Brickell City Center

Ensuring pedestrian comfort in a large-scale, open-air retail environment

Brickell City Center is a 5.4-million-square-foot complex in downtown Miami comprising office, retail, hotel, and residential spaces. The project’s centerpiece is a raised platform on which people can walk above street level between the shopping areas and adjacent condo and office buildings. Sheltering this platform is a “climate ribbon” – an undulating strip of steel and glass that offers protection from the sun and rain while redirecting breezes to provide natural air conditioning. Project architects and designers knew this passive design element had to be executed perfectly to achieve the vision of an urban “lifestyle development” where pedestrians move comfortably throughout the complex.