Rene Gonzalez Architect: Not Lost in Translation

Publication:
The Monacelli Press
Author:
Beth Dunlop, Caroline Roux, Tod Williams, and Billie Tsien
Published:
June 1, 2023
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Tactile, experiential, and holistic, the work of Rene Gonzalez Architects demonstrates a belief in the inseparable connection between nature and architecture, creating spaces that are memorable and timeless. Surveying fourteen residential, commercial, and cultural projects in Florida, marking the first phase of Gonzalez’s career, Rene Gonzalez Architects: Not Lost in Translation (June 2018, The Monacelli Press) illustrates his ability to distill the essence of place, distinguishing his work both in his home state and in the global landscape of contemporary architecture. Projects featured in the book include:

  • three Alchemist boutiques, the first of which won the 2011 National AIA Institute Honor Award
  • the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, whose one million glass mosaic tiles create the illusion of a jungle oasis on the exterior
  • the eighteen-story GLASS Residential Tower in Miami Beach
  • the “pocket sanctuary” that is vegan restaurant Plant Food + Wine
  • the North Beach Oceanfront Center, which serves as an inviting gathering ground to the North Miami Beach community

Gonzalez is especially attuned to environmental issues that are affecting the world, and which will drastically alter design practice in the coming years. RGA is receiving widespread attention for its efforts to respond to these emerging conditions, and these projects reveal Gonzalez’s commitment to embrace and celebrate the environment, seizing the opportunity to enhance our future.

Rene Gonzalez Architects: Not Lost in Translation is a deeply personal book that illustrates Gonzalez’s fascination with the world that surrounds him. Featuring a conversation with Gonzalez’s colleagues Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, essays by journalist Caroline Roux and Modern Magazine editor-in-chief Beth Dunlop, as well as his own photographs of Miami’s vernacular architecture, this book documents Gonzalez’s progressive and responsive architecture that is of its place yet universally resonant.

For Rene Gonzalez, it’s a matter of working with the salty swells rather than fighting them, adapting his tropical modernist style to handle whatever the sea might send his way... What Gonzalez hopes to do is enrich life by creating a sensory, or viscerally amplified, perception of it.

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