A new project from this year’s Pritzker Prize laureate, David Chipperfield, was announced recently as the architect of a new western expansion plan for the Design District in Miami.

Local developer Craig Robbins made the news public in earlier December via Instagram. The plan will reportedly include a high-end luxury hotel, a residential component, and an undisclosed total of retail spaces. No further details of the project have been publicized. Chipperfield spoke to his vision briefly during an impromptu sit-down with critic Paul Goldberger at the Design Miami fair. 

“I think [it has] a very interesting context, because [the district] has grown out of a pre-existing fabric in an organic way. There’s been a sort of intelligent reuse of buildings in a rather agile way,” he said, speaking to the appeal of working in the transformed district and the difference between the European cities he's worked in and Miami. “I think it’s very interesting now to be doing a project there, which is in a way the next layer of seriousness in an area which before was kind of not self-conscious in a certain way.” 

Other mixed-use projects by the firm include another recently announced hotel and retail development in Hamburg. Also in Miami, Zaha Hadid Architects is working on a replacement of the collapsed Surfside condo tower while another prominent British name, Heatherwick Studio, recently announced its design for a new Antoni Gaudi-inspired shopping center redevelopment in Midtown.