There is no excuse for the architects at Arquitectonica being incapable of designing all sides of the building within design and budget. This is not exactly a low end building, it is priced much higher than 1100 millecento. The eastern facade of Icon Bay is OK, but not exactly award winning.

No one can possibly look at the backside of Marina Blue and admire the design. Arquitectonica are either too arrogant to see how flawed these designs are, or too inept to actually produce a decent design within budget.

And yes, MUSPs can be recycled with pretty significant changes (see 1100 millecento and brickell house). Which MUSP were you looking at purchasing?

Again, you seem to not understand that architects work for developers not the other way around. Icon Bay and Marina Blue are SINGLE LOADED CORRIDOR buildings. The developer went to the architect and said I want 300 units and I want ALL of them facing east because that makes the units more valuable. You now have the "back" of ALL of the units on the west side. No one in the unit cares about how the back side of their unit looks. Sure they would like it to be made of gold but they aren't going to pay extra for it. As a result the developer is going to go with a cheaper facade no matter what the architect wants to design. It's not a matter of budget. Most developers aren't going to pay extra for something that they aren't going to get value from. Especially when no one seems to care except random people on the internet. The balconies on the west side aren't even actual balconies for the units. They are there to provide access to the two required egress points. They could have easily just made those balconies straight but then instead decided to build them in the triangle patter to mimic the eastern facade so the look the same.

1100 Millecento isn't located on the water. Therefore it's not imperative that all the units face east. So instead you get a building with a central corridor and units facing all directions, so essentially their is no "back" of the building for you to complain about.

So comments like this just make you sound foolish:

"No one can possibly look at the backside of Marina Blue and admire the design. Arquitectonica are either too arrogant to see how flawed these designs are, or too inept to actually produce a decent design within budget."

I'm sure Related will see Arquitectonica's inept and arrogance and fire them for designing what they actually wanted.

The City of Miami ought to have come up with some type of scheme to reward developers holding existing MUSPs for converting to Miami-21 compatible design.

Those outdoor corridors that exist on Marina Blue, Blue and as proposed for Icon Bay are an architectural atrocity. Regardless of the motivation, whether it be FAR bonus, fire code etc., the architect should be ashamed to even propose such crap.

Word is that 23% of Icon Bay has already been reserved after the first week of sales.

Pretty good sales for a project that others feel the architect should be ashamed off.

Tner garage is horrible! They should add lofts to the sides facing the streets.