Panorama Tower

The Panorama Tower is a Contemporary skyscraper designed between 2012 and 2013 by Moshe Cosicher, in association with FONS Inc, and built between 2014 and 2018, for a reported $800 million dollars, in Miami, FL.

Panorama Tower is not the only name you might know this building by though. The building is, or has also been known as 1101 Brickell.

Its precise street address is 1100 Brickell Bay Drive, Miami, FL. You can also find it on the map here.

In 2019 the Panorama Tower was awarded with the CTBUH Geotechnical Engineering Award of Excellence.

Initially envisioned in the mid-2000s by architect Kobi Karp, the project was stalled for several years as a result of the financial crisis of 2007. It wasn't until 2012 that the development was brought back to life with a fresh design by architect Moshe Cosicher. His reimagining of the tower introduced a mixed-use concept, seamlessly integrating residential, hospitality, retail, and office components into a unified architectural form..

Moshe Cosicher was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design, in association with FONS Inc.

That being said, architecture is a complex discipline involving many professionals from different fields, without whom this building would have not been possible. We will surely be leaving out a lot of names here, but here is a list of the people we do know also played their part in making the Panorama Tower a reality:

• DeSimone Consulting Engineers in charge of Structural Engineering
• Owner Terminated Tutor Perini as the Main Contractor
• Otis Elevator Company as the company in charge of the elevators system
• Florida East Coast Realty as the Main Developer
• Zyscovich Architecture in charge of Interior Design

The Panorama Tower can be categorized as a Contemporary building.

The Panorama Tower uses a frame structure made of reinforced concrete columns and beams.

A frame structure uses a combination of beams and columns to sustain the building's weight. The walls in this case are non-load bearing, which allows for more flexibility when distributing the interior spaces.

The facade uses a non-load bearing curtain wall system. This means the curtain wall modules are anchored to the building's structural frame, typically by being attached to the edge of the floor slabs. The curtain wall system connects to the slabs using brackets, anchors, and mullions, which transfer the loads imposed by wind and temperature changes, to the building's primary structural elements.

This setup allows the curtain wall to accommodate differential movement between the facade and the structural frame, such as thermal expansion, floor deflection, or sway from wind forces. This system's integration with the slab edges also allows for continuous insulation and weatherproofing layers.

The tower uses several structural features to stiffen the structure, including two belt trusses. The roof truss has six outrigger girders, reinforced with steel plates linking the core to the perimeter mega-columns.

Post-tensioned slabs were optimized and minimized to 8 inches at the podium and 7.5 inches in the tower. The core includes shear walls up to four feet thick, and the 12-foot-thick foundation is reinforced with high-grade steel and bundled #11 bars.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features high-performance tinted glass combined with horizontal aluminum and steel details, especially on the cantilevered balconies and slab edges.

Due to the proximity of the Atlantic Ocean and the height of the tower, all metal components exposed to saltwater corrosion (such as canopies and brackets supporting the glass curtain wall) were galvanized, effectively minimizing the need for maintenance.