With the foundation for the Ritz-Carlton Residences now complete, the 53-story luxury tower is rising on the shores of Sunny Isles Beach, Florida. Thornton Tomasetti provided structural design services for the condominium building designed by Arquitectonica. A joint venture of Fortune International Group and the Château Group is developing the 800,000-square-foot project.

The tower’s foundation features a 22,000-square-foot mat with more than 1,110 tons of reinforced steel. Eighty trucks delivered 600 loads of concrete for nearly 19 consecutive hours for the pour in late April. The foundation incorporates existing 130-foot-long auger-cast piles from a previously planned development. Since the existing pile layout could not be changed, new piles as well as the new pile cap had to be meticulously laid out and designed to strategically avoid or incorporate the existing structure.

With 80 trucks going to and from the site, 5,500 cubic yards of concrete was poured in approximately 19 hours.Utilizing a fluid, asymmetrical floor plan, the tower’s design resembles a splash of water and ensures that no unit is alike at each level. The building’s 212 residences will range from two to four bedrooms. The top floors will feature five penthouses with private terraces resembling those of yachts and cruise liners, each with a swimming pool. Halfway up the building will be a residents’ club with an observation area facing all directions, with lounges, dining areas and hotel rooms for short-term guests.

The oceanfront tower is designed to withstand Category 5 hurricane winds from any direction. A system of reinforced-concrete walls with a combination of conventional rebar and high-strength, large-diameter bars controls the size of columns and walls in the tower to maximize space in the units.

The shear walls and columns use 2.5-inch diameter, 97 ksi reinforcing bars, each of which has more than four times the strength of the standard #11 bar. It is only the third building to use this innovative feature in the Miami area as well as the first to incorporate column and wall bar cages built off site.

The porte cochere doubles as the surface for a retreat space with sunken spa and dipping pools, elevated tree plantings, skylights to brighten the space below and a 25-meter lap pool. Courtesy Arquitectonica

With several swimming pools of various sizes, large-scale plantings and long cantilevers, the podium levels posed additional engineering challenges. We designed a collection of concrete-framed solutions to accommodate this unique program. The tower’s first two floors will contain parking to accommodate 400 cars, above that will sit a third-floor lobby.

The tower is scheduled for completion in mid-2019.