SM&W Contribution
Rendering Courtesy of One Thousand Museum / Zaha Hadid Architects
One Thousand Museum is a 63-story luxury condominium apartment building situated in the cultural hub of downtown Miami, Florida. It was designed by the renowned, award-winning architect Zaha Hadid.
Its design is so radical construction experts turned to a building material never used before. The tower’s façade features an external structural support composed of Glass Fiber-Reinforce Concrete (GFRC) river which permits less structural columns within each floor and provides each apartment owner with open plan apartments. This unique structure is designed to with stand Hurricane force winds and its exterior resembles a piece of sculpture and has become widely known as “The Scorpion Tower for its appearance.
In addition to its external appearance are luxury amenities such as a roof top helicopter landing pad, a 2-story high penthouse level high swimming pool, where one side of the pool utilizes the exterior glass façade as part of the pool. This pool provides swimmers with breathtaking views of the Atlantic Ocean 60 floors above street level.
SM&W’s contribution to the project was Acoustics. There were challenges from the beginning as SM&W was tasked with the noise mitigation of dewatering pumps that were required to remove ground water for piles driven 80 feet below grade that were later filled with concrete to anchor the tower. As no two apartments were alike, SM&W provided unique noise control recommendations and solutions for the exterior glass acoustic performance, slab thickness, apartment partition constructions and HVAC to achieve a comfortable environment for future residents.
Future luxury building designs will likely consider One Thousand Museum aka the Scorpion Tower as it was referred to during PBS’s “Impossible Builds” as the benchmark for luxury apartment living and SM&W is proud to have been a major contributor to this landmark structure.
View the PBS “Impossible Builds” program
