Miami Beach Condominium Architects
Florida Architects on their Design Influences for New Beach Condos
Oct 18, 2008
The architecture and design of condominiums on Miami Beach has evolved in recent years to reflect not only the possibilities inherent in advancing technology but also the precepts of today’s condo-buying zeitgeist – the primary one being that a building shouldn’t be just livable, it should also be beautiful.
Some architects are responding to this new emphasis on aesthetics by actively applying artistic principles to their design.
Chad Oppenheim, Oppenheim Architecture and Design
Chad Oppenheim of Oppenheim Architecture and Design, for example, says that his Ice Project, a glass building on Biscayne Bay with 18-foot-high ceilings in the units, owes its sensibility to minimalist artist Donald Judd.
“He created simplistic volumes, and in the design we were inspired by this. How do you make a 400-foot-tall, 36-story building look as light as possible? With crystalline volume wrapped in a minimalist structure that forms a framing. We employ a framing device that distorts the reading of scale; the grid encloses the lobby and loggia, creating exciting open spaces.”
Robert Swedroe, Robert M. Swedroe Architects and Planners
Other architects, such as Robert Swedroe, let the needs of the individual units dictate the design of the building.
“We design from the inside out,” says Swedroe. “We design the units first, then decide on the outside of the building, so the building shape is a byproduct.” His Bella Mare, for example, is in the shape of an arc. “The outer part of the arc has all the main spaces — living, dining, kitchen, bedroom — while the secondary bedrooms face the narrower side; that’s the rationale for the arc.” Swedroe’s buildings also feature, as do many South Florida condo architects’, “floor-throughs/see-throughs,” i.e., outside views from opposing ends of the unit, as well as private-entry elevators.
“The advantages of using vertical access to apartments rather than horizontal affords multiple rather than single-direction views,” affirms Swedroe. “The builder doesn’t have to build, light, decorate, or furnish public hallways. The purchasers don’t have to carry that expense. Buildings become much more efficient, and the design becomes much more flexible.”
Charles Sieger, Sieger Suarez Associates
Charles Sieger of Sieger Suarez Associates, who is credited with pioneering the floor-through/see-through condo unit, agrees. “If you look at the buildings from the 1960s and ‘70s, the corridors are pretty nasty; you feel like you’re living in a dormitory.” His 6000 Indian Creek project flares out at the top, organically. “We were trying to increase balconies as we went up, which created the flare – the wraparound balconies and 360-degree view gave shape to the oval, which is also more efficient structurally.”
In fact, one of the major influences on condo design, and one of the reasons that so many new condos are curved or oval shaped, is the wind-tunnel test. Architects of tall buildings now routinely build models that they subject to various hurricane-force tests.
Lawrence Cohan, Brito Cohan Associates
Although even flat, oblong buildings conform to the hurricane-preparedness building code on Miami Beach, according to Lawrence Cohan of Brito Cohan Associates, “The advantage to the curved shape of buildings is that it deflects wind; structurally, the wind forces are less on the building, which allows us to have columns that are a bit smaller, so rooms can be bigger, and views can be wider, because the columns are further apart.”
His 46-story Akoya, one of the tallest on Miami Beach, features balconies that change shape as the building rises – “Some are curved, some are segmented,” he says.
Cohan’s vision of the ideal future is one with “more buildings with colored glass, with different variations of tints; different colored bands.” Given the proscription, as of April 2002, that all new buildings are required to use laminated glass to deflect possible hurricane damage, this future seems far off, at least according to Sieger, who predicts, “more block walls because it costs less than the glass wall, until the cost of glass comes back down.”
His own dream condo design, though not economically or even structurally feasible at this point, is one in which the building and the individual units ascended on a spiral, so that “you could have private yards and swimming pools for every unit.”
Computer-Aided Design (CAD) in Condo Architecture
All the architects agree that, hurricane preparedness and interior design concerns aside, computer-aided design, or CAD, has provided the turning point for condo architecture with greater finesse than it possessed in the early years of condo development.
“It allows us to do much more complex shapes than we could ever imagine doing by hand, and to produce more detail more efficiently to make the design more complete,” says Sieger. Cohan agrees, “The computer is now following us; we draw the shapes, and the computer makes calculations for us.”
The resulting calculations make it increasingly possible for condos on Miami Beach to achieve the marriage that both architects and the eventual occupants of their developments are seeking, buildings that are, as Oppenheim says, “Beautiful but economically sound.”
