Apartments, Bellomar in Fortuna Beach

[franjayo]

Project – 20 Apartments, Bellomar in Fortuna Beach

Location – Luquillo, East of San Juan Puerto Rico

Type of Project – Residential/Beach Apartments

Design Parameters – Conservative owners wanted typical two bedroom apartments. The layout reflects the most typical apartment layout in our area. We were able to add a different apartment unit on the top during design development. The third floor unit adds the balcony to the living area. Inverting the last stair section while using the same stair module, each unit is provided with a private interior stair to the roof terrace.

Recent zoning regulations required that the parking area be located in the back of the building with the intention hiding vehicles from the building facades. We convinced authorities that this should not apply here because cars would be interrupting the view of the beach from the apartments and bringing a horrible view and glare from ther car windshields to the beach.

You need to spend so much time and effort convincing people of the most simple ideas that it is absurd.

[franjayo]

Previous scheme with the same layout in each floor. The balcony of the third floor was eliminated and added to the living area.

[franjayo]

Site location.

[franjayo]

KMZ location.
Google has improved the resolution in this area recently, the aerial photo is about 5-6 months old when site work started.

[franjayo]

Elevations.

[franjayo]

Site plan.

[franjayo]

Site PDF for more details.

[franjayo]

Apartment layout for first floor. The central module is left without an apartment unit, it is used as entrance and access to the stairs in the back. The second floor is the same but using the central module for a seventh apartment.

[franjayo]

First floor PDF.

[franjayo]

The third floor apartment takes the balcony space and uses an interior stair section to connect to the central stair module, providing independent access to the roof from each apartment.

[franjayo]

3rd floor PDF.

[franjayo]

Construction photos that should give you an idea of the typical construction.

[franjayo]

View of the construction/beach. The authorities required the site level to be raised substantially, something that had not been required of similar projects in the area. We needed to add a beach wall.

[franjayo]

Forms for stairs being built.

[franjayo]

Rough first two floors already built.

[franjayo]

Typical forms.

[franjayo]

Rebar to continue the stairs

[franjayo]

Steel bars, electrical and plumbing going in the slab shortly before pouring concrete.

[Juan Gomez-Velez]

Jayo

Always an independent thinker, you insist in doing things rooted in common sense and with little room for banality. Clean, straightforward, filled with light, and extremely cost effective. If the units had been thought of by the Sponsors as two bedroom units, or single bedrooms with sleeping lofts I know you would have felt freer to open spaces up and face the sea more, something I feel you would have wanted to do. In any case, the lengthwise balconies are great.

I fancy your whimsical and somewhat unexpectedly pitched roofs, they are distinctive and are emblematic or iconical in this particular project.

As I know how difficult it is to obtain permits along this, and almost any other beachfront on the island, my best wishes and most heartfelt congratulations both to you and Marissa on work well done.

"Enhorabuena" .....Cheers in spanish.

Juan

[franjayo]

Juan,

Thank you for your kind comments. You know that it takes a lot of effort to go against the standards. It took over 2 years to get the permits.

Here I include a photo of a similar project in the same street that followed the standards and was started and completed during the same two years that we fought for the permits. In the perception of the owners, we are not very efficient getting permits because we try to go against regulations. We had to submit a complete EIS ( Environmental Impact Statement, archeology study, tree study and more), they did not have to submit an EIS, but they had only 10 apartments instead of 20. These guys went in and out quickly, made a quick buck and left this large box covered with tiles for posterity. People bought them anyway.

Note that the building is placed near the street, the parking areas are placed towards the beach, as regulations require.

[Pedro Barradas]

Well done Franjayo...

Really stupid the thing with the parking area...

I like you overall project and concerns, seem very good even if we don´t compare with the surronding box... :D
The SU output however I dislike it... but the important is the construction and the design approach...


:cheers:

[franjayo]

Thank you Pedro. I know my SU skills are primitive by comparison with many of you. I do not even use a renderer, but it does the basic job for now.

As for regulations, they are well intended to make the street more urban and give the faced a look that is not a parking area. However, they should not apply in this case of a street in which there is a more important activity in the back of the lot than the street. A word of caution for those of you who in the future may be writting up regulations...once they are politically approved they are difficult to change.

[franjayo]

Two color schemes were prepared. One considering that it is easier to find quality white roof coatings. They selected the red roofs as per our original schemes. Two manufacturers were found, one locally that provides a red roof coating, although it is a bit darker that we had in mind.

[franjayo]

Work progress by september 2006.

[franjayo]

Progress by december 2006.

[hena]

the building is good than the project about exterior but interior??? Can you give me some picture about interior of apartments, thanks

[franjayo]

There is nothing much to see in the interior, the owner wanted standard inexpensive finishes. The apartments were sold at the lowest price for seafront units, starting at $175k.

[cacapis]

The actual building looks much better than the sketchup renders. The color rendering is really lousy in sketchup and gives the idea of pastel tones.

[hena]

when I see your plan, I don't agree about kitchen, because the kitchen's space will not more brighter. It doesn't matter because the facitlities are suitable for the rent rate.

[franjayo]

The actual building looks much better than the sketchup renders. The color rendering is really lousy in sketchup and gives the idea of pastel tones.

I agree, I was not able to get the color in SketchUp, I tried to get as close as I could get. This is a SketchUp problem, the SketchUp color palette is very limited.

when I see your plan, I don't agree about kitchen, because the kitchen's space will not more brighter. It doesn't matter because the facitlities are suitable for the rent rate.

I agree, the kitchen areas lack natural light. The layout plan has limited improvements over two previous projects built by the same owners in the area which were successful in terms of sales. They wanted something similar, the priority is having all units with direct beachfront view in the living areas, which sells better.

Land use is maximized. Regulations require that a strip of 6 meters be given for public use at the beach, leaving about 2/3 of what used to be two house lots for the 20 apartments, 10 times the previous density.