Thesis Discussion

By Sean Williamson

Welcome back! Within the past 2 weeks, I have been discussing various options for a site location in Miami with one my professors. He had voiced his opinion saying that the site was not going to be buildable due to its proximity to neighboring buildings. After realizing he was correct, I began to search for a new site within Miami, Florida.

My search led me to an island West of Miami beach labeled Harbor Island. The site is highlighted orange in the attached document. The address of the site is 8098 West Dr. with approximately 196,456 square feet. It is surrounded by water and is accompanied by several condominiums and apartments to the south. After researching the zoning ordinance, I discovered the site was buildable for my proposed structure.

After finally obtaining a buildable site, I began to think about the actual building that was to be developed. I have decided to take out the commercial retail aspects of the project and just focus on a natural disaster resistant residential tower.

Because of the disasters I am designing against, I will be developing the lower levels of the tower to be able to be flooded with water and not affect the tower nor the site. Other design ideas I plan to incorporate into the residential tower is develop an automatic metal shutter system that will cover all openings within the tower to protect them from flying debris. Wind flow through the structure is also a principle I plan to use. This will decrease the amount of wind force being applied to the building by allowing wind flow directly through the structure. The structural skeleton of the tower will be composed of an all steel system. This decision was based off of steels ability to bend, compared to concretes lack of ability to bend (it cracks and breaks). The most important thing to design against is structural failure. Steel seemed to be the better structural choice because has more ability to bend and not fail. Another import aspect I am going to incorporate into this project is the use of underwater turbines. These turbines accumulate energy through the movement of the tides.

Stay tuned for my next blog to see some building form concepts for this residential natural disaster resistant tower.