GLASS Residential Tower, Rene Gonzalez Architect

Terra Group + Rene Gonzalez Architect recently unveiled their design for GLASS, a new residential tower composed of 10 full-floor units located at 120 Ocean Drive in Miami Beach. The 18-story, all-glass building is located in the South of Fifth neighborhood, which has become, over the past decade, one of the most expensive destinations for luxury high-rise living in Miami Beach. Delicate and sensorial, the design of GLASS is a considered a response to its setting in Miami Beach, specifically intended to allow one to experience the surrounding natural landscape.

Gonzalez, who specializes in creating memorable architectural spaces and projects of various scales and typologies, approached the design of GLASS aiming to reflect and capture the natural landscape of sand, sea, and sky. The building dematerializes as it rises, with its exterior almost disappearing into the atmosphere and its compositional use of fritted, patterned glass. Light and ethereal, GLASS is a response to its site, context, and environment, maintaining the essence of place through its architectural design, its materials, surface textures, and tonal color.

The building's entrance is an immersive environment - at once luxurious and elemental, with natural light and areas with water that evoke the beach. Referencing the visual effect of waves meeting the shore and receding into the sand, the porous Coquina stone, which contains fragments of shell and coral, becomes gradually interspersed with small rectangles of smooth, Azul Macaúbas quartzite from Brazil that reaches a greater density at the elevator, signaling the transition between sand and sea. (Font: ArchDaily)

Schermata 2016-07-15 alle 19.41.00

Photo by Key Hayden / courtesy Rene Gonzalez Architect

Photo by Key Hayden / courtesy Rene Gonzalez Architect
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