how supercars are redefining domestic space
On the fifty-sixth floor of Porsche Design Tower Miami, a car might roll out of a glass elevator and park beside its owner’s apartment. The sixty-story tower was completed in Sunny Isles Beach in 2017, and was built around three car elevators (so-called Dezervator lifts) developed by Dezer Development.
A resident pulls up at ground level and sends the car upward through the tower’s core, where it reaches private parking attached to the home. A piece of infrastructure usually buried below grade has been pulled through the building and placed beside the living room.
Porsche Design Tower Miami, Florida | image © Porsche
While it’s likely that most of us don’t live with such an amenity, the concept of the sky garage is not exactly new. Selldorf Architects completed 200 Eleventh Avenue in New York in 2010 with private garages served by a car elevator, while Hamilton Scotts in Singapore followed in 2012 with elevated garages behind glass walls beside the apartments.
Porsche Design Tower Miami arrived after those experiments. Its contribution was to bind an existing spatial concept to an automotive name, and to turn the relationship between car and home into the central identity of the building.
Porsche Design Tower Miami, Florida | image © Porsche
the automotive world informs a building type
Bentley Residences Miami (see here) carries that model into a second tower by the same developer. Designed with Sieger Suarez Architects and scheduled for completion in 2027, the 61-story building uses four Dezervator lifts to bring cars directly to private garages holding up to four vehicles. A mechanism introduced with the Porsche tower has become transferable infrastructure.
Bentley Residences Miami, Florida | image © Bentley
Once the same device crosses brand lines, the shift to a new building type becomes even more clear. Parking moves out of the basement and into each unit, which thus changes the sequence of arrival and the organization of the plan. The automaker generally supplies a design language, while a developer and a team of architects turn it into buildable housing. This way the building can be presented as an extension of automotive design.
Bentley Residences Miami, Florida | floorplan © Bentley
when the car starts designing the section
Porsche Design Tower Bangkok (see here) pushes the translation much further. The 21-story project in Thonglor is organized around 22 duplex and quadplex residences, with a spiral vehicle ramp called The Loop rising through the center toward customizable garages known as Passion Spaces.
Its automated terrace doors take their cue from the opening mechanism of the 911 Targa roof, while an exposed X-Frame references the Mission R concept car. The building scales up automotive mechanisms into architectural ones, moving beyond surface resemblance toward the way parts open and move.
Porsche Design Tower Bangkok, Thailand | image © Porsche
interiors informed by automotive design logic
Meanwhile, Pagani Residences in North Bay Village and Aston Martin Residences Miami (see here) work through have a more tactile, human-scale approach. Aston Martin’s design team shaped shared interiors inside the completed 66-story Miami tower with carbon-fiber reception desks and leather door tabs, along with bespoke hardware like handles and number plinths.
Pagani Arte applies materials associated with the company’s hypercars to its residential interiors, pairing typical building materials like stone and wood with carbon fiber and aluminum. In both projects, the house becomes an enlarged field for textures that were first developed inside a vehicle cabin.
