Claudio Salazar, AIA, LEED AP

Role: Architect/Project Manager/Designer at Nichols, Brosch, Wurst, Wolfe & Associates.

​Brickell Condominium & Office.  Miami Florida

Luxury Condominium. 870,000 sf.  Office Component 202,000 sf.

The project includes a mixed-use program of luxury hotel, residences and commercial spaces at multiple levels of an eighty-story tower with a total area of 1.35 million square feet.  The project’s Owner asked us to rethink the high-rise typology and create an identifiable tower for the City of Miami. As a team-leader in this project, it was important for me to define a series of strategies from the early stages to achieve the project goals.
  
1. The first strategy was to create a high-rise tower on which its design would tell a story about its location.  The most significant approach was to carve the tower with 50-foot voids at different levels to locate amenities spaces. The intention was to create dramatic outdoor public spaces in a relatively small site footprint. This feature reduces the effect of a “barrier” wall between the city and the edge of the water.  The large deep terraces at these spaces would also provide cross-ventilation in the individual apartment units.
2. The second strategy was to reveal the public spaces in the sky while also revealing the structure of the building as if light and air has removed the building’s envelope.  The openings would help reduce the height to width ratio for wind resistance during a severe storm. 
3. By being located at the edge of city and water, not only the building enjoys virtually unobstructed views of the water to the east and the city to the west and south. This location presents infinite opportunities to reflect the dramatic sunrises and the sunsets in Miami.  By curving the building’s profile as well as the edges in both plan and elevation, the building would provide different qualities of reflections throughout the day.  It would become a beacon that reflects its surrounding city.
4. To create a visual connection between the lobbies and the sidewalk and generating a more pedestrian-friendly environment, the building avoids having an elevated lobby despite the designated high base flood elevation regulation.  Instead, the building mitigates the impact of flooding through the use of storefront systems which perform as flood barriers.  Also the parking garage levels have been designed to allow the transfer of program from the ground level in anticipation of rising seas.
5. Normally a tower that would have both a condominium program and hotel program would locate the more public component below and the most private above.  This formula privatizes views to the ocean and the city. We are inverting this organization by placing the most public program at the top of the tower to promote public life at different locations.
My role in this project has been of Lead Designer and Project Manager.  The project is currently in the process of zoning approval where I have lead my team organize presentations to City officials and I have developed a series of strategies to help the Owner visualize the project’s feasibility . The project is on a successful track to start Construction Documents once a zoning approval is granted.