We were tasked with a complete overhaul of this massive three-story penthouse at the Icon South Beach, a successful building by Sieger Suarez Architects in collaboration with Philippe Starck. As we walked the place for the first time we became enthralled by the magnificence of the views from it: by far the very best in Miami, given the tower’s location.

Successive partitions and reconfigurations of these upper building floorplates had degraded the apartment layout, leaving a lot of room for improvement. The Owner opted for demolishing everything down to the shell, and a new vision took root. The first order of business was recovering the atrium under the skylight as an awe-inspiring initial step in the sequence of entrance, instead of obscuring it with a catwalk bridge from a previous intervention. The main stair got new glass guards and a simpler aesthetic. From there, the soaring Living Room unveiled itself as the social hub of the apartment, from which all other spaces derive. We cleaned its geometry and replaced the rudimentary spiral metal stair, leading up to bedrooms, with something more exciting. On the North side, we placed the formal Dining area next, separated by a large wall that defined both spaces yet did not take away from circulation flows. Thenceforth, a new breakfast area transitioned towards the new, enlarged Kitchen, and the live-in help quarters at the end. On the opposite side, we reinserted the corridor by the building circulation core to stitch back together the East and West portions of the penthouse’s lowest level. In so doing, the now mirror-full Powder Room was relocated to a more discrete position, an Art Gallery wall achieved, and two bedrooms created, one of which doubles as a Home Office the Owner loves. The corridor also affords the flexibility to temporarily seal off the newly minted Family Room, Bar, and Junior Master Bedroom suite beyond as sprawling guest quarters with an independent entrance for rowdy friends and family.

On the second level, the space off the main stair landing was transformed into the new Master Bedroom suite, in lieu of the three separate small bedrooms in the original distribution. This corner offered some of the best views, and its adjacency to the Living Room gave us the opportunity to dematerialize the visual boundary between the two. There was also enough floor area to set the Master Bedroom atop the hierarchy of night spaces; something needed and reinforced by the vicinity of the internal penthouse lift. The obsessive focus on preserving views at all costs prompted us to renounce most solid walls towards the exterior, while sizing and arranging the bathroom and sleeping portions of the Master Bedroom suite. In the end, we fused them together into a single space with the king-size bed a few feet away from the open, stand-alone bathtub and shower behind. Along the window wall, the sleek vanities pegged to the mullions hiding and supporting plumbing pipes and narrow mirrors. Only the toilet and bidet are granted an enclosure. Back in the Living Room, the new glass spiral stair leads up to two just-created en-suite bedrooms: private quarters for the youngest members of the family to chill out.

At the top of the main stairs, the access to the rooftop terrace level was rethought as a funky, cavernous glass corridor from which one erupts into the newly trellised outdoor Living area, meant for movie screenings and conversation. Once outside, the penthouse’s Swimming Pool got a new living green wall as a background, and a revamped sun deck with built-in seats, tables, and beds. A new outdoor Kitchen, Dining Area, Pool table, Conversation pool, and Fire Pit complete the private amenities program.