Project: Hammock Garden

Landscape Design: TROPICA 
Interior Design: TROPICA
Landscape Installation: TROPICA 

Status: Completed
Design: 2024
Build: 2024 

Location: Coconut Grove

TEXT: This Design-Build project in Coconut Grove exemplifies the approach to both landscape and architecture which allows the PLOT to influence architecture, and vice versa.

Together with the homeowner, we have given a completely new expression to a grey-painted wooden home. To emphasize the shadow -- the most desirable condition in hot / humid climates, the house was painted black, and a shady, hardwood-hammock forest was installed around the home.

The hardwood hammock is characterized by an extremely shaded atmosphere where a variety of native plants cluster together, competing for sunlight. This produces a unique condition where trees become extremely gnarly and wrangled. This typically old-growth forest gives the building a feeling that it has always been there, as the dense garden surrounds it.

All invasive trees were removed from the garden to make way for this new forest, which overtime, will create a unique sculptural condition against the dark-wood facade.

The design-build relationship with this project allowed us to control all site work, both inside and outside the home from day one.

All elements of the project from finishes, to plantings, to site elements are hand-picked throughout the process and installed with constant site supervision. This gives us a unique understanding of, and relationship with, the plot.

Within this three-story house, large windows and terraces provide ample areas to enjoy the new trees, as if one is within a tree house.

In addition to the trees, flowers and plants bearing fruits and berries for native bird, hummingbird, and butterfly populations are used. Over 40 species of plants are installed to offer variety to wildlife in all seasons. 

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