Colored Clouds of Miami
BIG’s Miami Produce Center will be elevated on columns above a trio of warehouses in Allapattah – a district known for a large open-air produce and textile markets. Architecture firm BIG has released plans to build a major complex in an industrial neighborhood of Miami, combining housing, offices, a school and urban farming. The 125,000-square-metre complex will comprise a stack of eight volumes, containing co-working offices, co-living apartments and a hotel. The three existing buildings traversing the site will also be transformed as part of the scheme into restaurants, shops and cafes, and a school.
Four long buildings will then be raised on slender stilts above the warehouses, and arranged around the perimeter of the site.
Each will host a different function – one for offices, another for a hotel and two for residences – with outdoor space on the rooftops. The images show sports courts, parkland and rows that suggest vegetable planting. BIG describes an aim of the project as to activate the site with “urban farming”.
Zigzagging walls between the plates will create outdoor nooks, while their offset arrangement will produce patterns across the facades. These walls will be coloured pale pink, orange or blue, depending on their block.
Newly released renderings show ground-level spaces around each structure will be landscaped into gardens. A street will run through the middle of the site, which will include an educational campus. Large expanses of glazing will be added to front of the renovated low-rise warehouses to open up the interiors to the outdoor space.
Another four residential blocks will then be built above, bridging the gaps between the lower volumes. These will also be raised on stilts and feature rooftop gardens.
Bjarke Ingels Group