Projects + Drawings

Buena Vista West Historic Rehabilitation Project ; Miami, Florida, USA.

The Buena Vista West neighborhood, located just 4 blocks west of the popular Miami Design District, is a pre world war two development with most houses and buildings constructed in the twenties and thirties. Many of the homes, schools, and commercial buildings have an architectural style I call "Afro-Mediterranean" which pays homage to the oft-ignored and forgotten African Moorish empire that ruled Spain and other parts of the European Mediterrranean coastal areas and Islands for around 700 years up to 1492, and was responsible for a lot of the architecture, town and city planning in the region.

The project was an amalgamation of two adjoining properties to create a compound which in three buildings, built between 1926 and 1938, contain seven 1 bedroom apartments of various sizes and a single family house. The two properties joined to become a unified lot of size 100ft. x 100ft. which is the average size of a suburban single family home lot, proving the increased possibilities of density in an urban neighborhood fabric.

Caliph Street Plaza at Town Center ; Opa Locka, Florida, USA.

Opa Locka, a city just to the north of Miami, was developed in the 30's as an "Arabian Nights" fantasy town. After building a collection of Moorish style buildings, the developer fell into bankruptcy and the city became ghettoized as slum lords grabbed up the cheap land. Today the city is on the rebound and this project is part of a movement to bring civic art and pedestrian ability back to the area. The construction of plazas for pedestrians in cities and towns despite being very common prior to world war two, is a lost practice in modern American cities. The presence of plazas is of primary importance in the life of any neighborhood to provide articulated public spaces to walk, excercise, relax, gather, and communicate. In addition to the small plaza or "piazetta" as it is known in Italian culture, we designed a colonnaded loggia of 5 arched bays in a contemporary Moorish style. The loggia is a perfect companion to this plaza in order to provide a covered gathering space shielded from the intense South Florida sun and it's voluminous rainy season.