What Miami can learn from this architect from Barbados

Building to withstand climate change: How one architect combines design and engineering to face the challenges ahead

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Watch our Interview with architect Alyssa-Amor Gibbons and learn how Miami can serve as a test bed for innovative coastal urban architecture.

Join us for a conversation on affordable housing led by Miami Homes For All on May 14th at The Beacon Council.

Alyssa-Amor Gibbons describes herself as an “architeer.” It is a play on words that she says best describes her work in architecture and engineering. 

“For me, architecture sits halfway between art and science,” she said in an Opportunity Miami Interview from her home in the Caribbean island nation of Barbados. “With this digital age… engineering design solutions across all these different fields, it’s hard to call yourself just one thing.”

Gibbons factors the environment into her designs, with a mix of both traditional and modern elements. Whereas in most parts of the world, “you try as much as you can to keep the weather out and then you control the internal environment – what works better for us in the Caribbean… and I think tropically is learning to work with it rather than against it,” she said.

Gibbons has a background in structural engineering and is a LEED-accredited professional in building design and construction. LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, a green building rating system. 

She was featured in TIME Magazine as a Next Generation Leader and delivered a TED Talk in 2022 on building climate-resilient buildings. 

When it comes to design, she thinks focusing on a building's performance does not mean having to sacrifice aesthetics. 

“Looking at cities and urban scale interventions, we want to solve issues of low housing stock or affordable housing, we want to provide shelter. But we also want to leave space to dream and aspire and create beautiful things,” she told Opportunity Miami. 

BARBADOS AS A LIVING LABORATORY

She is currently leading a project called futureCITY[x] from Bridgetown, the capital of Barbados, and “treating the city as a living laboratory.” Barbados being a small island nation, “we have a real opportunity to almost prototype what the ideal city is and bridge the gap between civic, tech, climate tech, and fintech.” 

The project leverages digital twin technology (creating a virtual design of a structure before construction) to design and document the city. The project goes beyond the usual interventions that incorporate infrastructure, coastal zone management, transportation, urban heat, and more. Gibbons said they also “encode the human experience” by crowd-pooling from large segments of the community on their perceptions of the city, its issues with services, and more. 

MIAMI AS A CASE STUDY

Along with her work in the Caribbean, Gibbons also designs for clients in the United Kingdom and Miami and serves as a junior sustainability advisor with the South Florida-based engineering firm Spinnaker Group, a division of Socotec.  

“Miami is an interesting case study for me because I consider you Northern Caribbean,” she joked.

“I think one of the biggest opportunities you guys have is solving that problem of aqua urban or coastal urbanism and what are the untapped opportunities to utilize your adjacent sea to large bodies of water to solve issues like urban heat island effects. And I look forward to the kind of innovations that I see coming out of Miami.”

Miami, she noted, can serve as the model for startup incubations focused on how we can safely occupy coastal, densely populated urban environments. 

MIAMI HOMES FOR ALL

Please join us on May 14th at The Beacon Council for a discussion led by Miami Homes For All on accelerating the growth of low-cost housing in Miami-Dade. You can register here for the event. To learn more about addressing Miami’s housing crisis, read our Thread with Miami Homes For All here.

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– Suzette