The greatest hurdles for the project team on the Aston Martin Residences came from perennial issues faced by all tall buildings in Miami—soft soils and high winds. The 69-story, 1.6-million-sq-ft tower also boasts a distinctive, curved design where no two floors are the same size or shape.

“Every floor is different,” explains Danilo Nanni, principal with structural engineer DeSimone Consulting Engineering. “This challenge was addressed by designing columns that follow the ‘silhouette’ of the tower and support the gravity, and to an extent, the wind loads.” The design of the tower—which features 391 condominiums and has a garage with 552 parking spaces—prompted several innovations, including the use of a 5-ft.-thick transfer slab at the podium to work around the garage, and a structural system with 12-ft-wide curved “mega columns” connected to a lateral load-resisting system that transfers loads to a large mat foundation 9 ft to 15 ft thick.

“A majestic structural element such as the mega column provides sufficient tension/compression capacity as well as shear resistance,” notes Nanni. “At the same time, it blends well with the architectural design and practical requirements.”

To meet the hurricane-force wind resistance requirements of the region, the building features additional walls in the exposed parking garage for added strength and a foundation with linear bearing elements composed of a series of seven 36-in. adjacent piles, with 573 foundational piles in all. “The lesson is that we can increase the density of the desirable areas of Miami,“ says Nanni. “Structural solutions, like the linear bearing elements, allows for a foundation more optimized than commonly seen in other towers with limited footprint.”