18 Brickell

18 Brickell is a mixed-use tower drawn by Nichols Brosch Wurst Wolfe & Associates for the Karam Group and Claro Development, on a site occupied by a strip mall anchored by a Burger King. The City of Miami approved a 78-story, 960-foot design in 2017: 392 residences, 66,618 square feet of retail across four floors, 464 parking spaces and dedicated bicycle parking, to a LEED Silver standard. The tower has not been built.

The form was the point. Rather than rising as a straight shaft, the tower was drawn to broaden as it climbs. The architects' analogy was a flower opening toward the light, and the practical effect would be residences reaching for daylight and views over the buildings crowded around the site, Brickell City Centre among them. A glass podium wrapped by a ramp cutting across the facade sat beneath, with vertical fins registering the movement of the sun across the lower floors.

The plan set a pool deck above the retail levels, with a second pool higher in the tower against the skyline. The address itself needs no defense: the middle of Brickell, immediately south of downtown and north of Coconut Grove, in what has become one of the largest financial districts in the country and home to a dense concentration of international banking.