Every Starchitect Building in South Florida’s New Development Pipeline — Ranked

Not all luxury buildings are created equal. The difference between a luxury tower designed by a global architectural firm with a 50-year critical legacy and one designed by a regional firm optimizing for sales-floor efficiency is the difference between a building that appears in Dezeen and one that appears in a real estate brochure. For a specific category of South Florida buyer, this distinction is the primary purchase criterion.

Tier 1: Pritzker Prize and Globally Critical

OMA / Rem Koolhaas — Three Active South Florida Projects

OMA’s presence in South Florida’s current pipeline is extraordinary by any historical measure — three active residential commissions simultaneously from one of the world’s two or three most consequential architecture firms. The Perigon Miami Beach (Mast Capital, oceanfront), Banyan Tree Residences West Palm Beach (Mast Capital, OMA architecture + Yabu Pushelberg interiors), and the completed Park Grove (Terra Group, Coconut Grove) represent OMA’s deepest engagement with any single U.S. real estate market.

Rem Koolhaas received the Pritzker Prize — architecture’s Nobel equivalent — in 2000. His firm’s Miami Beach oceanfront commission at The Perigon is the most significant new building commission in South Florida’s current pipeline from a purely architectural standpoint.

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) — Rivage Bal Harbour

SOM is the engineering and architecture firm whose portfolio includes the Burj Khalifa (world’s tallest building), One World Trade Center, and the John Hancock Center. The Rivage Bal Harbour commission — likely the last oceanfront development site in the municipality — represents SOM’s most significant South Florida residential commission. The building’s structural engineering ambition matches the site’s irreplaceable character.

Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW) — Eighty Seven Park (Delivered)

Eighty Seven Park in Miami Beach, delivered 2019. RPBW (2008 Pritzker Prize) produced one of the most restrained and quietly confident luxury residential buildings in South Florida’s history — a building that gets more impressive the longer you look at it, as Renzo Piano buildings tend to do.

Robert A.M. Stern Architects (RAMSA) — St. Regis Residences Sunny Isles Beach

RAMSA is not a Pritzker laureate, but Robert A.M. Stern is the single most prominent practitioner of classical American residential architecture alive — the architect of 15 Central Park West, 220 Central Park South, and the buildings that have set Manhattan’s residential pricing records for two decades. His South Florida commission at St. Regis Sunny Isles Beach brings the most accomplished classical residential architect of the era to the Atlantic shoreline.

Tier 2: Globally Recognized Major Firms

Safdie Architects — Mandarin Oriental Residences West Palm Beach

Moshe Safdie’s firm, known for Marina Bay Sands (Singapore), Habitat 67 (Montreal), and Sky Habitat (Singapore), brings a humanist design philosophy that prioritizes community, light, and the relationship between buildings and their natural environment. The WPB commission is one of Safdie Architects’ most prominent active U.S. residential projects.

Sieger Suarez Architects — Bentley Residences, Waldorf Astoria Miami

Sieger Suarez is the South Florida firm that has designed the market’s two most ambitious structural engineering projects — Bentley Residences (63 stories, the Dezervator, tallest residential building on any U.S. beach) and Waldorf Astoria Residences Miami (100 stories, 1,049 feet, tallest building south of New York). Not internationally critical in the same way as OMA or SOM, but operationally the most ambitious firm in the South Florida market.

Revuelta Architecture — Aston Martin Residences, Mercedes-Benz Places Miami

The Miami firm responsible for both of Biscayne Boulevard’s landmark automotive-branded towers. Revuelta’s approach is more commercial and less critically driven than OMA or SOM, but the firm’s track record on large-format luxury residential delivery in Miami’s complex regulatory environment is unmatched.

Tier 3: Boutique Design-Forward

Garcia Stromberg — Ritz-Carlton Residences WPB

• Tara Bernerd & Partners (interiors) — The Perigon Miami Beach
• Yabu Pushelberg (interiors) — Banyan Tree WPB, Apogee South Beach
• Rottet Studio (interiors) — Rivage Bal Harbour
• BAMO Inc. (interiors) — Waldorf Astoria Miami

Interior designers of this caliber are — for buyers who live with design rather than merely collect it — as important as the architectural author. The collaboration between OMA (architecture) and Yabu Pushelberg (interiors) at Banyan Tree, or between SOM (architecture) and Rottet Studio (interiors) at Rivage, produces buildings where the exterior ambition and the interior execution are equally considered.