Courtyard Building
North Miami Beach, Florida
University of Miami

Urban building types were the focus of a studio in the graduate program at the University of Miami where the North Miami Beach Courtyard Building was designed.  The studio began with a full documentation of an area in North Miami Beach along Collins Avenue fronting the Atlantic Ocean.  This studio project utilized a one week long charrette to first, design an illustrative plan for the area, and then a series of prototypical buildings found throughout the plan.

The block which I chose to design allowed me to create a building with a roughly square footprint organized around a central courtyard which needed to be elevated in order to comply with FEMA flood plain regulations.  On each corner and on the lots with ocean frontage I created a townhouse unit with three bedrooms and two and one half bathrooms.  All units on secondary streets without ocean frontage were designed as studio, one bedroom, and two bedroom maisonettes.  Other amenities in the building include a landscaped pool area, a community room, and a fitness room.