Cutting-Edge Compromise

Massed four stories high on an island across the Intracoastal Waterway from Miami’s South Beach, the town houses at Aqua seem to flatten against the development’s mid-rise buildings and merge into a wall of high-rises on the beachfront behind them. A cluster of curved roofs by Gisue and Mojgan Hariri pop out of this gridlike illusion, dominating the view as you park your car in this strange amalgam of Florida resort town, dense northeastern city, and architectural theme park.

Of the nine firms who designed town houses at Aqua, the New York-based Hariri sisters might just be the most conceptually daring of the lot. “We deliberately wanted to bring in architects from out of town and young architects from in town,” master planner Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk says. The Iranian-born Hariris say they took inspiration for their three town houses—all identically designed and occupying prominent sites—from Miami’s “sexiness,” “overlap of cultures,” and watery surroundings, but they were not interested in mimicking the city’s early twentieth-century Modernism. “We were not after Art Deco,” Gisue says. “It had to be dynamic, like waves, boats, winds. The roofs go in every direction. It’s like where Miami is today—fluid, liquid, and sensuous.” Aqua’s tight guidelines presented a challenge—“We tried to reinterpret them,” Gisue says, “because if we had accepted them as a given, the town houses would’ve had no choice but to look alike”—but the practical realities of real estate and construction had a profound effect on the final product.

Last spring the Hariris visited the town houses for the first time. Their highly sculptural forms enliven the streetscape, but the interpretation of the interior program produced some awfully quirky spaces. From the entry foyer, for instance, a claustrophobically narrow hallway turns at a right angle and leads to three bedrooms that appear shockingly small for houses priced from $3.2 million. By contrast, the enormous master bedroom on the third floor, under a soaring metal roof, has all the intimacy of a nineteenth-century railroad shed. The master bathroom is oddly placed—and windowless. Regarding the entryway, Gisue says, “We killed ourselves to make a courtyard,” as a way of providing a transition from the sidewalk. Several Aqua town houses have stoops that feel like vestiges of the stereotypical New Urbanist front porch; they’re an especially weak feature. The Hariris don’t make that mistake, but their entry court is more a narrow shaft running to the top of the building, useless in practical terms for anything but stepping through to the front door.

Some problems with the house are not connected to the plan. To maximize the views, the public spaces are located on the second floor. There’s a vast living room on one side of the landing, with the dining and kitchen/breakfast areas on the other. This was envisioned as one continuously flowing space, but changes during construction compromised it. An additional column the architects had not specified was placed in the living room. “Why did they put those in?” Mojgan asks. “To save two pieces of rebar?”

The sisters were also distressed by significant changes to the layout of the house. The opening from the landing into the dining room had been narrowed, truncating what would have been a clear sight line from one end of the space to the other. Instead the kitchen opening had become a vertical slit tucked into the dining-room corner, rendering the kitchen a dead end. Why hadn’t they visited during construction? “It never came up,” Gisue says, adding that construction drawings were sent to them for approval. “When we disagreed, we discussed it and fought, and some changes were made. We felt they knew what they were doing.” She cites the size and complexity of Aqua—which was built all at once—as a complicating factor. “But I’m not sure if the developer or the realtors made the decisions. It makes me very uncomfortable because ultimately the responsibility is on our shoulders. They’re selling the damned thing on our name.”

On-site alterations were made to other town houses as well. Kristopher Musumano and Adolfo Zayas-Bazan Albaisa, who designed one with a four-story atrium, were dismayed to discover that most of the windows there were inoperable, making it less the flowing internal courtyard of a Caribbean mansion and more the grim airshaft of a tenement—and nearly useless for ventilation. There were also construction issues. Inept plasterwork done on the porthole windows in one Hariri bedroom yielded absurdly lopsided gaps in the wall. DPZ’s project manager, Ludwig Fontalvo-Abello, says some changes, such as the interior column added by Wolfberg Alvarez in the Hariri houses, were a response to local codes. Marketing consultants made other revisions. “We were trying to introduce a type—town houses for the luxury market—that had not been done here before.”

Still, the Hariri house has many agreeable features. A large covered balcony alongside the living room is partially walled, enhancing privacy and shade. The vaulted stairwell seems to open and expand as you ascend. At the top, the tower room opens to a pair of decks, perfect for entertaining. Stepping outside, Gisue is enchanted by the sense of interrelationship between the neighboring rooftops. “This is like where we grew up,” she says, “where people lived and slept on the roofs.”

Given their past experience, it’s odd that the Hariris assumed the process would go smoothly without occasional site visits. Most of their residential work involves high-end projects for involved clients. Even their house in Sagaponack—very much a developer project, similar to Aqua in the way it uses architecture as a marketing tool—was essentially a one-off. “Every project has changes,” Gisue says. “What is essential is who makes the decisions. I still think the Aqua product is better than any other in the spec market. Craig was willing to sacrifice a bit of profit to achieve something bigger. We’re just asking for more, but that’s our role.”