On either side and above the railroad track along Himmershee Street, a 140-foot spread of land previously unused is taken up by a new steel mass transit facility. This is the project Santiago Pelaez, recent graduate of the School of Architecture, envisions for the future of Ft. Lauderdale. His is one of four students’ exhibits in what Professor Deirdre Hardy, the organizer of the project, calls “a good example of thesis work.”

The exhibit took on a life of its own and came about accidentally. Hardy and her students mounted their work and realized it looked professional.

“They looked so good, we decided to show them to the public,” Hardy says. One reason she says she chose to do this is, “to help the public see what students learn in an architecture school.” She calls the exhibit Graduating Student Visions because students are innovative and “on the leading edge,” she says. “It is their vision of the future, their effort to make the world a better place.”

Pelaez sees a Ft. Lauderdale only three years from being built out, and created use for dead space in anticipation of an overcrowded city. His interstitial space project would allow a Light Rail Train system to interact with a garage, movie theatre and restaurants, while maintaining the original use of the train. “It is a way of redefining and further exploring existing space,” says Pelaez.

Ilija Mosscrop, another graduate, reveals his project, a green office tower he planned for the downtown Miami area. His design boasts wind turbines to generate electricity, and landscaping on all levels to aid in shading and oxygen production. Rather than hermetically sealed windows that cannot be opened, Mosscrop created a grill off the side of the building to provide shade and to slow wind speed enough to open a window even at high levels. “The building takes advantage of our climate to reduce and conserve energy,” says Mosscrop.

Hardy says she wanted the public to see what could happen in the future and for them to realize that maybe one day they will see some of these projects in Ft. Lauderdale.

As Andrew MacPhee, current architectural student says, “not a lot of people understand what we can do.”