Archinect - News

Post-Surfside safety precautions could spur a new gold rush to replace aging Florida condo buildings

2024-07-30T16:49:00-04:00

Regulations passed in Florida after the 2021 collapse of the Champlain Towers condominium have helped fuel the drive by developers to buy out and replace older residential buildings. The new rules have increased costs for residents in many older buildings, sometimes requiring sizeable special assessments that may be unaffordable.

The rush to improve building safety in the wake of the 2021 Surfside condo collapse has since produced some unintended and expensive consequences for residents of Florida condominiums, three-quarters of whom live in structures that are now more than 30 years old.

While the laws’ intent is to protect their lives and property, the costs offloaded onto them through their condo associations have fueled a separate gold rush on the part of developers (who were already looking to take advantage of the new Resiliency and Safe Structures Act to make way for more lucrative new constructions). The court ruling in the Biscayne 21 case, if upheld, might now be the only thing preventing the mass-scale redevelopment of the many peers of Champlain Towers South, regardless of their current structural integrity.

Renzo Piano releases first concept designs for The Center for Arts & Innovation in Boca Raton, Florida

2024-04-19T18:30:00-04:00

Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW) has released early concept designs for The Center for Arts & Innovation project in Boca Raton, Florida. The firm was announced as the winner of an international RFP process to imagine the Center in September of last year.

As stated in an announcement today, the new campus aims to foster the convergence of arts, education, business, and community in order to develop a new approach to how the world designs, imagines, programs, utilizes, and embraces cultural infrastructure.

Image: Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW)

The project will consist of a three-story building featuring permeable and luminous multi-use spaces. The eastern side of the scheme will include the “main venue,” a large multi-functional, convertible event, exhibition, and performance space designed to merge seamlessly with the outdoor piazza. The main venue is intended to be highly flexible, allowing for a variety of gatherings, exhibitions, performances, and innovative programming....

Brooks + Scarpa completes vibrant park pavilion and sport complex in South Florida

2024-01-29T17:44:00-05:00

Brooks + Scarpa has shared photos of its recently completed design for the Youth Sports Complex in Pompano Beach, Florida.

The concept of the 10-acre project centers around The Field House, an enclosed 4,100-square-foot pavilion structure at the center of the park. Approached from the north elevation at Northeast 10th Street, visitors will be able to clearly view the signage that's encased in its yellow-painted metal lattice screens.

Image courtesy Brooks + Scarpa

Simple, cost-efficient board-formed concrete walls create the structure’s “playful and sculptural” outer facade. A wraparound porch is then formed inside the shell, capped by a sloping roofline that funnels water from its scupper into the aquifer of the rain garden below.

Image courtesy Brooks + Scarpa

Inside the porch of the pavilion, high-speed ceiling fans of varying heights that keep the space 20 degrees cooler are painted blue in contrast to the raw concrete ...

Renzo Piano selected to design new Center for Arts & Innovation in Boca Raton, Florida

2023-09-07T13:35:00-04:00

Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW) has been announced as the winner of an international RFP process to deliver a new arts and innovation cultural project in Boca Raton, Florida.

The Italian studio beat out Foster + Partners, Ennead, and OMA for the commission of the new Center for Arts & Innovation and will begin the design and development process next month toward an expected 2025 groundbreaking. The Center will be located in the city’s downtown core and offer local K-12 learners facilities equipped for STEAM education while providing much-needed cultural infrastructure. RPBW's proposal also calls for a six-venue program of flexible performance spaces with a capacity for up to 6,000 people.

“We have worked for the last five years to arrive at this milestone moment. The fact that this firm takes two to three commissions at any time in the year just underscores the fact that this project is that enticing to the global market,” the Center’s CEO, Andrea Virgin, indicated via a press ...

Inside BIG's twisted, twin-towered Grove at Grand Bay

2016-12-14T13:53:00-05:00

At each elevation from the third through 17th floors, the floor plates in Bjarke Ingels Group's new Grove at Grand Bay rotate three feet, creating a twisting set of luxury residential towers that from the ground resemble the splayed bellows of dueling concrete accordions. Indeed, these 20-story sustainable towers, which are expected to attain LEED Gold status, seem to be designed as much for the entertainment value of sweeping aerial flyover shots as actual inhabitation.

The interiors do possess a kind of upbeat brutalist vibe; slanted concrete pillars face off against vibrant murals and landscape architect Raymond Jungles' gardens in the common areas, while the residences themselves take in views of the arts community in which it is sited, Coconut Grove.