Architecture

South Pointe Townhouses

The project consists of four townhouses located on a broad landscaped boulevard in South Beach. The individual townhouses are composed of a series of horizontal, overlapping “drawers,” both enclosed and unenclosed, that create living areas of varying heights. These horizontal volumes are pinned together by a solid vertical element, the elevator, that sits near the center of each of the compositions. The landscaped ground level establishes the first of a series of horizontal planes that cap the shifting horizontal volumes. These are surfaced alternately in stone, natural ground cover, and wood decks, all with water features and variable amounts of vegetation.

The townhouses are differentiated by decorative attributes that identify each unit with one of the four elements: water, earth, fire, and air. These elements inform the individual designs of the cast metal fences, doors, and entry courts. Off-center pivoting main doors into the entry courts are built of smooth and rough-hewn stone, and translucent cast resin panels on a cast metal framework.

Wynwood Retail

This building is envisioned as an entity that invites the neighborhood’s creative energy inside and connects its occupants with the environment outside. Wynwood, known for its world-class collection of street art/murals and monthly art walks, is rapidly losing its galleries in favor of retail and office. This project is designed to provide space for both. Through careful sculpting of the building’s primary massing, and by considering natural light and ways to frame views, residents and visitors alike can engage with the community, urban life, and nature in ways that most conventional Miami buildings would not allow.

88 La Gorce

The client’s synopsis included over 16,000 SF of program and the request that the project should follow the basic layout of the 1926 Carl Fisher Estate, a property he had once owned. The program is divisible into three distinct groupings: a main house that contains the primary public and private areas, a guest pavilion, and a service structure with staff quarters, a garage, secure storage, mechanical rooms, and a power plant.
The main house consists of a large rectangular volume intersected by numerous volumetric elements that each articulate portions of the program. The master bedroom suite is located within a cantilever that overlooks a strip of private beach and over 100 feet of a reflecting pool (serving as both a pool and spa). The breakfast room extends beyond the main volume of the house to capture views of Indian Creek and the morning sun while the family room, located in a high-ceiling wedge, cantilevers over the front garden.
A twenty-five-foot cylindrical void is the core of the house, containing both its vertical circulation and a partially suspended stair that spirals up to the roof garden. The roof of the core is constructed in glass, allowing the natural daylight to fill the three-story void and welcome light deep into the house.

Parasol House

This house features a series of three courtyards, each with its own separate and unique character. The street side of the property contains several mature, live oaks that help shape the character of the first court. This appropriately named “Tree Court” is bound by the Florida keystone-clad wall of the guest quarters and the Ficus ripens-covered portion of the garage. The first perpendicular element, a glass-clad bridge that contains the children’s bedrooms, extends from the main bar and rests on the guest quarters volume. This court, the “Rain Court,” is bound on three sides by the circulation spine of the main bar, the guest quarters volume, and the two-story living room. It opens onto a dense garden wall. The third court, the “Water Court,” faces Biscayne Bay and contains the pool and spa. It was designed to create an exterior environment that encourages full access and enjoyment of the bay’s long vistas and sunsets.

Providing shade and comfort to both the Water and Rain Courts is the concrete parasol extending above the living room volume, to which the name of this project is indebted. Positioned to offer rain protection, it is raised above the roof to allow bay breezes to flow through the site. This parasol also acts as a solar reflector that blocks direct sun during most of the day while allowing the light that is reflected off the living room’s single-membrane roof to bounce off its underside.

Apple Miami Beach Lincoln Road

The Client is a global icon of technology and design. They commissioned Touzet Studio to help them design a building that fit into the scale and materiality of Lincoln Road.

The main façade, as well as all other visible surfaces of the building, had to communicate and celebrate the qualities the brand is known for. One can argue that one can no longer showcase such a thing as state-of-the-art technology because, just like the waters of Lao-Tze’s River, it is always in motion –always in flux. The technology of the current model is already dated when it hits the market. In consideration of that, Touzet Studio argued that today’s technology would not be an appropriate basis for the building envelope and needed to be more timeless in place and culture.

Both the façade and the interior needed to convey other iconic aspects of the brand: simplicity in design, meticulous materiality, and impeccable execution and workmanship.

Design District 3711

This project serves as a gateway to the Miami Design District, interacting with pedestrians at street level and with vehicles on the elevated highway.

The location inspired Touzet Studio to design a building that could serve as either a three-dimensional canvas or billboard, capable of delivering unique experiences depending on the time of day or night. The floating bar façade across the top of the structure is meant to anchor the viewer’s sense of perspective, while the massing and moves were kept purposely simple. This allows the floating bar element to assume different personalities by playing with simple concrete and light rather than relying on complicated skins.

The building’s base is dark and rounded to contrast visually with the sleekness of the rectilinear shape above. Meanwhile, the exterior uses embossed metal and glass surfaces to add texture and interest to the pedestrian experience. A proposed paved urban courtyard, designed by landscape architect Jefre, will take visitors to a rooftop garden with views of downtown Miami, Biscayne Bay, and the ocean. The building will serve as an exceptional venue for events both on the rooftop and at street level.

Wynwood Plant

For the design of this project, Touzet Studio wanted to recognize the unique qualities of this artistic neighborhood and weave them together with inspiration from Wynwood’s rapidly vanishing industrial past. The area’s history lives on in the form of industrial plants and manufacturing warehouses that artists have used as their urban canvases. This project aspires to continue that intersection of art and architecture at a larger scale.

Miami is a young city with a rich collection of culturally distinct neighborhoods. In Touzet Studio’s approach to design, it is important to share history and tell stories through architecture of what each unique part of the city is all about. While researching the site, Touzet Studio found that it was once an iconic Coca Cola plant. As with many historic buildings in Miami, the identifying signs had been taken down some years ago and nothing remains. This project’s name, Wynwood Plant, honors that historic use and serves as a reminder to future generations of this neighborhood’s story.

The Setai

This 38-story condominium tower was designed by Carlos Prio-Touzet and Jacqueline Gonzalez while at Schapiro and Associates. This project marked the first design collaboration of Touzet Studio’s Founding Principals and exhibits many of the qualities of design storytelling, sculptural modernity, and the attention to detail that have become the major focus of their own studio.