Ana
Alvarez and Frank Martinez are partners in the firm of Martinez & Alvarez
Architecture, Inc.. The office, which they originally founded along with
former partner, Juan Caruncho, as Caruncho, Martinez & Alvarez Architecture,
Inc. (CMA) in
1993 and worked collaboratively through 2006, focused primarily on
architectural and urban projects that contribute to the art of making
cities. The work ranges in
scale and complexity, from small, hand crafted houses to campus design and
institutional buildings. Because the partners are directly involved in
producing the buildings of the firm, they have been able to give the
projects equal intensity of design and attention to detail, producing
responsible and thoughtful contributions to the built environment. Design
Projects include buildings at Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart in
Coconut Grove; Florida Memorial University in Miami Gardens; homes in the
new towns of Windsor and Alys Beach in Florida, and Tannin in Alabama; and
historic renovation projects in Edgartown, Martha's Vineyard and Boston,
Massachusetts. Additionally MA Architecture works out of a 1921 wood frame
bungalow in Miami, which they have been restoring over time, and remains one
of the on-going projects. Publications of work include the design for a compound of houses for
"Dos Rios", a new
town in the Philippines in
New American Urbanism: Re-forming the Suburban Metropolis
by John A. Dutton for Skira in 2000. The Windsor Tennis Cottages and the
Windsor Courtyard Building at the town of Windsor, Florida were published in
national and international professional journals, Architecture, Archi & Colonne
and the lay journal, Southern Living,
which also published the "Picket Fence"
house and office in 1999 as well as the "Badia
Residence" in 2001. Elena Elli's article "The Renewal of Architectural Traditions Under the
Tropics" in the Sept.-Nov. 1999
Archi
& Colonne examines the work of Caruncho, Martinez & Alvarez
Architecture
with respect to "references" in the architecture that through a study of the
traditional and vernacular of a region becomes an "original". In the
scholarly publication Between Two Towers: The
Drawings of the School of Miami for Monacelli
Press in 1996, Vincent Scully describes the search for character in "Kilborn
Residence & Tannin Pool House," both early examples of the attention to the
association of theory and practice in architecture. Publication of these
projects in professional journals takes a different approach to the work by
placing it within the larger context of practice, most notably in the
article by Raul Berraneche in the May 1999 issue of Architecture (a theme
issue dedicated to young American architects) titled "The
Traditionalist". The first built
design project, the Gray & Johnston Residence in the Village of Tannin, Orange
Beach, Alabama, was featured in
American HomeStyle in June of 1995 in an
article by Dylan Landis titled
"Embracing Sea & Sky". The house was the selected by Casas International
(January 1999) for publication in an issue dedicated to the work of
Miami design firms and featuring the work of several colleagues at the
University of Miami, School of Architecture.
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