A Locavore Landscape and Architecture for the Future of Miami-Dade County’s Haulover Park

LOCATION: Miami, FL

PROGRAM: Restored & Fortified Landscape + Restaurant

STATUS: Proposal

This project illustrates the potential to advance food-based coastal restorations as an approach to climate change. The project draws upon a collaborative landscape that enhances the ecological health of Miami-Dade County’s Haulover Park and its capacities for coastal agriculture through sustainable farming and foraging, providing grains, produce and game for a series of experimental kitchens and a niche restaurant, UMAMIAMI. 

The barrier islands along South Florida’s eastern coast have been transformed over the last 100 years as dredged fill expanded their borders and mangroves were traded for pavement. This transformation has exposed the coastlines to the perils of sea-level rise. 

Haulover Park is one of a chain of Florida’s east coast barrier islands. Designed by William Lyman Phillips and established in 1948 as a premier beachfront park, Haulover currently provides ocean access to a county of nearly 3 million people some of whom reside as far as 30 miles from the sea. With 23% impervious pavement, 17% tree cover, and few remnants of its historic plant and animal life still present, the park provides an opportunity to investigate the site’s pre-development ecology, cultural history, and present day role in the face of climate change impacts, as a foundation upon which to develop a proposal for its future.

In his influential text, Design with Nature, Ian McHarg describes the evolutionary importance of collaboration – through which a species survives by their merits of strength or cunning, and thrives by teaming up with other species both flora or fauna, to mutually benefit. Analysis of this process at Haulover Park informs the development of this proposal.