be some of the most exclusive residences in the city.
The big commotion surrounding this tower isn’t over its architecture. The chunky glass cylinder designed by the Sieger Suarez Architectural Partnership is disappointingly nondescript. There’s little to distinguish the facade of the glass and steel behemoth from the rest of the Collins Avenue strip. Just like Sunny Isles Beach’s Trump Towers a couple of miles South along the coast (by the same architect and developer) the building is yawningly symmetrical, and clearly amenity focused. The project makes a deliberate effort to disengage from the public. The structure itself hugs the beach, and is significantly set back from Collins Avenue. Its dual driveway approach is both inclined and curved, discouraging pedestrians from wandering inside. In the president of Dezer DevelopmentGil Dezer’s own words: “We’re really making [these buildings] a self contained city, so you don’t have to leave”.
Forget the Stuttgart branding, 10 foot by 15 foot (3 meter by 4.5 meter) plunge pools integrated into every unit’s balcony, the massive square footage, the 20 foot (6 meter) high ceilings, the remote controlled toilets, and the panoramic views of the Atlantic. The Porsche Design Tower is interesting because of its one party trick: the Dezervator. Yes, the developer has named the building’s elevators after himself, and they’re patented. That is the sole reason that this tower has caught the public’s eye. The contraption is incredibly decadent, but an admittedly impressive engineering feat that makes the building’s floor plan quite intriguing.
The Dezervator is a fully automated car elevator powered by electricity and hydraulics (there’s currently no plan to power them off any alternative to the South Floridian grid). Three Dezervators whose energy-hogging acrobatics operate independently of one another cleverly meet in adjoined circles occupying the hollow concrete core of the tower. Inhabitants can drive their automobiles right into the building and get transported directly up to their condominium all without leaving their car or having to deal with a valet. The building contains 284 apartment-adjacent parking spaces for its residences, allowing owners to leave up to four cars (in the more expensive units) right at their 50th floor doorstep. The Dezervator finally fulfills the long held gear-head fetish of being able to “sleep with your sports car.” According to Curbed Miami, Dezer claims that the gimmick has seduced no less than 22 billionaires (over 1.2% of the world’s total!) who have purchased units in the tower, which opens in a few months.
It’s little surprise that the Porsche Tower is a glorified garage; the developers are obsessed with automobiles. Dezer Development is a New York City-and-Miami based father-son business that was founded in 1970 by Michael Dezer. In 1985 he set his sights on buying and developing 27 acres of the Floridian coastline, largely in Sunny Isles Beach. To this day he is one of the most prominent oceanfront property owners in Florida. Gil Dezer, Michael’s son, orchestrated the Porsche deal and owns 29 cars, 17 of which are Porsches (including a 1950s Porsche Spyder 550 fixed directly into the wall of his Trump Palace condo). But these 29 vehicles are a paltry number when compared to his father, who owns over 1,000 vehicles that are on display at the Dezer Collection Museum in Miami. These powerful men have immense influence over the future of the city. Given Miami’s trajectory, it was almost inevitable that the Dezers have partnered with and are enthusiastic supporters of Donald J Trump.
Trump has previously collaborated with both Dezers on ostentatious Trump Tower projects: “We’re best known for our six buildings we’ve done with Donald Trump, hopefully our future president… The future [for Miami] is very bright” boasts Gil Dezer on a Miami New Construction Show interview. According to the Center for Responsive Politics (a nonpartisan nonprofit research organization that keeps track of campaign contributions) Michael Dezertov (Dezer for short) donated $100,000 to one of Donald Trump’s largest Super PACs, the modestly titled “Make America Great Again PAC.” The Republican Presidential Nominee has famously denounced climate change as “a total, and very expensive, hoax” and a concept “created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.” Trump has also sworn if elected president, to “cancel” the United States’ participation in the Paris Climate agreements due to the strict environmental regulations and turn our back on the rest of the civilized world. Coastal Risk Consulting (a flood risk assessment company) estimates almost 100 days of flooding per year in Sunny Isles Beach by 2045. Considering that the city sits a mere three feet above the encroaching Atlantic, it is clearly in the Dezers’ interest for him to become commander-in-chief if they want to continue stealing sky in a submerging city.
Although the state of Florida blithely ignores the issue and the potential consequences of climate change, and developers’ seaside towers continue to rocket skyward, local governments can’t afford to wait. Despite an annual budget of around $500 million, Miami Beach is spending $400 million ($160 million less than the budget of the Porsche Design Tower) in an attempt to delay the inevitable. The funds will provide the city with 80 new pumps designed to relocate seawater that regularly floods Collins Avenue as well as serving as a last line of defense against the contamination of Miami Dade County’s low-lying potable water reservoirs. Yet meanwhile, the Sunny Isles Beach City Commission unanimously approved the Porsche Design Tower in 2011. As nearby Miami Beach starts to invest in anti-flood infrastructure, it is practically an inevitability that Sunny Isles will have to pony up some taxpayer dollars in the near future to protect its privately owned towers.
On his “anonymous” (and public) Instagram profile Gil Dezer, aka gdizzle99, allows us a glimpse into his privileged life via dozens of photos and videos: million dollar supercars, a yacht, various watches, a private jet embellished with the Dezer Properties logo, plus a cheerful mugshot of CNBC’s Robert Frank presumably taken last year while recording Dezer’s very own episode of “Secret Lives of the Super Rich.” Gil also offers teasers from the construction site, including a breathtaking time-lapse of the Dezervators in action. The video offers a rare glimpse of the triple-contiguous vastness that defines the plan of the tower. To gild the lily, Gil elegantly captions another photograph of the Dezervator: “Does anyone know what this is? Hint: #ladieslovemyshaft There’s a prize to the hottest girl who loves the #shaft.”
The realtor for the project (and VP of Sales for Dezer Platinum Realty) is the self proclaimed “Condo Queen of Miami,” Ms. Lucrecia Lindemann. She smiles from online banner ads that proudly tout the minimum sticker price of a condo in the tower as “six million plus.” When asked via email if clients had expressed concern over sea level rise and the potential loss in value of their investments she never responded.
Unfortunately this very real threat of rising seas encroaching on low lying property will continue to be ignored until the city is literally drowning. The Porsche Design Tower is an apt symbol for the self-absorbed hedonism of Miami’s one percent. As Gil Dezer writes on his Instagram bio: “The one who dies with the most toys, WINS!!!”
Thomas Musca was the assistant curator for the Architecture and Design Museum’s 2013 exhibition Never Built: Los Angeles. He is currently studying architecture at Cornell University.
From the architect. The Invisible House next door reflects the living trees in Waterlow Park opposite and the house backs on to Highgate Cemetery so our proposal plays on this context.
Rather than reflecting the living trees, we decided to use wood that had been ‘traumatised’. This wood, as dead as we could make it, reflects our clients’ interest in the macabre drawing on the ambience of Highgate Cemetery. The heavily charred larch fins creates an interesting counterpoint to the Invisible House that ties the two buildings together.
The fins are fixed to the facade using galvanised top-hat brackets and glued in place. The fronts of all the timbers are in one plane to unify the facade so when viewed from up and down the street, the elevation appears closed, but on moving past the house the differing depths of fins reveal the ghost of the original articulation of the dwelling behind.
MAD Architects has conceived a new design center for international fashion group Xinhee in the coastal Chinese city of Xiamen. Designed as six petals growing from a central atrium, the 61,000 square meter building will sit on a 15,000 square meter site, and will serve as the home of Xinhee and its six subsidiary brands.
“We envision it as a building with skin-and-bones,” reveals MAD founding principal Ma Yansong, “the correspondence of clothing and architecture is they both explore the relationship between the interior and the exterior.”
Courtesy of MAD Architects
The plan of the complex takes the shape of a six-pointed star, mixing office and garden spaces along each of the “organically-formed arms.” Vertical gardens run up the height of the arms, veiled by a PTFE envelope, which acts as a sun-shade to diffuse light and provide ventilation to the building during the hot season. The lightweight skin also gives the building an elegant, floating appearance, like “a piece of delicate, thin, soft skin covering the “bone” structure of the building body.”
Ma Yansong elaborates, “It’s interesting for a building with such an intrinsically logical structure to look floating and free.”
Courtesy of MAD Architects
One wing of the building is designated to each of Xinhee’s brands to foster office efficiency, while the layout creates flexible spaces that allow the different departments to freely interact and communicate. The radial plan allows the building to be highly efficient, while still providing natural light, ventilation and immediate access to landscape. The atrium is open to both staff and visitors, and includes a footbridge which provides air circulation and doubles as a runway for fashion events.
Courtesy of MAD Architects
Courtesy of MAD Architects
The design center has been designed for maximum environmental awareness by adapting to the local climate. The first floor consists of public garden and water features to help provide ventilation to the structure, which has been lifted to reduce the first floor footprint by two-thirds. In the summer months, cool air is circulated through the atrium; in the winter, the glass room transforms into a solar greenhouse to keep the building warm. A translucent coating on the exterior glazing will decrease solar radiation, and an array of solar panels will line the rooftop to provide electricity for daily operations.
Sectional Model. Image Courtesy of MAD Architects
Sustainability Diagram. Image Courtesy of MAD Architects
Xinhee design center is currently under construction and is expected to be completed by 2017.
Design Team: J Travis Russett, Flora Lee, Liu Huiying, Fu Changrui, Xu Chen, Julian Sattler, Jei Kim, Jakob Beer, Younjin Park, Liu Ling, Sear Nee, Zhu Jinglu, Liang Zhongyi
From the architect. The assignment was to place 2 prefabricated warehouses of 1000 m2 on a plot of 10000 m2, and design an office building of 500 m2 that would give the corporative image to the Licanray company.
The first decision was to concentrate the design and budget efforts into the office building and its showroom.
Plan 1
Plan 2
The building is placed like a strip of 8m deep and 30m long on the east–west axis, parallel to the access road, and located at the narrow forefront. In this sense the building is placed like a visible face to the road, having 2 important open large façades, namely the north and south ones, and 2 blind façades, East and west façades.
The warehouses are arranged behind this building in the north-south direction, leaving a distance that would allow for the loading and unloading of the trucks.
For the structure of the main building, the use of laminated pine wood was proposed. Its construction was based on diagonal pillars in an ‘X’ form that configure the main façades, and by joining with the horizontal beams assemble the floors and roof.
The main program of the office is elevated a floor so that it could capture the views, liberating the ground floor for accesses of building and the showroom.
Details
Details
The expression of building is defined primarily by its structure. The enclosing elements, windows and walls, remain behind the structure, leaving it exposed.
The roof fulfills the fundamental role of protecting the wooden structure, and its overhang on the north façade also keeps direct sunlight out of the offices.
This article is part of our new “Material Focus” series, which asks architects to elaborate on the thought process behind their material choices and sheds light on the steps required to get buildings actually built.
The Mipibu House, designed by Brazilian firm Terra e Tuma Arquitetos Associados, measures 170 square meters, and uses exposed concrete blocks to complement an expansive layout. Located in an unusually sized site in Brazil, a key element of the architects’ design involved the consideration of the possible – or rather the inevitable – verticalization of nearby buildings. In response to this challenge, they designed a compact, complex design that answers the needs of their customer with creativity in the selection and use of materials. We talked with architect Danilo Terra to learn more about the choices of materials and the challenges of the project.
How did you research suppliers and builders suitable for the materials used in the project?
DT: Being materials that are not often considered relevant, since they typically provide a base or framework for other projects, we sought suppliers that were able to meet the demand, with quality materials and installation. The same went for the construction team, who would need to be used to working with these materials and have a reasonable construction speed. This last item, time, is still very underestimated by architects and should be considered as a part of the decision making in materials, not just their unit value.
What were the advantages that these materials offered for the construction of the project?
DT: The possibility of facing a lean budget to invest in more relevant areas of the project, like larger sizes, larger openings. The space and its indoor / outdoor relationship were also very beneficial.
Sig Nordal 