Project Description
The Villa Matti is designed to not look like the public housing it is. Thirty six 1-Bedroom / 1-Bath rental apartments for Senior Citizens typically feature large corner windows to accentuate the average 514 SF per unit. This is a U.S. / H.U.D. housing project.
The stepped features of the floor plan was an effort to design each unit with as much view as possible in this dense urban neighborhood. Even apartments at the rear offer peek-a-boo views of the surrounding cityscape.. Nine different apartment plans also insure that this is not cookie cutter design.
The building is designed to acknowledge the city’s rich architectural history while ensuring that this is a design very much of our own time.. Contemporary influences of ‘Miami Beach whimsy’ include the random pattern of fixed and operable windows, the chamfered columns on the first floor and the jauntily angled tops of the front and side elevations and the indented light-well..
Communal spaces include a first floor lobby and exterior courtyard plus a rooftop deck and social room.. Although the client decided not to apply for LEED certification, the building incorporates ‘green’ planning with concrete sunshades; daylighting at all common areas including corridors, porous paving blocks throughout the exterior of the first floor, low VOC paint and provision on the roof for future installation of solar panels..
Restrictive budgetary limitations were successfully approached by developing the design of the building directly with the structure.. The design is composed of the inter-weaving of the building’s elements: the vertical mass of the stair tower and the continuous concrete sunshades. The structure is the design.