Overview

General Contractor SKANSKA USA Building hired KENPAT to provide the exterior for the Living Core building of the amazing new Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum in Miami, Florida. As part of the museum, the Living Core houses the Gulf Stream Aquarium, a 100-foot wide, 500,000-gallon aquarium in the shape of a water drop, when viewed from above. The façade is a one of a kind doubly curving mortar bed and ceramic tile vented cavity structure. The finished tile surface is organized into a linear parallelogram pattern, with a 3/16” tolerance, superimposed on the continually changing complex curved substructure. Tiles in the parallelogram are flat, convex or concave to create an in-and-out pixel geometry texture allowing the arc of the sun to animate the façade. The exterior must be capable of passing a Miami-Dade Notice of Acceptance (NOA) certification to meet the impact, water and air infiltration parameters of the NOA.