Brickell City Center Visit

ARCHITECTONICA.GEO ,Coconut Grove

Brickell City Center is a 1 billion dollar mixed-use development including office, hotel, retail and residences located in the center of Miami between 8^th street and Brickell Avenue. We met with Jovany Chediac of Architectonica Geo, the company in charge of landscape architecture for this project in their offices located in Coconut Grove.

Swire, the development company, appointed them for this project.Swire started acquiring land 4 years ago and ended up with a total of 9 acres required in order to obtain the FAR planned for such development under current regulations. The integration of the 4 blocks through with under level parking as well as pass ways using air rights to integrate and connect the whole project was very creative.

The team of landscape architects from Architectinica. Geo had the challenge of integrating design, requirements and functionability and complying with the new city’s sustainability’s y regulations.  Jovany showed us the “ Climate Ribbon” which is an architectural feature created by a French firm and Carnegie Melon University for this project to connect open retail spaces and to be used as a climate control structure. This feature built with steel and glass, will act as a passive ventilation structure allowing both light and shade that will also be capable of collecting water for irrigation use. It will be interesting to see how it performs.

The overall cost for landscape architecture is calculated to be 1% of the total cost of the project, which,as mentioned, is estimated to be over 1 billion dollars.

Jovany pointed out on the their of used native Florida plants in the project which will require minimum care and irrigation. He says that it has been a bit of a challenge since native plant growers and farms are scarce. Architectonica’s team of architects is also extensively incorporating the use of green walls throughout the project to integrate spaces and to create a sense of open space in enclosed areas.

It will be interesting to see how, once completed, this massive development with all the intent to promote green spaces and walkability within their parameters of urban design will impact an already “collapsed” transit area such as Brickell Financial center.