BISCAYNE BAY RESEARCH CENTER
FOR MARINE & ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCE

Regenerative design on biscayne bay

Miami Beach, FL

Transformation, adaptation & resilience; The ambition of our proposal is to transform an underwater artifact of Biscayne Bay into a new research center for marine and atmospheric science. The success of the proposal hinges on the idea that architecture can be restorative, rather than disruptive, to natural ecologies in Biscayne Bay.

Biscayne Bay Habitat

The flora of Biscayne bay is dominated by sea grass beds and mangrove communities. The major sea grasses found in Biscayne Bay are Thalassia testudinum (turtle grass), Halodule wrightii (Cuban shoal grass), and Syringodium filiforme (manatee grass). These plants function as a food source, provide shelter and protection, stabilize sediments, and act as a chemical sink.

Mangrove forests are shelter for birds, fish, shrimp, crabs and mollusks and host a lot of biodiversity, due to the tree’s strange roots system, which take in oxygen in a waterlogged environments and serve as nursery for the larvae of many fish species while they develop into adults. Around one-third of all marine fish species are sheltered from predators in mangrove ecosystems. Mangrove forests and sea grasses also help in reducing the impact of waves and storm surge, and protect the coast from erosion by collecting sediments around their roots. Sea grasses in the northern part of the Bay have been heavily impacted and normal communities are not observed north of the Port of Miami. Mangroves, sea grasses and tidal marches capture and store huge amounts of carbon - Blue Carbon - and combined with Coral Reefs function as one single system responsible for most of marine life.

The Venetian Islands

The Venetian Islands are a chain of artificial islands in Biscayne Bay. In 1925 there was an audacious plan to build a series of nine islands in the shallow waters of Biscayne Bay. The Shoreland Company and officials of the Venetian Island Company wanted the islands, connected with arched bridges, to stretch north through the center of Biscayne Bay from Di Lido Island, in the Venetian Causeway, to what is now 79th Street. Given the shallow depth of the bay, these manmade islands were built of sand pumped from the bottom and constrained within pilings. The first island to be built just north of Di Lido was to be called Isola di Lolando.

However, due to the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926 and later, the Great Depression of 1929, the project was abandoned. Today, the piles from Isola di Lolando still remain and provide for a protected area for pelicans, anhingas and manatees to thrive, uninterrupted from boat traffic. These abandoned pilings establish the limits of our site.

Metabolism

The Metabolist movement was a post WWII movement formed by young architects, Kiyonori Kikutake, Kisho Kurokawa, Fumihiko Maki, and critic Noboru Kawazoe, under the influence of Kenzo Tange. After the land devastation caused by the bombs dropped on Hiroshima, Japanese architects determined that they want to abandon man’s attachment to land. Metabolism embraces the ideas of artificial land, liberation of the ground and mega structures supporting group growth, freeing the growth of cities from the lands edge. In their view, architecture should embrace new technologies and exploit tradition as a means of innovation, finding balance between tradition and modernity. The idea of METABOLSIM is to conceive the growth of a city or building as a biological condition - similar to the growth and division of cells in nature. Buildings and cities must be able to adapt, grow, elevate, even float, if they are to survive the dual pressures of rapid modernization and inevitable natural change.