These four buildings sit at the principal intersection of a new resort town. County road 30-A runs east to west, dividing the town into neighborhoods oriented around either the beaches of the Gulf of Mexico, or the pine woods to the north. Somerset Street, running north and south, conducts people from one neighborhood to the other. There is a public plaza at the foot of South Somerset, which descends from thirty feet to sea level over a single long block. The buildings at the intersection will redirect some of the traffic from 30-A to the plaza at the Gulf.

The program for these four buildings amounts to about 170,000 square feet. There are fifty four apartments on the upper three floors of the four buildings. Ground floors are commercial, with a restaurant in each building. Car trips from similar towns along this stretch of the Gulf are generated primarily for eating dinner off site. The restaurants provided in this program should help reduce off site trips. The building on the northeast corner that encloses a public amphitheater has a market on the corner and bars and restaurants on all four levels. There is a small free standing open market on the southeast corner, an aberration on an intersection that otherwise goes to the county’s maximum allowable height. Buildings south of 30-A rise around this smaller building in a roughly semi-circular bowl.

As the buildings face a 130 foot right of way and mark the principal intersection, these are the largest buildings in town. They must make this large right of way feel like a single public space even as large volumes of traffic have to be conducted through on 30-A, unavoidably dividing it in two. As they are immediately adjacent in places to blocks of two story courtyard houses, the buildings are

modeled and scaled to keep them from overwhelming neighboring structures. Repetition is used, but sparingly.

Slip lanes along 30-A that accommodate parking throughout the rest of the town, end short of this intersection, giving way to wide 50 foot planted sidewalks that dwarf the traffic lanes and reduce the crossing distance. The single row of medjule palm street trees typical of 30-A elsewhere, give way to double rows of trees with crowns that will provide shade and relief from sub-tropical glare. The amphitheater will occasionally be a large performance space with serving porches arranged around its perimeter like upper seating. Typically, it is a lawn onto which apartments, shops and restaurants open. A monumental porch conducts people from 30-A sidewalks to the interior of the amphitheater block. A major pedestrian path brings people in from the northeast quadrant of the town, and through the amphitheater, porch and intersection as part of a sustained sequence of public spaces that ultimately ends at the plaza by the sea.

Apartments are thirty two to forty feet deep and have light and air from at least two exposures. Most units are one story with three bedrooms, but there is a range of unit sizes and occasionally units spread over two floors. Most units have porches or balconies and long views. The building on the southeast corner is a courtyard apartment building, the court coming to the ground and the shops like the vias off Worth Avenue. The building on the southwest corner has a second level terrace as part of a path of egress that keeps the residential core from excessively dividing up the larger retail plate. Although underground parking was considered, all parking is currently on streets or in alleys.