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Completed in 2016, the SLS Brickell Hotel & Residences is a 52-story mixed-use hotel and condo project that I was proud to add to Quadra’s portfolio. As a development project, it cost $230 million and had a $130 million construction contract. The building itself has 1.2 million gross square feet, with the first ten floors—the hotel portion—under our management.
SLS Brickell
SLS Brickell was initially considered a standard condo-hotel tower, with the condo portion occupying only a slice of the building. For the first ten floors it was strictly a hotel; from floor 11 through 52, it was strictly condos. It sold well. Part of the intrigue, I think, that made it so attractive to buyers was that it is kind of cool to say that you live in a building with a hotel in it—not to mention that it is a beautiful design, both inside and out.
Much of that beauty is thanks to the vision of superstar designer Phillipe Starck. Even though Starck was not very accustomed to doing this type of high-rise tower, he did a phenomenal job. If you are not familiar with Starck’s work or his ideas about design, his TED Talk is a good overview.
World-Class Dining
Inside the SLS Brickell, guests and residents have a couple of world-class dining options: Jose Andres’s Bazaar Mar and Michael Schwartz’s Fi’lia. These restaurants were based on two distinct concepts for two distinct chefs with different needs. That was actually one of the biggest challenges of the entire project—all the different parts that needed to come together, the hotel and condo and two restaurants. But come together they did.
There are some of those iconic Phillipe Starck moments in the building where things are very minimalist. For instance, the hotel lobby is just concrete with a humongous led screen, and then it’s all very, for lack of a better word, stark. You have punches of color in fabrics and textures contrasted with an almost cold ethereal quality.
And then you have Fi’Lia, with nice warm accents and reclaimed woods. I actually took a trip up to Ohio to a veneer plant and big exotic lumber company to pick the wood. The bar top is solid oak. It was a cool experience selecting those materials for use in on the floors and ceilings and other areas.
On the mezzanine level, Starch switches to a nautical theme. It’s very adventure-focused in the design. The rugs in the space were custom done to make it look like guests are walking on nautical maps. Starck’s team does their typical design at the end by going to flea markets and junkyards. They go on these shopping sprees two weeks before a place opens, flying in from Paris to curate artifacts locally, sometimes shipping things from Paris. When they curated SLS Brickell, I think they went out and spend $200,000 on knickknacks and tchotchkes.
During that process, they ended up buying quite a few nautical photos. I happened to have a photo of my dad at his graduation from the Cuban Naval Academy hanging in my office. They actually ended up putting a copy of that up in the mezzanine space.
Azulejo Tiles
The Bazaar Mar called for a different design. Starck wanted to riff on Jose Andres’s Spanish roots with the design of the restaurant, so he came up with the idea of making it feel like you are part of something distinctly Spanish. Azulejo tiles, which trace their origins to the 13th century in Spain and Portugal, seemed to fit the space perfectly.
Sergio Mora, a painter from Madrid, was able to capture Starck’s “Alice in Wonderland” vision for this series of tiles in a way that no other artist could have. Once Mora completed the initial designs, they were then transferred onto the tiles by artisans from Talavera. I had the privilege of traveling to Spain to check on the production on the azulejo tiles, and from there I formed a relationship with Mora and others involved in their production.
They ended up asking if I would be interested in having a tile done with my likeness on it. I agreed, but only if every other key player on the project, including Starck and Andres, would have their own tiles done. Now these tiles are up on the wall for everyone to see, though with all the detail that went into the overall design of the rest of the thousands of tiles that cover the walls, you might have a difficult time finding them.