Taking car devotion to some new heights
IT’S the hottest trend in the automotive industry, and it’s not electric vehicles or autonomous driving. It’s something far more unlikely: the automotivebranded highrise condominium tower. It started with the Porsche Design Tower, which opened in 2017. The Bentley Residences followed in 2022, a 228mhigh, 60story condominium, still being built at a cost of
$US850 million (NZ$1.4b).
Both car brands are owned by the Volkswagen Group and constructed by Dezer Development, which also codeveloped the Trump Grande, Trump Towers, and the Residences by Armani/Casa, all in Sunny Isles Beach, Florida, north of Miami Beach. Uniquely, vehicle elevators are used in both the Porsche and Bentley buildings, allowing condo owners to park in their own private multicar, glasswalled garage next to their apartment. Other automakers are finally following their lead. In February, German automaker MercedesBenz announced MercedesBenz Places, a 791unit, 67story mixeduse residential tower located in Miami’s Brickell neighbourhood.
Units range in size from studios to threebedrooms.
Plans call for the tower to incorporate nearly 61,000sq m of shops, offices, health and fitness centers, and a 174key Treehouse Hotel. It was followed in March by supercar maker Pagani, revealing plans for the Pagani Residences, to be located in North Bay Village near Miami. The 28story condo tower will have four units per floor, allowing all to be corner units, ranging in size from
610sq m to over 1000sq m, as well as a 2100sq m penthouse with 1340sq m of outdoor space.
But the latest tower to reach completion is the Aston Martin Residences, a 66story, 391unit tower also in the Brickell section of Miami. Ninetynine percent of the units are sold, ranging in size from a $US820,000, 212sq m, singlebath studio to a more than 8200sq m $US59m, sevenbedroom, eightbathroom, threelevel penthouse. Among the amenities: a new Aston Martin Vulcan and over 2200sq m of private outdoor space with pool and spa. But some buyers don’t need the car, as more than 50 residents already own one. To visit the Aston Martin Residences, the brand’s first real estate project, is to experience the sort of apartment building once common for the middleclass but now reserved only for the wealthy. My grandmother’s middleclass apartment building in Philadelphia boasted its own food market, beauty salon, flower shop, medical offices, dining room, bar, outdoor swimming pool with cabanas, private gardens and parking garage.
Aston Martin Residences has many of the same amenities, including hair salons, a twostory gym, spa, ballroom, children’s rec rooms, rooftop pool with cabana and DJ booth, not to mention a private art gallery, movie theatres and golf simulator. And while it’s easy to come away impressed, you might find it harder to see how it relates to Aston Martin.
But there are similarities in aesthetic and design approach, according to Marek Reichman, Aston Martin’s chief creative officer, who guided the design over its decadelong gestation.
‘‘It’s an application of what I would call a design DNA on to a different vernacular,’’ Reichman said.
‘‘It’s then taking that DNA and applying it to a building, which is fundamentally different, but in many respects the same because you’ve got to honour the design belief and the design ethos of Aston Martin.’’
For Reichman, that means a timeless design. This might explain the building’s bowed appearance, with a form recalling an airfoil, or perhaps a sail being blown by the wind. Its rounded shape works perfectly on the tower’s windswept spit of land on Miami’s Brickell Point. ‘‘We’re designing cars that will exist in people’s collections forever. You’d you don’t throw an Aston Martin away; 96% of the cars we’ve ever made since 1913 still exist,’’ Reichman said. ‘‘We’re building homes with a certain aesthetic and even if it’s your second, third, or fourth home where you live, it represents you just as what you drive.
‘‘We had to ensure that all the values that exist within that 117yearold brand existed in this brandnew building today.’’—