Architecture firm BIG has released plans to build a major complex in an industrial neighbourhood of Miami, combining housing, offices, a school and urban farming.
BIG's Miami Produce Center will be elevated on columns above a trio of warehouses in Allapattah ? a district known for a large open-air produce and textile markets.

The 125,000-square-metre complex will comprise a stack of eight volumes, containing co-working offices, co-living apartments and a hotel. The three existing buildings traversing the site will also be transformed as part of the scheme into restaurants, shops and cafes, and a school.

Newly released renderings show ground-level spaces around each structure will be landscaped into gardens. A street will run through the middle of the site, which will include an educational campus. Large expanses of glazing will be added to front of the renovated low-rise warehouses to open up the interiors to the outdoor space.
"Between the warehouses, three public spaces will exhibit a variety of lush landscapes that create diverse microclimates and allow the buildings' programmes to extend outdoors," said a project description from BIG, which just completed a pair of skyscrapers in Shenzhen.

Four long buildings will then be raised on slender stilts above the warehouses, and arranged around the perimeter of the site.

Each will host a different function ? one for offices, another for a hotel and two for residences ? with outdoor space on the rooftops. The i...