Miami retail structure’s honeycomb façade fluctuates between opacity and transparency
By David Malone, Associate Editor
The Verge Building, a planned 8,400-sf retail structure located in Miami’s Design District, is designed to take full advantage of its small lot size and reflect the contemporary architecture that surrounds it.
The three-story building is perched at the corner of North Miami Avenue and 41st Street. The façade will undulate and swell slightly and is supposed to look like the “results of years of aeolian geomorphology,” according to Royal Byckovas, the project’s architect. The façade is made up of hexagon glass fiber reinforced concrete (GFRC) panels that give the building a honeycomb look.
Rendering courtesy of Royal Byckovas.
The building’s façade also switches between being solid and transparent. Natural light passes through the transparent panels and pierces into the buildings volumes. When combined with the opaque sections of the façade, the interior of the building becomes a binary of light and shadow that shifts within the interior floor-scales as well as with the movement of the sun.
The building will be home to “a diverse mix of high-street retail tenants,” according to TSG Group, the project’s developer, but no specifics have been released yet. CBRE has been selected as the leasing agent.