This project started in analyzing the Surfside Collapse, which resulted in the tragic death of 98 people. My project explores how this event marked the end of the Miami leisure culture that started in the 1980s building boom, which was advertised through expensive real-estate, luxurious amenities, and the culture of leisure.The Surfside beachfront was one of the prime locations developed during this period, with a total of 42 resorts being built and sold at exorbitant prices. However, as we witnessed in the collapse, this ideal of luxurious Miami living was not matched by structural stability, with maintenance problems, lax building codes, and hasty construction cited as possible causes of the disaster.
My project proposes two main interventions to address these issues: a pool memorial and a surveillance system. The pool memorial aims to create a space for people to remember and honor the victims of the collapse, while also symbolizing the exposed and broken image of the perfect Miami life.The surveillance system, on the other hand, aims to provide better maintenance of the resorts and alert people to the dangers of hasty real-estate development. I designed a subterranean pool surveillance room along the Surfside beach, which includes CCTV viewing rooms and monitor rooms to watch over possible structural frailties in the resorts.
