Check Out the Plans for Starchitect Jean Nouvel’s Monad Terrace

May 17, 2016

Starchitect Jean Nouvel’s design for a boutique condominium tower at South Beach’s Monad Terrace won big applause at the last meeting of the Miami Beach Design Review Board, with the Miami Herald reporting, at the end of a lengthy and powerful review: “The Monad Terrace proposal was enthusiastically approved by Miami Beach’s Design Review Board last week. The DRB cited it as a model for future waterfront development. One board member expressed interest in living there when it was completed. Sales are due to begin this fall.”

The plans, elevations, sections, and most of the renderings below are from Monad Terrace developer JDS Development Group’s submittal to the City of Miami Beach. The design itself is a pair of buildings centered around a watery courtyard, with lagoon and pool, and sightlines straight from West Avenue to Biscayne Bay. More than almost anything else in Miami or Miami Beach, Nouvel’s design psychologically embraces South Florida’s submerged, aquatic future, taking it as a point of inspiration and adapting to it. One 14 story building, and one of only 7, hold 54 condo units in all. A transparent lobby looks out to the courtyard and eventually to the bay, enclosed in a cone of metallic, glassy shields that splay out as one progresses west, and creating was Nouvel calls a ‘reflection machine.’ Certainly, as the sun sets across Biscayne Bay, one can only imagine glowing red skies amplified to the street beyond.