Today we’d like to introduce you to Tamara Despujols.
Tamara, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I’m an Architect and Real Estate Developer.
I received my Bachelor in Science in Architecture from the Universidad Central de Venezuela. I attended the Facoltá Di Architettura at the Politecnico di Milano in Italy where I obtained an Urban Major and Parsons School of Design in New York City for a Master in Urban Theories. In 2010, I moved to Miami to do a Master in Real Estate Development and Urbanism at the University of Miami and decided to stablished my self here. In 2012, I co-founded, together with my sister Bernadette Despujols, TBD Group; a women-run Architecture and Real Estate Development boutique firm, based in Miami.
TBD works in a variety of scales, ranging from single-family homes to high-end multifamily properties, offering outstanding design, sustainability, and solid return-on-investment potential while contributing to the growth and strengthening of community bonds, generating long-term benefits.
In parallel to the Real Estate Development Company, I develop an experimental “architecture-urban” practice that incorporates both architecture and urban aspects to create interactive installations that modify the public space. I transform my ideas and critiques of contemporary life and cities into thought-provoking visual and architectural objects that represent my take on art and life.
To an important degree, the aesthetic and conceptual choices that I take when producing my experimental work revolve and include participation by the spectator. I seek to alter the lives of people, by pushing forward and making my viewers somehow shift in their perception of the city they inhabit. Whether you eat a banana from the ever-ripening pile, swim in the waters of a pink beach inlet in Miami or walk through a street that has been erased by mirrors, the public space is, for me, always a part of life, a part of our city, our body, embedded and immersed within everything around it, making it impossible for your life not to be impacted, even modified, by it.
Has it been a smooth road?
It has not been a smooth road. As a young woman and as an immigrant it is always hard to have your voice heard in a world run mainly by men. Mostly in the construction and real estate development industry. Nevertheless being a pioneer, to me, has been an exciting and positive experience. As well as starting up a company an a career in a new country has been an adventure with a lot of challenges, making the road more interesting and full of new things to learn.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
TBD works as a multiplatform practice of architects, designers, and artists engaged in projects and mixed-use developments in harmony with the city’s urban planning vision. We try to incorporate notions of quality of life along with state of the art design, focusing primarily into building honest projects with character and personality, outstanding from the standardized and generic architecture so commonly found today.
With our projects, we aim to improve lives by offering research-based developments and principled designs that span the project lifecycle from conception to construction and delivery.
Our core values are centered on sustainable design and construction, creating architectural spaces that contribute to Miami´s visual identity while growing the urban landscape. TBD architecture stands for a strong fusion of innovation, functionality, and contemporariness, always maintaining a harmonic dialogue with the environment.
What do you love about our city and what do you dislike?
To me, Miami’s bay is its greatest asset, however, very few residents have the opportunity to experience this lifestyle due to the currently limited accessibility to the sea, unless one live in Miami Beach or Key Biscayne.
The relation between Miami and the sea is mostly visual. The sea serves as an object of contemplation, mainly for the benefit of expensive real estate properties, segregating those that cannot afford them and limiting the benefits of a seaside city. My work looks forward to reinforcing Miami’s true asset: “the sea”, in order to improve the lifestyle of its residents.
In my view, the waters surrounding Miami should be introduced to the public space, becoming an intrinsic part of the city, as is the case, for example, in Rio de Janeiro, Sidney or Barcelona. In one of my installation projects, “FiBi Beach: A System of Floating Beaches”; the floating platforms erase the boundaries between our bodies, the city, and the water, enabling the urban diagram to expand into new frontiers: those of the water and reinforces Miami’s true asset: the sea.
Another phenomenon that I believe has defined or has been defining what Miami is today, is Gentrification. With its pros and cons. Miami is a very young city that has had rapid growth in recent decades. Promptly through gentrification. This phenomenon has contributed to shapes its identity. As an architect, I recognize that gentrification has determined the growth of contemporary cities, in a positive way. Yet it has also displaced entire communities and created an important schism between social classes. On a more personal level, I’m concerned about Miami as a city developed to please and serve a foreign population, investors, becoming an unaffordable place for its inhabitants along the way, a fate similar to that of other tourist-centric cities such as Paris, New York, London or Berlin. In addition, gentrification coupled with an accelerated pace of growth has minimized the human scale, focusing instead on the monumental, and this has, as a natural consequence, removed entire neighborhoods from their identity, rendering them “neutral” spaces. Giving way to the tabula rasa phenomenon.
The phenomenon of tabula rasa applies to many urban areas in Miami such as Wynwood or Little Haiti, in which gentrification has been aggressively removing years of cultural memory and history, and replacing the area with new developments.
Nevertheless, the growth and constant change of cities by external and internal forces is part of its natural evolutions. I believe the mixture of cultures and the constant flux of immigrants make Miami a unique city with a lot to offer not only to visitor but to its residents. Shaping the city of Miami multicultural identity, and welcoming immigrants from many different backgrounds.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.tbd-development.com , https://www.tamaradespujols.com
- Phone: 305-890-1523, 786-337-1413
- Email: tbd.development@gmail.com
- Instagram: Studio_tbd
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