Ours is a design for a new four-apartment building on a vacant lot, in the North Shore Local Historic District, by a canal bend with expansive water views towards the Southwest and the North and surrounded by detached apartment buildings from the 1920s to the 1970s.

When seen from the waterway, one realizes the untapped potential for a stronger relationship with it and a boating lifestyle, and sees how the new building is to be inserted in a context of compact, yet relatively sizable apartment buildings with 4 to 5 stories, characterized by open front yards, simple forms, a white or light colored palette, big windows, particularly on the front and back, continuous stucco bands all around, and the occasional chimney as a poignant element over the roof. Looking closer, the adjacent building to the North has a rather symmetrical facade, with prominent round corners at the roof parapet, and balconies with a vertical divider as a dominant element also repeated in the rear. Then there is a smaller building next to it, whose sheer horizontality makes it very dynamic, reinforced not just by stucco bands, but by continuous overhangs wrapping around the building, with emphasis above the entrance. Finally, the large building across the street also features strong horizontal bands in its treatment of the balconies, softened up by curved corners throughout. These are some of the syntactic elements in the surrounding structures, many of which derive from the local MiMo vernacular prevailing in the neighborhood, a language we had to talk to set up a successful dialogue with the new building.

Next come the successive layers of zoning requirements, superimposing each other and pushing design decisions within an extremely tight envelope. They start with the side setback requiring a 10 Ft wide view corridor to the water, out of what is already a very narrow lot, and with the increasing front setback that steps further back after reaching 32 Ft in height, meant to keep scale low and the roof access stair not visible from across the street. Then there is the requirement for additional landscaped space within the buildable envelope, equivalent to no less than 5% of the net lot area.

All of which coalesces into the new, four-dwelling-unit apartment building proposed, detached and with an open front yard, long and svelte, with strong horizontal lines defined by the rounded, wrapping overhangs, pulled forward at the tip of the corners to break the staleness of an otherwise very simple, rigid volume that tries to maximize scarce permitted floor area, with the staircase supporting and anchoring the building as it confers an overarching symmetry, and the tapered columns defining edges and giving vertical movement, preventing the building from feeling too long and boxy. The stair stops at the third level, with its mezzanine pulled back to meet setback requirements, but for a sliver of the trash chute enclosure shaped like a chimney itself.

The proposed solution deals with the dichotomy of a building whose access sequence happens on the street front, yet it is completely focused on the waterfront, with all living rooms and social spaces facing the private boat marina and views on Tatum waterway.

Back on the street, the lobby is set back to zealously guard precious FAR, and the Parking Garage entry follows suit. The stair screen opens to allow full visibility from the sidewalk, as visitors enter, and then wraps around the rest of the stairway for emphasis, with the scales flattening on the driveway and pedestrian entry sides, where protrusions are unwelcome. Side windows concentrate at the corners, with the total opening area limited by fire separation requirements, and the top of the building recedes as mandated.

This capability of the metal scales to raise and open, or otherwise flatten and close, makes them a versatile element that would convey unity of design, a coherent look, and yet morph as required by each usage… As in the mechanical parking lifts, screened without consuming valuable inches, with an almost fabric-like woven depth.

In the rear, the balconies protrude as far as is allowed by the zoning ordinance, with the rounded guard corners mimicking those of the building to the left and that one in the background, and with the vertical divider as another connecting element with the surrounding environment.