Meet the Architects Who Will Transform Downtown Tampa Bay

Sep 19

Water Street Tampa will create 3,500 new residential apartment and condominium units; 630 modern hotel rooms; an iconic cultural arts pavilion; 1 million square feet of new retail and cultural spaces; and more than 2 million square feet of office space, including the first two new office towers in downtown Tampa in nearly 25 years. SPP has also donated land to the University of South Florida, which will relocate the Morsani College of Medicine and Health Heart Institute into a new 300,000-square-foot facility in downtown Tampa.

This amount of new development will leave a major impact on the skyline of Tampa for generations to come. SPP has carefully chosen architecture firms for the project with track records of building forward-thinking, timeless, and sustainably produced buildings.

Meet the 10 award-winning architectural and design firms that will transform the city:

CookFox Architects

Best known for designing the Bank of America Building at One Bryant Park, CookFox will design two buildings, office and residential over retail. The studio is known for integrating environmentally responsive design into its buildings. The firm is inspired by biophilia - design connecting people with nature. They "pursue architecture that restores, regenerates, and elevates our collective experience of the urban environment."

Morris Adjmi Architects

Founded in New Orleans, Morris Adjmi has transformed the New York City skyline. The firm will design three buildings: 157-key five-star hotel, luxury condos, apartments and retail. The firm is known for very ordered, geometric forms. In Morris Adjmi's own words,

"One of the things I've tried to do is be more open in terms of materials and forms, so that the language of the forms and the forms that are used are specific to each project. What is consistent is thinking about the relationship between buildings and their context. Plus, a lot of the buildings that we do are very ordered or geometric, following a grid. Our Samsung office building is twisted almost like a Richard Serra sculpture, and that really came from the site."

Olsen Kundig

Olson Kundig is a Seattle-based design practice founded on the ideas that "buildings can serve as a bridge between nature, culture and people, and that inspiring surroundings have a positive effect on people’s lives." Led by five owners, the firm will be completing one building in Tampa, office over retail.

Foss Waterway Seaport in Tacoma, Washington

Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (KPF)

Based in NYC, KPF is one of the largest architecture firms in the world and will design two buildings in Tampa (condos and apartments over grocery store and retail). The firm consists of 550 staff led by 25 principals, with offices in New York, London, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Seoul, and Abu Dhabi. The firm also runs a foundation for social responsibility in architecture. The firm has built residential structures that incorporate elements of existing infrastructure in the environment to make buildings blend with their surroundings. View more of their residential projects here.

World Bank Headquarters in Washington DC

Gensler

Gensler is the most active architecture firm in the United States. The firm will design two buildings in Tampa (office over retail). Art Gensler started the firm with four drafting tables in sublet space near San Francisco's Jackson Square, and today it is the world's largest architectural practice - a privately held company with 46 offices in 14 countries. More than 4,000 employees work in 27 practice areas ranging from tall buildings to product design.

One of the core pillars of Genser is sustainability. At the building scale, the firm employs strategies such as using LED lighting, solar water heating, heat recovery chillers to capture waste heat and converts to chilled water building cooling, real-time performance modeling, and solar chimney (designed stacks that organize a building to induce cool air induction and hot air exhaust to offset internal heat gains). Learn more about their sustainability efforts here.

Westin Denver - hotel and transit center

Nichols Brosch Wurst Wolfe & Associates

Nichols Brosch Wurst Wolfe & Associates (NBWW) is designing one building in Tampa (500-key four-star hotel over retail). According to Architect magazine, the firm is most known for its "restoration and redesign of many of Miami’s most legendary historic properties. Over the decades, the NBWW has been tasked with polishing some of the finest and most iconic buildings in Miami Beach into marvelous gems, including the restoration of the Morris Lapidus-designed Fontainebleau, Eden Roc, Loews, and the DiLido (now Ritz-Carlton South Beach)."

Alfonso Architects

The Tampa-based firm produced the redevelopment vision for Channelside (residential and waterfront retail; new public park on Riverwalk). The firm utilizes a state-of-the-art, computerized networked system (hardware and software) to produce all of its drawings and construction documents. They are currently using AutoCAD Architecture 2015 software for general production purposes. In addition, the firm utilize 3ds MAX, Rhino, as well as Adobe software for studying and rendering designs in three dimensions.

Pickard Chilton

All aspects of the studio’s work are animated by the belief in the transformative power of research-driven design to deliver high-performance buildings that create measurable value for clients, produce an engaging and productive workplace and build better communities. The firm is designing three buildings in Tampa. Pickard Chilton’s commitment to sustainable design has resulted in LEED-Gold and Platinum certification of nearly 50 million square feet of the studio’s commercial, and institutional buildings since 2006.

Baker Barrios

Based in Orlando and Tampa, Baker Barrios is designing one building in Tampa (central cooling facility and infrastructure). Like other architects working on the SPP project in Tampa, the firm has a major focus on sustainability. According to their website, "Baker Barrios is committed to producing sustainable, economically viable and environmentally responsible design solutions that meet or exceed our client’s needs. Throughout the design process, we follow LEED building certification programs that recognize best-in-class building strategies and practices. LEED certified buildings save money and resources and have a positive impact on the health of occupants, while promoting renewable, clean energy."

Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts

HOK

HOK is ranked #1 in architecture firms for technology expertise. The firm is designing the University of South Florida’s Morsani College of Medicine and Heart Institute (construction begins this fall). One example of their forward-thinking approach is their use of building information modeling (BIM) software, a key part of HOK’s buildingSMART approach, leads to increased project coordination, communication, document quality, design efficiency, and design/performance optimization among the many client benefits that result from using BIM.

“HOK buildingSMART, our Virtual Design and Construction initiative, has been designed to bring greater value to our clients in the form of higher-performing buildings, better quality, a more integrated design-procurement-fabrication-construction process and data supplied to the owner that can be used for the life of the building,” says Carl Galioto, managing principal in HOK’s New York office.

Hamad International Airport Passenger Terminal Complex

Cedars-Sinai Advanced Health Sciences Pavilion

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By Charles LaCalle

urbantech

Charles LaCalle