Gensler Enlivens the Street-Level of Chicago’s Willis Tower

At 1,451 feet, the Sears Tower was the tallest building in the world when it opened in Chicago in 1973. Designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, it rises 110 stories over the Loop neighborhood and is a modernist icon, with a geometric structure and a facade of blackened aluminum and bronze-tinted glass. It’s also a landmark visible from across the city—so much so that locals still call it the Sears Tower, though it was renamed the Willis Tower in 2009. But it was always, as architecture critic Blair Kamin put it, “a dud at street level.” An austere plaza and a granite berm wrapping the base kept pedestrians at bay, and the public could only enter to visit Skydeck, the observation platform. In 2015, Blackstone bought the building and hired Gensler to rethink the site, which has resulted in a mixed-use attraction for office workers, tourists, and Chicagoans alike.

Todd Heiser, principal and managing director at Gensler’s Chicago studio, grew up in the city and found it surreal to take on the high-profile project. “It’s walking on hallowed ground,” he begins. “We approached it with humility, serving to amplify its positives and correct what was imperfect.” Willis Tower, he notes, was the product of an era of urban flight and single-use office buildings; it was designed to be impenetrable. But in the 21st century, aside from the early years of the COVID pandemic, cities have come roaring back to life and tenants seek dynamic, welcoming workplaces.

Designing an Amenities-Rich Hub in the Willis Tower

Gensler brought the supertall up to date with a 463,000-square-foot makeover, including new entrances, lounges, and a transparent six-story podium with a food hall and a rooftop park—elements that prove why the firm not only ranks number one among the Interior Design Top 100 Giants but also third amid the Hospitality Giants (as well as 14th on the Healthcare list).

Heiser and Hansoo Kim, principal and design director at Gensler’s Washington office, started by researching how people used and moved through the building. They met with families visiting the Skydeck, who were often also looking for a place to have lunch, and office workers hoping to get to their desks quickly. “We had to support demographics of all ages,” Heiser says, and consider “the person who wanted to linger and the person who wanted a friction-free environment.” Kim adds that to create a vibrant multipurpose destination, they had to connect different types of programming, like coworking and retail, and “blur the boundaries between work, life, and play,” he notes.

Gensler Creates an Expansive Communal Space for All Ages

The block-long building has entrances on three different streets (Wacker, Jackson, and Franklin). Originally, there were two for tenants and one for Skydeck visitors. Gensler opened them all to the public. “The entire base of the tower is now porous,” Heiser continues. Like a transportation hub or civic plaza, it hosts everyone from United Airlines employees who work in the building to toddlers and Midwestern retirees; the Skydeck alone draws 1.7 million visitors a year. Security is discreet. There are guards and cameras, but nothing like the airport-style measures we’ve come to expect in skyscrapers since 9/11. Touchless turnstiles use fingerprint scanners to admit employees into the tenant elevator bank at the building core.

Gensler built the glass-walled podium on what had been an unwelcoming granite plaza, extending the base of the building to the sidewalk. The centerpiece of the addition is a soaring atrium and food hall called Catalog, a nod to the Sears mail-order business, that brings together local eateries beneath an enormous skylight. Diners can slide onto oak benches under bistro-style lights and look up at the tower. “Our goal was to create a Chicago streetscape inside the atrium, so you feel like you’re outside,” Kim explains. Above Catalog, a public roof garden with winding paths and native prairie grasses faces a neighboring park. Like the rest of the podium, it connects the building to the street and draws pedestrians into the once-forbidding landmark.

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Inside the Spacious Street-Level of the Willis Tower

Gensler: grant uhlir; benjy ward; michael townsend; neale scotty; scott marker; stephen katz; hua-jun cao; kelly bogenschutz; marissa luehring; shawn fawell; todd desmarais; jeffrey peck; kim lindstrom; kate pedriani

skb architects: facade architect

olin: landscape architect

thornton tomasetti: structural engineer

esd: mep

v3 companies: civil engineer

burlington stone; campolonghi: stonework

parenti & raffaelli: millwork

clayco corp.; turner construction co.: general contractors

cascade coil drapery: chain drapery (lounge)

bloomsburg carpet: rug

pk-30 system: backlit wall

B&B Italia: sofa

cassina: black, white coffee tables

phantom hands: green chairs

novum structures: skylight (food hall)

tegan lighting: catenary system

concrete collaborative: flooring

newmat: stretched ceiling (lounge)

Avenue Road: green barrel chairs

hanover archi­tectural products: pavers (roof)

rich brilliant willing: pendant fixtures (food hall)

arflex: teal chairs

established & sons: stools

tacchini: sofa (small lounge)

estudio persona: chairs

stahl + band: coffee table

Pulpo: side table

linetec: custom aluminum cladding

boston valley terra cotta: terra-cotta paneling

The Founder of Claude Cartier Studio Dreams Up Her Own French Apartment

For centuries, Lyon, France’s third-largest city, has been famous for the sumptuous silk textiles it produces. Located in the center of the town, near where legions of artisanal looms once hummed, designer Claude Cartier’s apartment evokes the spirit of those fabled fabrics—their luscious colors, bold patterns, and rich textures—but in breezily modern form. Cartier founded her business in 1981, opening a home decorating store that soon led to extensive residential-design commissions and the establishment of her eponymous studio in 2010. Although now a qualified interior designer, Cartier still prefers to define herself as a “decorator,” and the ebullient theatricality of her apartment shows why.

Cartier Showcases Her Sense of Style Throughout the French Apartment

“Inevitably, each piece of furniture was chosen because I had an absolute crush on it,” Cartier begins, “though often it was customized.” A case in point is Jonas Wagell’s Julep sofa, its curving minimalist form dominating one corner of the living room but transformed into some sort of exotic vegetation by Métaphores’s upholstery of abstracted-floral jacquard. The botanical theme is echoed in the opposite corner, which is entirely draped with pale-green velvet curtains that conceal wall shelving and a TV. The fabric’s delicate color is picked up in the dress of the woman in an Erwin Olaf photograph, one of the many striking artworks curated by Sibille; it hangs above Gianfranco Frattini’s iconic Sesann sofa, its voluptuous contours clad in bottle-green velvet.

The living room exemplifies the audacious color palette Cartier uses throughout the apartment: “Dark hues that are a bit dramatic, like the entrance,” she says, referring to the latter’s burnt-saffron and inky-blue ceiling and walls, which set off black-and-white checkerboard tile flooring, “then mint-green pastels with watery shades, earth tones, pearly whites, finished with strong colors underlined with games of stripes.”

Bold Patterns Meld With Subtle Hues

Stripes, a recurring motif, are used with maximum impact in the main bedroom and bathroom. In the latter, they run up the walls in the form of yellow and white tiles, joining with a colorful patchwork curtain and striped-cotton toilet skirt to create a space that’s “like a beach cabin,” Cartier suggests. In the bedroom, a sunburst of broad bands of yellow and white paint explodes across the ceiling, an homage to the dazzling effect Gio Ponti created in the Villa Planchart in Caracas, Venezuela. Both rooms have the vivid immediacy associated with interiors in Provence, Andalusia, or the Mezzogiorno, a reference that’s entirely intentional. “I love the South,” she enthuses. “It was important for me to have Mediterranean accents and influences.”

Not all the furnishings are from Tacchini, of course. A multi-leg white-lacquered cabinet by Jaime Hayón is a glossy presence in the bedroom, while a black marble console from Angelo Mangiarotti’s 1971 Eros interlocking system of tables serves as a glamorous key-drop in the entry. In the second bedroom, which doubles as a study, a showstopping inlaid-oak cabinet by the Swedish studio Front is backed by a dado made of Cristina Celestino’s earth-tone Gonzaga clay tiles, another evocation of the South that Cartier so adores.

In the same room, a desk by Pietro Russo sits on a narrow rug that runs up the wall all the way to the ceiling, its bold colors—terra-cotta, rose, cream, black, white—arranged in an equally bold geometric pattern. The runner is but one in a series of eye-popping rugs that populate the residence, all of them Cartier’s design. The hand-knotted-wool collection’s irrepressible brio encapsulates the apartment’s aesthetic perfectly, as does its name: So Much Fun.

Inside Cartier’s Eclectic Abode 

claude cartier studio: fabien louvier

manifesta: art consultant

serge mouille: pendant fixture (living room)

bisson bruneel: lamp shade

Gubi: white armchair (living room), bench (dining room)

india mahdavi: vases, ashtrays (living room, bedroom)

Mutina: floor tile (entry, kitchen)

collection particulière: vases (dining room)

bulthaup: cabinetry (kitchen)

ceramica bardelli: wall tile

moroso: ball pillow (living room), chair (study)

fornace brioni: dado tile (study)

flos: lamp

petite friture: mirror (study), sconces (corridor), pendant fixture (entry)

bernard: wall tile (bathroom)

moustache: mirror

les crafties: curtain

olivades: toilet skirt fabric

MADE IN GOLD: CUSTOM WALL COVERING (ENTRY)

agapecasa: console

bd barcelona design: cabinet (bedroom)

Studiopepe: custom headboard

tacchini: furniture

métaphores: upholstery fabric, drapery fabric

cc-tapis: rugs

Ressource: paint

This Napoli Home by Giuliano Andrea dell’Uva Architetti is a Hidden Gem

Italy’s third largest city, Naples, is not exactly known as a locus of peace and quiet. “The city is certainly chaotic,” says architect Giuliano Andrea dell’Uva, who has lived most of his 41 years there. “Its charm also comes from managing to find the serene and calm in that chaos.” That is precisely what he accomplished with his redesign of a three-bedroom, four-bath flat in the upscale Posillipo quarter for art/design collectors Irene and Teodoro Falco and their teenage daughter and son.

In a twist of fate, the 3,400-square-foot apartment, located in a 1956 building by Davide Pacanowski, has roots in dell’Uva’s youth, when he first became acquainted with the work of the Polish-born architect, a student of Le Corbusier’s. “I lived in a stretch of the Posillipo hill and was fascinated by the sight of Villa Crespi, a bold project of rationalist architecture that Pacanowski designed in 1955,” he recalls. The cliffside residence, with cantilevered slabs wedged between ancient pine trees, “was, for me, a symbol of the direct relationship between architecture and sea.”

Alas, his clients’ flat, though retaining some historical elements like porthole windows, had been restored in the 1990s “to a more neoclassical taste that eradicated its original charm,” dell’Uva recounts. “I really tried to get it back.”

Doing so entailed reconfiguring the floor plan around sea views, so that the public areas and main bedroom face the Gulf of Naples. Dell’Uva forewent corridors and divisions in favor of making the space as open as possible. The entry leads to conjoined living and dining areas (the Falcos requested a statement salon in which to receive guests) separated from the eat-in kitchen by full-height brass-frame glass doors. To the left of the living area’s fireplace—a steel marvel designed by the French sculptor Robert Ascain in 1972—a curved wall subtly directs foot traffic to a row of sleeping quarters: first the main suite, followed by bedrooms for the kids, as well as their own youthful sitting room. The son gets a custom berth tucked into a space-age aluminum enclosure.

The gulf also inspired the color scheme: sparsely deployed yellows and blues (see the cipollino marble paving the entry and cladding the primary bath walls) against a background of sparkling white. The city’s world-class cultural scene also figures prominently in the form of the couple’s blue-chip art collection as well as covetable vintage furnishings from a cadre of specialist dealers. Elements by maestri of design invariably factor into any dell’Uva project. He grew up surrounded by the work of Gio Ponti, Franco Albini, and others, which instilled a love of design in him from an early age. “Even as a little boy I would draw houses and interiors,” he recalls. (Dell’Uva was certainly precocious: his first project, at the tender age of 17, was the renovation of a family home his architect great-grandfather had designed in 1924; and he launched his own studio at 23, shortly after graduating from the Università di Napoli Federico II.)

cc tapis: rug (living area)

la cividina: sofas

through galleria francesco: coffee table

tacchini: armchairs

rezina: resin floor

through dimore gallery: floor lamp

through robertaebasta: chimney breast (living area), chandelier (dining area)

Nilufar: custom table, chairs (dining area)

paola c.: glass centerpiece

through galleria massimo caiafa: leather armchair (son’s room)

cassina: chairs (kitchen)

abimis: island

B&B Italia: sofa (kids’ lounge)

through galleria rossella colombari: vintage ceiling light

alimonti milano: marble (bathroom)

Dornbracht: sink and shower fittings

galleria elena: tilework (primary bedroom)

Nilufar: sofa

Jennifer Kolstad and Ghafari Associates Propel the Ford Experience Center in Michigan into the Future

2022 Best of Year Winner for Office Transformation

Ford Motor Company was founded in 1903 and today is one of the biggest car companies in the world. Despite its long history, Ford is focused squarely on the future, developing new technologies like smart infrastructure and self-driving vehicles. Yet for over 20 years, the main events facility at its headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan, was a dark and uninviting concrete structure. Company executives sought to reimagine it as a cutting-edge “front door” to the 600-acre campus, which itself is being overhauled under a master plan by Snøhetta. They turned to Jennifer Kolstad, the in-house global design and brand director, and her 20-person team to renovate the 1998 building and transform it into the Ford Experience Center, or FXC.

Ford’s leaders envisioned the FXC as a dynamic hospitality-inspired hub for employees, car dealers, and major customers. It would have flexible event spaces, conference rooms, a café, and hot-desking, plus an on-site design lab where employees could work with clients like the City of Los Angeles to customize and prototype police vehicles. The FXC is also meant to reflect a new company-wide emphasis on innovation and collaboration. Positioned across the street from the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation, the FXC symbolizes “Ford future facing Ford past,” Kolstad notes. Her design encompasses aspects of both.

Kolstad worked on the 95,000-square-foot project with Ghafari Associates, which served as the architect of record but also designed major elements of the interior and helped with the selection of furnishings. Together, the two teams completely transformed the existing two-story building, keeping only its structure and oval shape. “Even though the space is similar to what it was, an event center, we had to take it to the next level,” architect and Ghafari director of design Andrew Cottrell recalls. The goal was to create an environment that felt open and transparent. “Ford wishes to be the most trusted company in the world, and architecture can help that along,” Kolstad adds.

To start, the concrete walls were out. Ford and Ghafari re-skinned the facade with electrochromic glass that brings ample light to the interior but can also tint for shade. Kolstad, who was a principal at HKS before joining Ford in 2019, brought a focus on wellness and human-centered design to the project. She incorporated two green walls in the café, called the Hive, and ensured that even enclosed rooms have natural light and views of the surrounding lawns. She also integrated the building into the landscape: Terraces allow for events to flow outdoors, and the central corridor aligns with the front door of the Henry Ford Museum.

The FXC showcases the future of automobiles, but it’s grounded in Ford’s history. “The building speaks to the legacy of the company through its use of museum-quality materials,” Kolstad explains. “If the foundation is solid and well-executed, the brand can breathe and take on its own life.” In the central forum, polished white-terrazzo flooring and oak stadium seating form a timeless backdrop for what is in fact a high-tech, production-ready space. At the touch of a button, the lighting can change to suit a cocktail party, presentation, or launch event, and cars rotate on a turntable in the floor. Overhead, a sculpted white ceiling of acoustical plaster conceals lighting and mechanical systems, with cuts that mirror the lines in the terrazzo floor. “We had to coordinate myriad things to make the ceiling look seamless,” Cottrell says.

Like the building, the forum is the shape of the Ford logo: an oval. “You won’t see the logo anywhere, but you’re literally inside the Ford oval,” Kolstad says. “The space tells the company’s story in a subtle, sophisticated way.” Ovals appear in the symbol of the Hive, making the shape of a bee, and in custom lighting fixtures, while velvet in the brand’s deep blue upholsters the café’s banquettes. Covers of retro Ford Life magazines hang in phone booths, and broken ovals appear in the pattern of blue vinyl wallcovering. Kolstad’s team also deconstructed the oval to make a camouflagelike pattern for blue-and-white area rugs. All furnishings, materials, and finishes demonstrate a new palette that will be used in Ford showrooms and offices worldwide, including the nearby workplace by Snøhetta now under construction.

Though Kolstad describes the FXC as an “immersive brand experience,” you won’t find a Ford sign at reception. Instead, there’s a mirrored acrylic work by Detroit artist Tiff Massey, one of several in her team’s DEI-focused art program for the project. Inspired by traditional American quilts, it’s composed of seven designs—representing each of Ford’s company truths—laser-cut onto 90 tiles. An asymmetrical solid-walnut desk in front of it, designed by Ghafari, looks like a sculpture that alludes to movement. Elsewhere, three abstract artworks by Los Angeles artist Robert Moreland refer to the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the French car race that Ford won in the late 1960’s. With the FXC, it’s leading again as a cool, tech-savvy company.

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ford environments: julia calabrese; rachael smith; chris small; don zvoch

ghafari associates: michael krebs; brittnee shaw; angela cwayna; joseph kim; delbert dee; justin finkbeiner; stephanie hrit; jennifer hatheway; katy rupp; steve lian; yuqi pan; bruce coburn; justine lim; karan panchal; ali zorkot; christopher olech; ryan raymond; cynthia harman-jones; kristina allder

illuminart: lighting consultant

farmboy: art consultant, custom wallcovering

denn-co construction; ganas; navy island: woodwork

devon industrial group: general contractor

tacchini: benches (forum)

viccarbe: benches (lounge)

dwr: chairs

bernhardt; designtex: banquette fabric (café)

Coalesse: tables (café), chair (phone booth)

geiger: chairs (café, innovation)

Stellar Works: sofas (break-out, collaboration, grand hall)

carnegie: wallcovering (break-out)

stua: coffee table

zauben: green wall (café)

preciosa: custom pendant fixtures

keilhauer: stools

Tarkett: carpet (phone booth)

Humanscale: lamp

Blu Dot: tables (innovation, grand hall)

restoration hardware: lamp (grand hall)

michielutti brothers: flooring

shaw contract: custom rugs

benjamin moore & co.: paint

RIOS Turns to Healing Elements for the Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine in Los Angeles

If ever there were a multilayered hybrid collaboration, it is the Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine. A long, narrow new-build oriented on a north-south axis not far from the University of Southern California’s campus, it encompasses 84,000 square feet across five floors, and includes 3,500 square feet of coveted outdoor space. HLW completed the structure’s core and shell architecture. RIOS, under the leadership of creative director and partner Sebastian Salvadó, handled the remainder of the project, which took three years to complete, just as COVID-19 hit the scene.

Primarily a cancer research initiative, the institute is led by founding director and CEO David Agus, a physician and researcher, and was spearheaded by Oracle Corporation cofounder and noted billionaire Larry Ellison’s $200 million donation. A place for both labs and clinical services, it is a healthcare facility, but it’s also a workplace requiring offices, conference rooms, lounges, and staff amenities. Adding to the hybrid designation is the project’s educational component, which consists of a gallery celebrating medicine’s history and advances and an event space for symposia, and a repertoire of blue-chip artwork, much of it coming from Ellison’s private collection.

“The program is broken into three types of spaces,” Salvadó begins. Solitary rooms are for focused work. Lounges encouraging collaboration are dubbed transitionary spaces. They adjoin public zones, which include conference rooms and a kitchen. Arriving at the concept was not only Salvadó and the RIOS team but also the doctor and the donor. “Sebastian was amazing in figuring out a way to include me in every decision,” Agus enthuses. “He made models so I could understand.” And Larry, who Agus first met while treating his nephew, was “involved in every decision, too.” To which Salvadó adds, “Our goal was to take Agus’s vision and translate it into a built space.” It’s a holistic vision, including wellness programs and nutrition counseling, that acknowledges nature as a healer, while also integrating AI, physics, biology, math, and engineering.

Labs hold the key to the project’s organization. They are visually open to everyone on all floors and on all sides of the building. It was an expensive move but worth every penny: It not only anchors internal neighborhoods but also guarantees interdependency and that user paths intersect. Circulation is anything but orthogonal and the scheme is quite a departure from standard silo situations. The predominant use of wood—in the white-oak exposed ceiling and beams, thermally modified ash-slat partitions, and brushed oak flooring—is unusual, too. The setting is warm and “reminiscent of old warehouses,” Salvadó notes, and also underscores the project’s nature-centered theme.

Set atop a two-story parking garage, the institute centers on a three-story atrium. A pair of stairways lined with live plants (as well as elevators) lead up to reception on the atrium’s second floor, where the gallery is also located. From there, a path proceeds to a lab fronted by a large glass expanse so that even visitors can see in. Nearby is the donor wall, its brass plaques arranged in the form of an olive branch, the ancient symbol of healing. Toward the back of this floor is Agus’s office, a bright aerie complete with a Charles and Ray Eames lounge chair upholstered in indigo corduroy, a slatted wood ceiling, and access to a landscaped terrace. It’s here that, among other work, Agus meets with donors, broadcasts lectures, and writes; his fourth book is a deep dive into nature, which he believes holds all the answers.

That’s in step with the large, Pacific Ocean–facing terrace off the building’s skylit top floor, half of which is devoted to office areas and staff amenities, including a combined gym and yoga studio and a librarylike lounge with shelves of books holding the entire sequencing of the human genome. The other half of the floor is dedicated to patient care. Although more clinical and white than the institute’s other areas, forms, such as the check-in desk, are rounded, and vertical surfaces are wrapped in grass cloth-esque wallcovering. A bridge spanning the atrium connects the two sides and adjoins the project’s experiential aspect: a grass and rock garden built on top of one of the labs. “It’s not Japanese but more West L.A,” Salvadó says. “The gravel looks like beach sand and the greenery is bright like what’s found in the Santa Monica Mountain canyons.”

Hope and love, also crucial to healing, are literally spelled out in Robert Indiana’s immense sculptures, both located in the atrium lobby. They’re joined by pieces elsewhere in the hospital by such bold-face names as Jim Dine, Keith Haring, and Ai Weiwei.

Le Corbusier famously said, “A house is a machine for living in.” Agus proffers his version. “RIOS made a building that enables us to work. The building is not separate from the work, it’s part of it.” He hopes it encourages the next generation to enter science and medicine to discover a cure.

Art Therapy

At L.A.’s Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine, concerns for health and wellness extend beyond research, labs, and treatment clinics. Art plays a part in healing, too—at least it does to the institute’s founder and CEO David Agus and establishing donor Larry Ellison, also known as the cofounder of Oracle. Together they conceived of a plan in which art would pervade—and elevate—the premises. Among the artists featured are Bunny Burson, Jim Dine, Donald Sultan, and Ai Weiwei.

“I had the privilege to work with Steve Jobs,” Agus says. “He implanted in my brain that every detail matters.” Jobs’s fellow tech titan Ellison donated many of the center’s pieces from his collection. So far, they number 35 and encompass a range of mediums, including a granite bust by Jaume Plensa. Some even allude to cancer, the institute’s primary research initiative. One is Jeff Koons’s 12-foot-tall magenta sculpture of an elephant; the animal has genetic mutations precluding it from developing the disease. Another is Jacob van der Bruegel’s mixed medium covering a wall on the building’s top floor. Its components resemble cancerous cells as seen under a microscope while searching for better treatment.

RIOS: clarissa lee; devin miyasaki; erin williams; haoran liu; laura kos; melanie freeland; misato hamazaki; nicole robinson; tom myers

Oculus Lighting: Lighting Consultant

Harold Jones Landscape: Landscaping Consultant

Risha Engineering: Structural Engineer

CRB Engineering: mep

Systems Source: furniture dealer

Andrea Feldman Falcione: art consultant

KBDA: gallery consultant

Sierra Pacific Constructors: general contractor

Tom Dixon: tables (lounge)

Bla Station: sofas

tech lighting: pendant fixtures

muuto: chairs (lounge), rug (library)

Design Within Reach: chairs (library)

Indo: table

Luminii: linear fixtures (gym)

Regupol: flooring

Kvadrat Maharam: curtain fabric

Louis Poulsen: pendant fixtures (lounge)

tacchini: white sofa, ottoman

bernhardt design: lounge chair

Hay: side chair

Pierre Augustin Rose: coffee table

Green Furn­iture Company: benches

MDC: wallcovering (hall, clinic reception)

Miller Knoll: chairs, ottoman (office)

Systems Source: custom desk

armstrong: ceiling

XAL: recessed ceiling fixture

bentley: carpet

Amerlux; Lucifer: lighting

Ariana Rugs: custom carpet

Thermory: wall slats, ash flooring

Galleher: custom oak floor planks

Benjamin Moore & Co.; Dunn-Edwards; Farrow & Ball; Sherwin-Williams Company: Paint

Jorge Pérez’s Private Collection on Display at One Park Grove in Miami by OMA and Meyer Davis

“Let’s build sculpture.” That’s how Will Meyer, principal of Meyer Davis, recalls the design team of One Park Grove—the last of three towers to be built in a Coconut Grove, Miami, waterfront residential complex—being rallied by Jorge Pérez, chairman of Related Group, which co-developed the project with Terra Group. “Jorge didn’t say, ‘Let’s build a box and decorate it,’” Meyer notes. “It’s a totally different approach to design.”

Pérez, one of Miami’s preeminent art collectors (his name graces the Pérez Art Museum Miami by Herzog & de Meuron) assembled an all-star lineup to bring One Park Grove to life. OMA, led by partner Shohei Shigematsu, envisioned the tower’s undulating architecture of exterior concrete columns that swell and contract like the trunks of royal palm trees. Studio Sofield designed the understated kitchens and bathrooms in the residences.

Landscape architect Enzo Enea laid out the parklike grounds, which cover 5 acres and include an outdoor amphitheater, a ribbon of swimming pools, and a sculpture park. And celebrity event planner Colin Cowie programmed services and experiences from music playlists to poolside towel and sunscreen selections.

Meyer Davis’s charge was designing the tower’s lobby, amenity spaces (more than 50,000 square feet of them, including a screening room, spa, and wine room), and other public areas, incorporating artwork from Pérez’s extensive private collection. “There are a lot of branded towers in Miami, but this one has a real personality,” co-principal Gray Davis says. “It touches on all the sensory points that make an enjoyable experience and give the project a real soul.”

Meyer Davis senior project manager Sonya Cheng calls One Park Grove’s interiors “bohemia on the bay.” That’s a reference to Coconut Grove’s long history—it’s the city’s oldest neighborhood—and reputation as Miami’s free-spirited artistic and intellectual hub. Onetime abode of John Singer Sargent, Tennesse Williams, and Joni Mitchell, the Grove, as it’s known, is home to the city’s top private schools and the former Coconut Grove Playhouse. The neighborhood also happens to be one of the city’s leafiest, with a dense tree canopy that stretches to the shores of Biscayne Bay. “I thought we should provide something of the essence of Coconut Grove, immersed in nature and maximizing exposure to light and air,” Shigematsu says of the 23-story tower’s 68 residences, which he likens to “stacked villas.”

Shigematsu cites another influence on OMA’s architecture: Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s 1983 Surrounded Islands, where they wrapped an archipelago of tiny islets in nearby Biscayne Bay in sheets of hot-pink polypropylene. Cheng also mentions the installation as influencing how the lobby interiors negotiate the tower’s unique peanut-shape footprint—pinched at the center with two elevator cores—and multiple grade changes. Similar to the way the islands were encircled with concentric bands of pink fabric, the designers layered ribbons of stone flooring that radiate outward from the core. “Where all those lines converge and intersect, we created ‘islands’ of seating groups,” Cheng explains. Patterned rugs ground those sitting areas—Meyer describes them as “moments of serenity, the residual between waves”—as they float between the core and the lobby’s curved glass exterior. The language of undulating forms continues vertically, with core walls clad in slats of white oak and others hosting a palisade of backlit white panels. “It’s not a traditional layout—it’s organic and really out there,” Meyer acknowledges. “It was hard to describe to people who weren’t on the team exactly what we were doing. It’s really a new language with its own logic, rules, and geometry, but it creates its own sense of space.”

Positioning large sculptures from Pérez’s collection also directed Meyer, Davis, and Cheng’s choreography of the lobby’s interior. At times, circulation took a backseat to art placement, in which Pérez played an enthusiastically active role. “Sometimes, we’d pick a spot and Jorge would say, ‘No, this piece works better over there,’” Cheng recalls. Sometimes the team accompanied Pérez to his private storage facility to preview artworks, other times to the art museum in downtown Miami. “We turned the typical design process upside down to achieve a different result,” Meyer notes.

An early recommendation was South African artist Ledelle Moe’s ensemble work Memorial Collapse, a trio of monumental heads, laid on their sides, with rebar emerging through the concrete. “When Jorge suggested those, our response was a resounding ‘Hell, yeah!’” Meyer recalls. “He gets really excited about art. When he sees the direction a designer or architect is going in, he wants them to take it as far as they can. If you lean in on his spirit, you get results.”

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Other works populating One Park Grove’s public spaces run a gamut of styles and media. Outside in the gardens, Jaume Plensa’s The Poets in Bordeaux (Body Soul God, Country, Water Fire), which comprises three 35-foot poles topped by illuminated resin busts, changes appearance as the lights cycle through different colors. Interior amenity spaces feature more subtle works, including delicate vellum drawings by Miami-based artist Michele Oka Doner and a Richard Serra etching.

One Park Grove’s well-orchestrated blend of architecture, design, and art bears an ultimate stamp of approval: Earlier this year, Pérez, who has lived on the Coconut Grove waterfront for decades, decided to trade in his Venetian palazzo-style mansion for a penthouse at One Park Grove. He donated the $33 million proceeds from the sale of his house to The Miami Foundation.

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meyer davis: scott abrahams; matthew haseltine; cass nakashima; nils sanderson; daeho lee; matthew edgardo davis; jeremy kim; gonzalo lopez; pantea tehrani; sumit sahdev; jun shimada; andrew mack; miguel darcy; betty fan; carly dean; ahmadreza schricker; britt johnson; shida salehi-esmati; jackie woon bae; ian watchorn; filippo nanni; esin erez; luke willis: oma. mei lau; drew tucker; marianne mordhorst

arquitectonica: architect of record.

arredoluce; enea garden design; plant the future: landscaping consultant

south dade lighting: lighting consultant

desimone consulting engineers: structural engineer

feller engineering: mep

vsn engineering: civil engineer

allegheny millwork; miles of wood: woodwork

excellence in stone: stonework

american upholstery: custom upholstered-goods workshop.

moriarty: general contractor

stripe vintage modern: blue armchairs (lobby)

Stellar Works: nesting tables

f&r general interiors: custom console (lobby), table (wine room)

apparatus studio: pendant fixtures (reception)

steel monkey dream shop: custom shelving (reception, lobby)

gabriel scott: pendant fixtures (lobby)

tacchini: round side tables

liaigre: floor lamp

the future perfect: modular coffee tables

phillips collection: side table

bec brittain: pendant fixture

harbour: sofa, chairs, coffee table (cabana)

marset: floor lamp

metalarte: table lamp

berhardt design: console (spa), pendant fixture (playroom)

usona: chaise longues (spa)

hbf textiles: wallcovering (screening room)

ludwig & larsen: sconces

sacco carpet: custom carpet

kravet: chair fabric

jab anstoetz: pillow fabric

opuzen: drapery fabric

tri-kes: custom wallcovering (playroom)

tommy bahama: pillows

wine cellar innovations: custom lockers (wine room)

le lampade: ceiling fixture

tailor-made textiles: custom rugs

benjamin moore & co.; scuffmaster: paint