Mark Hobson

West Gulf Real Estate

Cape Coral, Florida

 

The site is located at an intersection of a busy commercial boulevard and a residential collector parkway. The 9,000 sf building, parking, and the site's zoning requirements demanded a solution that integrated parking into the bulding footprint, hence the cantilevered second and third floors over the parking.  The boulevard and the constant stream of traffic as a commercial strip is the context to which this building solution responds. The solution speaks to horizontal trajectory, speed, lane change, sudden stops, and motorist tension. The building is situated as close to the intersection as allowed, and responds to the boulevard, tension and its release through speed with a building mass/5 degree axis shift from floor to floor. This shift is generated by the 95 degree axis of the boulevard and parkway.

 

The building's program is separated into a three-story corner block (the owner's office), and a block of three office units. An open common area with a pedestrian connection to the boulevard and parking separates the two blocks. The corner office's interior climbs from the first level to the third with mezzanines thereby openining the corner to three stories. This interior corner's verticality is experienced against the exterior's horizontal rush in the boulevard. The dynamic along the commercial strip is further expressed in the action/articulation along the facades.