Low white pavilion with palms beside turquoise water
North Bay Village, FL · Ongoing

The Causeway Motel

A 1962 motor court kept its neon bones and is becoming twenty studios for artists.

year
2024–
area
17,500 SF
program
Live-work studios
01Concept
The brief

The developer bought a derelict motel for the sign and asked what else was worth keeping. The answer was almost everything.

The site

A causeway-strip motor court from 1962: two low bars of rooms around asphalt, terrazzo floors under carpet, the sign rusting at the road.

The climate move

The motor court becomes the cooling strategy: the parking lot is demolished for a shaded courtyard garden that drops the microclimate six degrees before any door opens.

02Blueprint
Plan study
Section: shaded strata
Detail: the meridian datum
Materials, as drawn

Existing CMU and terrazzo · New aluminum breezeway screens · Restored neon · Native canopy planting

03Manifest
The response, built

Rooms pair into studios, the asphalt becomes garden, and the breezeways get their screens back. The neon is restored letter by letter and relit at the topping-out.

The detail that proves it

Every studio keeps one original terrazzo floor and one original block wall exposed: the 1962 building remains legible inside the 2026 one.

Set to solar time.