By providing meaningful spaces that foster the relationship between living and learning, CO Architects developed a design scheme that offers a diverse congregation of cohesive, multi-functional buildings. The project features multiple scales of social environments, from a single student room to the university campus at large. The idea of community is reflected in the design of the project, and permeates throughout the building structure. The “home” encourages resident interaction, collaboration, and collective learning, and provides opportunities for chance encounters. The Hurricane Track encourages healthy living within the community and peaks at The Learning Summit, a multidisciplinary resource within the living environment. The Great Room provides an area to host art exhibits and conferences, and the Amenity Promenade embraces both residents and the visiting community alike with retail space and artist studios.

The homes stack one on top of another into blocked, staggered groupings. Each block is gradually offset by one another to provide shaded terraces and establish large areas of social interaction. The three-story home is composed of private and semi-private living areas, juxtaposed to create close-knit communities within the residential space. A series of efficiency studios, one-bedroom, two-bedroom, and four-bedroom units is linked together by a central corridor and anchored by a shared living room, encouraging student interaction across the 426 residences.

The Hurricane Track, dedicated to student health and wellness, is composed of ascending stations, each serving a distinct function, such as cycling, yoga, weightlifting, and stationary biking. Stations are connected by a monumental staircase that peaks at the Learning Summit, a symbolic and literal pinnacle for the university that acts as a host for communal and individual learning. The Great Room, featuring a café and open lecture hall, is equipped to host conferences, think tank summits, concerts, and art installations.

The Amenity Promenade on the ground level accommodates a variety of public programming, and serves as a space to engage the broader campus culture and embrace the visiting community. The nature of this collective environment lends itself to teaching, study, exhibition, retail, and artist studios. Concrete columns mimic tropical banyan trees and serve as an homage to the university’s surroundings. The elevated second-floor level allows pedestrians to pass beneath, and permits the existing tropical garden to flourish.

The residential complex has been designed with the acknowledgement of solar orientation, wind direction, and wind-speed frequency in order to maximize cooling. The staggered grouping of homes and resulting porosity created between each structure facilitate natural ventilation and permit both air and individuals to move more freely. The site allows the building to engage with the nearby architecture school, and directs pedestrian flow from public transit by creating a meandering urban street within the campus. The project also preserves precious remaining green space, and features direct views of Lake Osceola and the Miami skyline.

Los Angeles-based CO Architects is nationally recognized for architectural planning, programming, and design in the higher education, science and technology, and healthcare sectors, and works with leading institutions from coast to coast. CO Architects’ specialized expertise includes transformative schools of medicine and health professions, advanced research and teaching laboratories, and innovative clinical facilities on higher education, healthcare, and urban campuses. CO Architects is the recipient of the American Institute of Architects, California Council’s prestigious 2014 California Architecture Firm of the Year Award. The firm has been nationally and internationally recognized through design awards, published articles, speaker presentations, and tours by organizations, such as the AIA, The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design, World Architecture News, the Association for Medical Education in Europe, and the Society for College and University Planning.