Florida: The Latest Architecture and News

A consortium of Tampa-based ASD, Rogers Partners Architects+Urban Designers, and Ken Smith Landscape Architect has been announced as winners of the second St. Petersburg Pier redesign competition. Chosen after the city failed to implement Michael Maltzen Architecture’s competition-winning proposal due to strong public opposition, the new winning scheme, "Pier Park" takes a more scaled down (and affordable) approach to redesigning the site's landmark 1970s pier by focusing on public experience rather than architectural intervention.

Read on after the break for more on the $46 million Pier Park proposal.

Last week, the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) presented its Innovation Design in Engineering and Architecture with Structural Steel Awards program. Recognizing exemplary work in steel for both its architectural and structural merits, the AISC awarded Santiago Calatrava's Innovation, Science, and Technology (IST) building at Florida Polytechnic University in Lakeland, Florida with the national award in the $15 million to $75 million category.

After deliberating over eight shortlisted proposals to reimagine the St. Petersburg Pier, the Pier Selection Committee has narrowed the competition down to three designs. Though the proposals vary widely in aesthetics, the finalists all approached the project as an opportunity to express the past while embracing modern forms and incorporating strong public programs.

Next on the agenda, the Pier Selection Committee will conduct an initial public meeting on April 23 in which finalists will present clarifications on their designs, followed later that day with a second meeting to announce the teams' rankings. Based on these proceedings, one design will be chosen for further development, in collaboration with the city. Check out the three finalists, after the break.

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Populous' has released plans to redevelop Jacksonville, Florida’s riverfront Shipyards district into a massive recreation and entertainment hub. Unveiled by the Jacksonville Jaguars' team owner Shad Khan and president Mark Lamping, the property will be injected with life to better stimulate economic activity in the area and make the forgotten plot a bustling destination for locals and tourists alike.

Read on after the break for more information and an animation of the Shipyards vision.

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After public outcry rejected Michael Maltzan Architecture’s winning entry “The Lens,” which sought to replace St. Petersburg Pier with an ambitious sail-like concrete canopy and aquatic habitat, the fate of the structurally inapt inverted pyramid remained in limbo. Now, two years after the culmination of the original competition, the City of St. Petersburg, Florida, alongside the preservations of the Concerned Citizens of St. Pete, has selected eight scaled back proposals in hopes that one will provide a sensible solution that will both maximize the pier’s potential and satisfy the locals.

Shortlisted competitors, including FR-EE / Fernando Romero EnterprisE, Alfonso Architects, and Rogers Partners, received a $30,000 stipend to submit these preliminary design concepts, complete with reports, renderings and cost estimates. Take a look at all eight proposals, after the break.

The first to use this type of free-form geodesic geometry in the United States, HOK’s Salvador Dali Museum is a Floridian landmark in St. Petersburg known for housing one of the most important collections of a single artist’s work in the world. Referring to it as “The Dali,” architect Yann Weymouth and museum director Dr. Hank Hine discuss their intentions behind the building’s design in this interview with TheCoolist.com.

Early this month at Design Miami/, Olson Kundig Architects celebrated the opening of “38 Beams,” a temporary collectors lounge named after the thirty-eight salvaged glulam beams that made up the structure. Originally milled in the 1950s, the Northwestern Douglas fir beams were once used to construct a Los Angeles building before being repurposed.

Approximately 15x30 inches around and up to 30 feet in length, 38 Beams formed a 2,400-square-foot lounge with an open lattice-work stacked 15-feet-high. The focal point of the space was a 28-foot Perrier-Jouët champagne bar lit by a chandelier of one hundred suspended light tubes designed by LILIENTHAL l ZAMORA. 

More about the structure and images, after the break. 

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Fentress Architects has released plans for the $500 million redesign of the Miami Beach Convention Center. The news follows the City of Miami’s controversial decision to nix plans provided by OMA, who was originally awarded the commission after a high profile competition against BIG.

Fentress will be working with Arquitectonica and West 8 on a significantly scaled-down masterplan that will include the renovation of the 500,000-square-foot exhibition hall and 200,000-square-feet of existing meeting space, as well as a new 80,000-square-foot ballroom and outdoor event space.

Daniel Libeskind has teamed up with locally-based GS4 Studios to propose a four-tower, luxury condominium project for downtown Boca Raton, Florida. North of Miami, the “Mizner on the Green” development will add 500 residential units and a two-acre public park directly adjacent to the Boca Raton Resort and Club golf course.

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Construction has begun on Miami’s tallest tower: SkyRise Miami. Standing 305 meters above the Biscayne Bay, the waterfront tower will offer three viewing decks, a restaurant, nightclub, ballroom, exhibition space, and even the chance to bungee jump off its upper floors.

It’s designers, locally based arquitectonica, hope SkyRise will achieve LEED Gold upon completion in mid-2017.

The Spring House, also known as the Clifton and George Lewis II House, is the only private house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright that was ever built in Florida. The design embodies the final and shortest stylistic phase in Wright's career – the hemicycle style. The plan is characterized by concentric and intersecting circles, while the elevations are consistent with Wright's other designs in how they accentuate the horizontal.

After the death of her husband in 1996, Clifton Lewis formed the Spring House Institute, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to preserving the historic property and turning it into a public legacy. In order to restore and complete the house (some elements were never built, including a semi-circular pool on one of the terraces), the organization needs to raise $256,250, which will then be matched by the Division of Historical Resources to pay the $512,500 purchase price. To meet the Division of Historical Resources' October 15th deadline, they have launched an IndieGoGo campaign with a target of $100,000. For more on the historical landmark and the organization's fundraising efforts, keep reading after the break.

The city of St. Petersburg, Florida is once more seeking candidates for the design of its new pier. The call comes two years after a pier design by Michael Maltzan Architecture was selected over rival schemes by BIG and West 8, but was eventually turned down after significant public criticism. To avoid a repeat of that incident, the current selection process for candidates and their subsequent proposals will incorporate more community input.

More on the competition after the break

Florida International University’s Stempel Complex, designed by Perkins + Will, will be completed this fall. The complex will house the Extreme Event Institute, which will bring together a number of the university’s research and academic programs to study “extreme natural events.” The form of the building itself takes inspiration from natural disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes, and is centered around an oval-shaped courtyard.