Rene Gonzalez Architect creates buildings that actively engage in a design “conversation” with their surroundings. Founded in 1997 in Miami, Fla., the award-winning firm believes that a building is inexorably linked to cultural and natural environments beyond its physical boundaries.
The firm’s designs are influenced by external factors, both ethereal and earthly – including sky, water, vegetation and the bustle of human activity. Often in its work, there’s a deliberate ambiguity between the inside and outside, bringing elements of each into the other.
By intentionally blurring the lines between constructed and innate landscapes, Rene Gonzalez Architect (RGA) synthesizes elements, making it difficult to discern exactly where their work ends and the ambient surroundings begin.
Detail-oriented and contemporary, the multiple award-winning firm specializes in the design of museum and gallery spaces, exhibition design, hospitality, retail and residential projects.
Principal Rene Gonzalez, AIA, believes that architecture should be a sensory experience. His work is based on the idea that buildings and spaces impact us and should be designed to leave a lasting memorable impression on us.
He seeks to discover and define the essence of a place by interpreting patterns, ideas, and cultural conditions rather than stylizing architectural typologies or forms. The approach to accomplish this is holistic; integrating the architecture, interiors and landscapes.
RGA approaches each project with an individualized design methodology that requires the firm to listen – not only to their clients, but also to the voices of the elements around a particular site creating in every project both a reflection and an extension of its environment.
RGA allows the purpose of the space and the intrinsic elements surrounding it to influence each other, so the result is a place that feels soulful. The idea is to develop a deep and meaningful relationship between people and their built environment.
Gonzalez is the only Miami architect in 50 years to be honored twice for Miami projects. He is also the recipient of AIA Miami’s 2012 H. Samuel Kruse Silver Medal for Design and in 2011, RGA received AIA Miami’s Firm of the Year award.
His work has been published in more than 200 national and international publications, and in 2010, he was one of four contemporary architects featured in the book Four Florida Moderns.
For more information, www.renegonzalezarchitect.com
Image Credits: Residence at Indian Creek. Photo by Luis Travieso / courtesy of Rene Gonzalez.