Roberto Rovira

Boca Museum of Art

A combination of elements rethink the museum’s exterior as a canvas that opens up to the city and transforms the existing sidewalk into an exterior gallery that is accessible and openly visible to the passing public. +

Cuba

Map of Cuba. Hand painted intaglio map. +

Love Orlando Logo

This simple graphic honors the tragic legacy of the many innocent lives lost and altered in a senseless act of violence in Orlando, Florida, in the early morning hours of Sunday, 12JUN2016. +

Florida Fauna Maps

These hand painted intaglio prints document typical Florida fauna and feature birds, fish and butterflies that can commonly be found in the state.    Exhibit at Frost Art Museum:

San Francisco Infinite Observer

Infinite Observer plays upon the idea of an infinite loop between observer and observed as one surveys a cartographic representation of land and city. The boundary between the observer and the observed is ambiguously juxtaposed, creating new spaces and new … +

Shallow Depth

The work of this exhibition was the first collaboration among Jason Chandler, Jacek J. Kolasinski and Roberto Rovira, an architect, an artist and a landscape architect, respectively. The exhibition collapses the disciplinary boundaries of these three educators to reveal the … +

Continental Migration Prints

These cartographic displacements simulate the geographic migration of Latin American and Caribbean countries and nations onto three US cities. The geometric sum of their shapes creates new, imaginary landforms that reflect the multicultural diversity brought on by urban migration in … +

SiteDisPlacement

Site DisPlacement explored some of the material limits and potentials of cardboard to shape space and create infrastructure for people and vegetation. The material origin and waste stream of cardboard was additionally be researched +

Wynwood Greenhouse Park

The Wynwood Greenhouse proposes an open and flexible framework that exists at the intersection of art, architecture, and landscape. This iconic destination for design, music, art, events, and play, is composed of an ultra-thin structural frame… +

Magnolia North Park, Opa Locka, FL

This community park transformed four vacant lots into one of Opa Locka, Florida’s, more thriving public spaces. In a neighborhood challenged by a history of violence, economic depression and urban decay +

Rietveld Park, Aruba

The design of Rietveld Park in Oranjestad, Aruba, borrows from the legacy of Gerrit Rietveld as much as from the bold colors and textures of the island’s vernacular architecture and landscape. +

Lauderhill Overpass

The transformation of the overpass structure addresses the challenges of an imposing and divisive bridge by introducing large scale shade structures that provide shelter and protection as much as they aim to reflect the identity of the surrounding community… +

Easel-Bench Courtyard

The Easel-Bench Project at South Miami Middle Arts Magnet extends the elementary school’s art studios into the adjacent courtyard, in effect doubling the existing classroom space. +

The Sky Lounge

The FIU Deuxième Maison courtyard redesign transforms one of Florida International University’s earlier buildings and takes advantage of the courtyard’s dramatic height, while being mindful of the constraints of maintenance and existing infrastructure underground… +

Wadi Rum

Wadi Rum creates a model for ‘primitive luxury’ for the region by carving into the sandstone cliffs near a nature preserve close to Petra, Jordan. The landscape features of this 80,000sf site minimize water usage and energy consumption while maximizing comfortable healthy living and exposure to the natural beauty of the area… +

Parque de las Flores

Parque de las Flores proposes a  model for the botanical garden whereby scientific, technological, cultural, educational, aesthetic and economic agendas are integrated into an ecologically-based proposal… +

Engineering Campus Park

The ECPark studio sought the long term, phased transformation of the FIU Engineering Campus. It posed the questions: “What does a Park as a Classroom look like? How can the design of outdoor space connect the physical environment of a university to its pedagogical mission? +

FIU Landscape Promotional Campaign

Roberto Rovira designed the Make Waves, Move Mountains, Start Something campaign as chair of the FIU Landscape Architecture program. Small cards were created that matched award-winning student project images with +

Lake Belt Learning Facility

The Lake Belt Learning Facility studio focused on a 35-acre site at the edge of a limestone quarry in Miami-Dade County. The program called for a center that would provide opportunities to learn about the wildlife and vegetation of this area west of Miami, +

The Ecological Atlas Project

The Ecological Atlas is a visually intuitive mapping method that provides a means with which to understand the relationships and the richness of living systems. The project addresses the challenge of visualizing and understanding relationships among individual… +

Global Reach and Impact Graphic

The graphic summarizes the various activities, events, and recognition that the FIU Landscape Architecture program received from 2006 to 2012, as part of the program’s re-accreditation visit. The resulting graphic shows the “Reach and Impact” of the program’s students and faculty. +

Mission Planters

Steel planters are designed, customized and produced by Roberto Rovira Incorporated. The corten steel provides an oxidized patina that weathers well with age. Other finishes are also available. +

Forged Steel & Glass Drafting Table

This steel and glass drafting/light table was designed and built by Roberto Rovira.

Mill Valley Planters

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H2H Planters

Modernline_H2H is a narrow metal planter ideal for defining boundaries with a crisp clean line. Custom sizes and profiles available.

Bigbox Planters

Modernline_Bigbox provides enough soil depth for large plant material that makes an immediate impact. Custom sizes and profiles available. +

Hoop Planters

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Copia Planters

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Flor 500 Logo

FLOR500 is a participatory art, nature, and history project by Miami artist Xavier Cortada to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Juan Ponce de Leon’s landing in Florida. Logo design  by Roberto Rovira. +

Icemappings

The themes of transformation and time in the landscape were explored using these 33 blocks of ice, each one weighing over 400 pounds and frozen with the petals of over 400 roses. Done in collaboration with performers from music, theater and dance, the blocks’ gradual melting lasted a period of 23 hours, during +

Drydock Loom

Constructed out of 13,000 feet of intensely colored blue, acrylic line, individual lengths of string were attached to the existing pipes of an abandoned drydock. Spaced 2ft on center, approximately 16ft off the ground, the variation in the tension of each line created an evanescent blue gradient in the drydock’s colossal +

Puerto Rico

Map of Puerto Rico. Hand painted intaglio map. +

Land Prints

This ongoing research project investigates the relationship between the act of mapmaking and the land it represents, by using metal plates that are embedded in the ground for a period of time and are used to create various maps at full scale. +

California Wine Country

This series of maps documents the wine country regions where Roberto Rovira worked and lived from 1998 to 2005. +

California

Stags Leap

The pursuit of printmaking and mapmaking is at the heart of many of the studio’s projects.  These are deployed as a way of researching subtleties of place and work parallel with writing and exhibiting through galleries, museums, library collections and private commissions.
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Granada

The city of Granada, Nicaragua was studied through progressive mapping, in an effort to uncover the ineffable qualities of its landscape. Using the technique of intaglio printmaking as a starting point, numerous cartographic constructions were created, uncovering the potential of the map as a medium of prediction, as +

New England

Mashpaug Pond, RI +

Catalysts of Urban Canvas

The course “Catalysts of the Urban Canvas” invites both landscape and architecture students to explore projects that view landscape architecture as prescriptive of urban change and essential to its evolution. +

Nature Preserve Park

Formerly an integral part of the greater Everglades ecosystem, the seven acre FIU Preserve was at the eastern boundary of the fabled “river of grass.” A destination for local wildlife as well as for education, leisure and recreation within the FIU campus, the Preserve studied design solutions that would help learn about the ecology +

Miami Waterfront Park

Exhibited at the 5th European Bienal in Landscape Architecture, as part of the International Exhibition of Landscape and Architectural Schools in Barcelona, Spain. +

Quarry Reclamation Studio

The 4-acre site is located within the 77.5 square mile, limestone-mining district known as “The Lake Belt” in western Miami Dade County, Florida.  This project proposes the transformation of this  industrial region through the incremental creation of a floating landscape that deploys a series of  islands. +

DIGITAL DESIGN IN LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

Through Computer Practices in Landscape Architecture, students explore the integration of computer software in the design, representation and communication of landscape architecture. +

Miami Art Museum

The following were completed as part of several presentations to the Miami Art Museum and the office of Herzog & DeMeuron. +

Seattle JTF Lookout

Winner of a public art competition for Seattle’s Joint Training Facility–a center where Firefighters and Utility personnel conduct training–the JTF Lookout explores the concepts of balance, vulnerability and scale as these relate to the diverse branches of personnel who use the Joint Training Facility. +

San Francisco Botanical Garden

The San Francisco Botanical Garden, which encompasses a botanically diverse and ecologically important collection of over 7500 varieties of plants on 55 acres within San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, sponsored an open, one-stage, international competition to select a design for the Gondwana Circle. +

Phragmites Line

100 upright stalks of 6 ft tall wetlands grasses (Phragmites) were set approximately 5 ft apart to create a single file line that crossed several city courtyards and building interiors and exteriors, ending in a gallery exhibit. +

Migrating Forest

100 Christmas trees discarded in January were collected and ‘transplanted’ into a tight urban alley, creating an evergreen forest with a narrow path in between.  The forest was subsequently moved to two distinct locations several blocks away over a two week period. +

Lemon Drainfield

The drainage patterns of a popular public lawn at Rhode Island School of Design were ‘drawn’ with over two thousand lemons–their pattern representing the flow of water throughout the site. Founded in 1996 in Providence, RI, Guerrilla Gardens focused on developing the medium of the “semi-anonymous” +

Inverted Forest

Hundreds of ‘invasive’ shrubs were suspended with twine from the underside of two buildings’ fire escapes.  The inverted foliage created a rustling yellow band of leaves above passersby.  The floor was covered with 6 inches of dry leaves. Founded in 1996 in Providence, RI, Guerrilla Gardens focused on developing the medium of the “semi-anonymous” +

Ice Webs

Three 12ft by 12ft panels made of bronze screen mesh and framed with copper tubing were hung from trees at a prominent urban intersection in the middle of Winter.  The panels were misted with water and subsequently froze into translucent ‘webs’ that thawed during the  day and were frozen again at night for a +

CLUI_South Florida

The studio dealt with a site at the edge of Miami’s Urban Development Boundary–a limit established in the 1970’s to control Miami’s westward development into the Everglades. Students were asked to locate the +

Invented Remote Landscape

Visual Notations teaches drawing skills in multiple media and uses the process of drawing as a medium of investigation, documentation, memory, observation and presentation. +

Visual Notation

Visual Notations teaches drawing skills in multiple media and uses the process of drawing as a medium of investigation, documentation, memory, observation and presentation. +

FIU Sweetwater Studio

The studio rethought the boundary between the Florida International University campus and the city of Sweetwater, FL, to the north. Two communities that have been neighbors for over 30 years, the studio sought to redesign the wide right of way that divides these two communities and create public spaces to bring them together. +

Sunspars

The Sunspars project was the first place winner of an international ideas competition whose goal was to create a monument to the City of Miami. Pivoting pedestrian bridges transform from a horizontal position during the daytime into a vertical configuration that can be visited via elevators at night. +

Oakland Interstate 880 Gateway

This winning public art competition proposal sought ways of connecting waterfront and downtown Oakland at a busy and dark highway underpass. The design makes use of materials such as guardrails, recycled rubber and LED lights that acknowledge the presence of the highway but that also reinterpret materials common to this context. +

Glasshull

Located in the East Courtyard fountain of the Solano County Government Center, this winning proposal for a public art competition explores the concepts of history, transparency, and balance, and juxtaposes layers of the county’s history on its surface. The 8ft x 20ft x 22ft steel and glass +

Wilson Avenue Light Towers (WALT)

Paralleling this important entrance into the city, the Wilson Avenue Light Tower Project proposes a series of towering lookouts that project onto the adjacent river’s wetlands.Each tower has a tall, solar-powered, hollow mast that is illuminated at night, providing a pedestrian destination that educates the public about +

Butterfly Field

These translucent kevlar wings were commissioned as a measure to scare birds from the vineyards at Stags’ Leap Winery in the Napa Valley. +

Vinespheres

Hollow 6 to 7 ft diameter spheres made of vineyard cuttings and twine were rolled on to the waterfront at the conclusion of the vineyards’ pruning season in the Napa Valley. +

Faculty Competes

Exhibit showed various competition entries by South Florida university faculty. All graphic design by Roberto Rovira. +

Bachelors in Landscape Architecture

Exhibit for the Bachelors in Landscape Architecture program accreditation at FIU.
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Parque de Valdebebas, Madrid

In this competition proposal, the site’s agricultural history, its deep cross-section and the system of creeks and streams that currently and formerly lined the Valdebebas landscape were used to provide a flexible circulation network of green paths that connected important points in and outside the site. These green corridors allowed the ground to +

Shellmound Park

Commissioned to design a 14,000sf park honoring what used to be the most substantial Native American shellmound in the San Francisco Bay Area, the project proposed the substantial sculptural form of woven metal arches delineating the volume of the original mound. Raised walkways and wetlands grass +

DMU Dubai

As part of a mixed-use development, the landscape in this project sought the integration of indoors and outdoors with multiple strategies for creating microclimates and shade. The shade structures became iconic elements whose shapes and design echoed the angular nature of the architecture and +

Coney Island New York

This proposal for a waterfront boardwalk used the language of marine forms to create an immersive environment that would appeal at all hours. By complementing a lighting scheme designed around tidal fluctuation, fountains and features would change throughout the day and cast dynamic shadows. +

Biscayne Landing

The reclamation of this nearly 200-acre former landfill site into a retail, residential and commercial mixed-use community made Biscayne Landing the largest LEED development project in the southeastern United States at the time. Located next to Oleta River State Park, Florida’s largest urban park, Biscayne +

W Hotel Dubai

The W’s landscape defined the intersection between the hotel and the water and gave residents and guests a seamless experience between indoors and outdoors. The integration of the marina as a part of the landscape strategy–creating floating lounges that took advantage of the boats’ lighting and dock terraces throughout–established a layered +

Hudson Square, New York

Hudson Square is an approximately 30-block district on Manhattan’s West Side formerly known as the “Printing District.” Its connection to the area’s cultural and ecological history and to the Hudson River that borders it was a critical component of this invited competition proposal. As a catalyst that can link the area with year-round activities and +