Full Project at BIG's Website

The city of Fort Lauderdale, Florida—dubbed “the Venice of America”—is a vibrant waterfront city with active pedestrian promenades and boating along the New River. As an integral part of this three-phase series of housing towers, we propose an intervention which both stitches together the last parts of the now-fragmented Southern Riverwalk and promotes a public life that blurs seamlessly between water and land.

Phase 1&2
The first two housing towers are appear as one continuous volume broken in half. To allow maximum pedestrian access to the waterfront, the break separates the two buildings at the ground to preserve the public pathway from the street and gradually narrows as it ascends to rejoin as a singular roof garden.

Phase 3
The third site proposal straddles the entrance to the door of an existing boat garage allowing boats to pass through. This functional erosion of building area is repeated at the roofline, excavating units from the top to form a cascading sun terrace.