The proposal resolves through its various perforations the high winds characteristic of South Florida. The installation system is mechanical, using screws at all joints, including its anchoring to the existing building.
It is an all aluminum system, from its structure to its panels, with a 3 mm thick warm white color. Designed through a continuum of folds of different rhythms that give the facade movement and dynamics, emphasizing the longitudinality of the building. There are three areas that are specifically accentuated with greater depth in their folds suggesting a different function in the façade. The cutomized design of the folds made possible a play of depths where the lighting maximizes its visual impact.
The system was designed to work as a unit, i.e., the panels are assembled together to cover the system’s own mechanical anchors with the same panel. All the panels are installed on aluminum tubes, which are visible behind the system thus suggesting a modular presence. We have found in the diverse folds an economical and sustainable design resource whose aesthetic result proposes a subtle and sober order for the façade.
The proposal is a façade intervention in the Design District area in the city of Miami, an area characterized by being considered a rich catalog of very elaborate and brilliantly designed façades.
Although the intervention on the existing 132 ft x 60 ft (40 m x 18 m) building had to consider this influential environment, it was not conceived as provocative but rather sober given the brand’s commercial proposal.
The intervention on the façade was performed on a building about 40 years old which has been preserved absolutely all its shell. The silhouette of the existing building has five large windows and two entrances crowned with their canopies. The strategy was to cover up subtly the various functional situations of the façade through customized folds and perforations, preserving the openings of the original building.