Architecture

Grove Central

Grove Central is a mixed-use multi-modal transit project located in Coconut Grove, one of Miami’s oldest and most desirable neighborhoods. It seeks to bring much needed housing density to the community while connecting it to both multi-modal transit and high ground. The project includes a 23-story residential tower that will offer market-rate, workforce housing as well as co-living units. Touzet Studio is both the Design Architect and the Interior Designer for this project.

The design for Grove Central is bold, graphic, and fun. In designing this multi-modal project, Touzet Studio considered how the building would be seen at different speeds and vantage points (trains, cars, bikes and pedestrian). Inspired by its Miami roots, Touzet Studio incorporated playful aspects of both the streamline modern and mid-century modern Miami. For instance, the floating canopies above the bus stop reference Morris Lapidus’s work. Graphic speed lines and strong curves are featured in the parking garage structure alongside a bus station also influenced by Miami Beach midcentury modernism. The tower itself plays with a gray and white infill pattern between bold white accent lines that open up as the tower rises.

101 Hibiscus Residence

The client came to Touzet Studio with the idea of making a modern Miami Beach translation of a Hôtel Particulier, which can be described as a French urban palace. Touzet Studio worked closely with the owner to craft a home for entertaining and for enjoying the waterfront views. Initial research focused on studying the proportions and layouts based on the spatial and historic roots of the Hôtel Particuliers, now re-imagined for Miami Beach and its tropical climate.

Mary Street

Mary Street reinvents a 1980’s garage building with an added floating bar of Class A office buildings overlooking the nearby park and water. Touzet Studio designed the exterior facades as well as custom Interiors for Terra Corporate.

Located at one of the gateway entrances to the Coconut Grove Village Center, this project re-purposes a now tired municipal building and creates contemporary value for the existing structure. The design uses the composition of five main volumes to establish a new presence at a major entry point to the local downtown.

The project’s materiality was inspired by the local natural environment of Florida in various ways: the glass volumes relate to the ocean and fresh aquafer waters below the site while the Louvered volumes took inspiration from the patterning and terracotta colors of seashells and sand. A clear glass volume, curved at both street corners, contains the retail component and the office lobby. The top three-story glass volume houses the main office component. The garage volumes are clad in a screen of square-section, terra-cotta “baguettes,” spaced to allow ventilation and daylight into the volume.

Coral Gables Residence

Inspiration for this house was taken from the tropical hammock of Coral Gables as well as the pristine nature of Biscayne Bay. The house transitions from two engaged, stone-clad volumes on the street to a primarily crystalline facade on the bay side. The interiors balance a warm, neutral palette with moments of intense color, using terrazzo floors and natural wood to give the residence a very tropical Florida feeling. The blues and greys of the carpets and custom light fixtures reflect the shades of the neighboring ocean while bright bursts of color recall the vibrant tones typically found in tropical garden landscapes. The furniture layout takes full advantage of the crystalline facade and beautiful bay views while also meeting the client’s programmatic needs to have a comfortable space for his family to enjoy the water and watch TV.

800 Lincoln Road

2021 AIA Florida Award of Excellence for Renovation and Addition
Built in 1936 and designed by Robert Law Reed, 800 Lincoln Road was originally home to the Burdines Department Store. It featured a streamlined steel and concrete frame structure which was originally intended to serve as a pedestal for the future addition of five more stories. After Burdines moved to a new, larger space, the building was occupied by Richard’s Department Store and several other commercial businesses before finally becoming home to Art Center/South Florida.

The design aims to bring back the original character of the building by restoring the cast concrete panels that made up the façade skin and the polished aluminum trim that established discrete bands of diverse surface treatments. It also establishes a clear demarcation between the original building and any new additions. The newer portion of 800 Lincoln Road retains the use of concrete as a surface material while differentiating itself by using board-formed concrete, which has a rough texture that contrasts sharply to the smooth surface of the original panels. The volume of the addition is set back from the plane of the original building and is separated from the historic structure by a continuous band of glass that runs from the entry to the addition at the southern edge of the historic volume up to the rooftop restaurant.

Doral Square

Doral Square is a proposed mixed-use retail and office development to be located on the southeast corner of Doral Boulevard and 87th Avenue in Doral. Doral Square would incorporate a two-level retail and garage structure into an existing 148,000-square-foot office building and parking lot. The project is adjacent to Carnival Cruise Line’s headquarters with over 3,900 employees, and one block from City Place Doral, a community where CineBistro and Fresh Market now serve 1,000 residential units and 150 single-family homes.

Pancoast North Bay Road Residence

AIA Miami 2015 Honor Award Winner in Restoration/Renovation Category
Miami Design Preservation League: Barbara Baer Capitman Award

The client had asked to add a studio to the house over the existing kitchen to embody the feeling of a “treehouse.”

The original residence was a 1928 Moorish Revival house, designed by a very respected local Miami Beach architect, Russell T. Pancoast, at a point in his career where he was experimenting with different architectural concepts from Spain and the Moorish tradition. To prepare for the project, we studied historic photographs and existing details of the house, maintaining a focus on Pancoast’s era of tropical architecture and its application to the South Florida climate.

Careful attention was placed to the modernization of the property, integrating virtually invisible technology while maintaining the historic characteristics of the residence. Architectural professionals and craftsmen were commissioned to apply their knowledge and expertise to the restoration as well as to the new addition of the house. One by one, the pieces came together, ultimately creating a mosaic of historically intact architecture paired with the accessibility and comfort of modern life.

One by one, the pieces came together. We worked with local and UK craftsmen to bring this amazing structure back to its former glory with added modern conveniences and a thoughtful addition.

Vitri

The palette for the buildings is inspired by the two distinct environments that make Miami Beach unique. The beach’s colors and shapes, derived from the sea, sky, and sand, dictate the appearance of the West Avenue building. The body of the first volume relates to the ocean with its curving, wavelike concrete frame that encloses facets slipping out towards the water views. The glass portions allow light to seep in and change the colors of the structure.

The Alton Road building was inspired by the manmade environment of the City of Miami Beach itself. Appropriately, the materials reflect a more modernist aesthetic composed of steel, glass and concrete. The different glass colors and irregular grid were meant to show that the city is a mosaic of different pieces, all contained within one frame of reference. It is eclectic, exuberant, yet nonetheless contained in a rectilinear volume. Not only are spectacular views of Miami Beach accessible from this building, the Vitri itself offers a unique take on the city.