Aidan Green: Environmental Architecture, Week Two

The famous Biltmore Hotel where we watched the fireworks.

The firework show

A lot has happened since my last blog post. Our country had a birthday, I have been sea fishing (although I did not catch anything), gone to the beach, and I have attempted to get in better shape for hockey camp. These are just some of the things I have done outside of my internship and the office.

I feel very lucky to be participating in so many cool activities with such great people who are becoming life long friends and all of my fun would not be possible without a GREAT host family! The youngest son in the family, Mikey, and his girlfriend, Claudia, returned this week after a one and a half month long trip around Europe, surprising his family with coming home a couple of days early. Finally meeting Mikey was great, we spent almost the whole weekend doing cool activities such as playing game after game of ping pong or going to the beach to walk the dogs together, along with his brother Kevin and his girlfriend Nicole and sometimes their oldest sister Ashley. Being with them makes me feel as if I am one of their family members.

The fish Kevin caught

Family dinner

That’s enough about how nice the Hans family are, now let me tell you about last week with my internship, which is the reason I am in Miami in the first place. Last week in the Borges office I continued to read about sea level rise and how it is going to effect coastal cities in the next 100 or so years. Sure that sounds similar to what I did last week but that is because I am learning every aspect, strategy, and every bit of information I can about sea level rise. For example, one article I read talks about a new way to live with, and protect people from, the rising sea in San Francisco. The project is called the Hydramax and it is a proposed building that will create an ecosystem for surrounding animals and plants, while protecting people and collecting solar power and water. The company is called Future Cities Lab and it has created more projects that are very advanced and are based around energy and the most efficient way to create a safe and healthy planet. In the end I am going to take all the information I have been learning about and reading, and transform it into a power point.

Panorama of Miami beach

The trolley that takes me to work everyday

Along with reading articles about new innovations to help with sea level I have sat in on meetings either in the office or around the city to take notes and learn as much as I can about actual experiences and what it means to be an architect. What this means is that I am observing the working day of an architect. Last week I sat in on two meetings. One was a lighting proposal/presentation given to the office during lunch. The meeting described different types of light features and fixtures the company supplied as a man discussed pros and cons about their lights versus other companies or distributors. The second meeting I was allowed to participate in was held in an office in Coral Gables discussing the construction of a house Borges is trying to build in the Coral Gables area.The meeting was based around how this house which was proposed to the city of Coral Gables and had passed until a neighbor denied the construction and permitting of the building because she did not want them to cut down two trees on the property. In order to save the trees, the house had to be moved back about 10 feet. To my knowledge this new plan for the house went through the same permitting process, was again approved, and again the neighbor spoke up and denied the house due to other small details on the house. She believed the house did not follow Coral Gables “Mediterranean” style. Because of this neighbor the office now has had to re-design parts of the house in attempts to make it look more Mediterranean.

Now after being approved and denied twice this is the stage of meetings that I joined in with an attempt to satisfy the neighbor while stile holding to the vision of the client. In total, with all the attempts to get a permit for this house, it has been 10 months of meetings and heavy conversations with both the city of Coral Gables and the neighbor. Ten months is almost enough time to design and build a house if there were no problems with permitting. In the meeting I sat in one we discussed the new changes to the house with Ramon Trias (director) and Carlos Mindrau (city architect) in the City of Coral Gables Planning + Zoning Department to see whether or not the house will pass the next approval, determining whether construction can begin. If the house does pass they will soon break ground and begin building the house. Being a part of both those meetings served as a great learning experience. I am looking forward to what next week has in store for me!