Project: Element
Type: Condominium
Designed by Oppenheim
Architecture/Interior finishes: Oppenheim in association with Walter Chatham Architects
Scope: 650,000 SF
Date of estimated completion: 2011
Location: Miami, Florida
Website: www.oppenoffice.com
Element is an ethereal crystalline tower that is harmonic fusion of exterior and interior space into sensual melding of pure form and simple, elegant structure. Its a transparent, soaring glass sheath distinctively encased in an articulated shell whose spaced columns create apertures that frame fragments of visual beauty and allow floods of brilliant light to define the interior spaces.
The lush greenery and bright tropical flowers of the designer gardens at its base became an integral part of the structure itself in the double height terrace that wraps the central core of the tower on the fourth and fifths levels-a fantasy of Sky Gardens, pavilions and limpid pools that completes the seamless integration of exterior and interior volumes.