From a press release from Keenan/Riley: “K/R’s recently completed Garden Building is a two-story mixed-use building with an intensively landscaped green roof in the heart of the Miami Design District. The original site served as an expansive garden for private and public events. The new Garden Building expands on this vision, incorporating retail space on the ground floor, a mixed-use second story space and a green roof garden.” On the building’s facade, “just above street level, a series of jewel-like glass ‘vines’ are suspended within finely crafted frames.” Full press release here.
For designing small, attached urban buildings, what wisdom can Terry Riley share? From an email from Mr. Riley: ”Starting out as a young architect in New York City, I became very used to the idea that the facade defines the structure — in many more ways than in suburbia where buildings tend to be free-standing.” You heard it here first, folks: focus on the facade. Congrats on an attractive, exemplary building!
Well, it’s time that our urban core is built with HUMANS in mind, and not based on the scale of the automobile. We need more of this. HOWEVER, with that said, I do think that the city of Miami needs to expand its shuttle services throughout neighborhoods in the city, designed in such a way that suburbanites visiting friends who live in the city can park their vehicles on the outskirts of the city and jump on shuttles/trolleys that take them into the heart of the city. This way, congestion is kept out of core while getting visitors out of their cars. It’s safer for pedestrians and for the environment, too.
i agree that it’s about time, and i think the city should stop requiring parking for all small urban buildings
In my experience forces conspire against this sort of project and I applaud the developer for getting it done. I’d be curious to know how this was accomplished, ie, what was the land use/zoning framework that enabled a developer to profitably build at such a scale?
Lots of times, the well thought out urban plan gets tossed out the window when a city is confronted with a project that will reap more in development impact fees, property taxes, etc. from building higher. This leads to disused, blighted land and leapfrog development, hurting the urban fabric, not to mention the opportunity costs of “could have been” development. The game land speculators play is that it’s a marginal cost to sit on that land, but a huge potential gain if they lobby for a big variance that increases their land value. Minimal holding costs with a lot of upside potential.
I’m glad this one got done. How do we get more of it?
transit concerns are definitely at the forefront of sustainable urban growth
To answer the comment above. Dacra/c. Robbins has a special zoning district for this area so he is not tied to Miami 21 and can basically do as he pleases, he owns every building basically in the district and probably has a parking master plan that he ties to any new building. Parking really should be considered the same way streets are from the city’s perspective in the sense that it really should not strictly be the responsibility of the private developer to provide or not. The city should regulate it and create public parking areas where needed, just as FDOT regulates the street.
the zoning framework is a “special area plan” or custom zoning (e.g. no on-site parking), which you can apply for if you are a massive urban property owner with 9 contiguous acres: http://curbed.cc/LijuVv. so yes, it’s throwing the plan (miami 21) out the window, but in this case not in favor of “leapfrog” development. leapfrog usually happens where there are blocks of vacant land, like in downtown miami, so development just goes to the farthest block because it’s cheapest, but in this case there is an existing urban fabric that is not being demolished. how do we get more small urban buildings with no on-site parking? change miami 21 to allow them even if you’re not a massive property owner. let small property owners — sometimes called “residents” — revitalize their own urban neighborhoods
Thanks for the info, I was not aware of the special area plan in place.
In “Walkable City”, Jeff Speck suggests “in-lieu of” payments from developers to create spaces as needed that are more of a public benefit, or better yet no parking requirement whatsoever.
i’m in favor of the latter