Albany is a modern paradise-like beach and golf resort community, located on the south coast of New Providence Island. With a state-of-the-art mega-yacht marina and an 18-hole championship golf course, the resort is pushing the boundaries of luxury and convenience, creating a true post-industrialist environment that parallels an optimistic utopian vision from the 60s.

While most of the development consists of villas and clustered country-style amenity buildings, BIG’s masterplan for the Marina Residences seeks to introduce an element of urban density. The six to eight story buildings frame the marina and capitalize on the views of the boats and the water.

The first building completed within the masterplan is The Honeycomb, designed in response to the Bahamian lifestyle. Each home has a giant balcony forming an outdoor living room with a summer kitchen and a pool sunken into the floor. The floor slab dips down to accommodate the body of water. The weight of the water is carried by the four-meter-high partition wall between the homes below serving as a room high concrete beam. The fourth wall of the pools is made from acrylic aquarium glass. Swimmers become fully immersed in the view of the marina like a human aquarium. The resultant façade, composed of interlocking hexagonal pools, appears like a giant beehive.

The striated volume appears like a rippled seashell made from parallel walls facing east and west to block the low incoming sunrays, while opening up toward the Marina and the private garden. The undulating roof is made from tilted slabs ensuring that there are no parallel surfaces between floor and ceiling. The resultant elevation appears like parallel columns of light like the digital display of an equalizer.

Diverging from the condominium typology is a world-class recording studio, The Sanctuary – located adjacent to the public plaza on the most prominent site in the entire resort. Despite being the lowest lying structure in Albany, its location at this significant intersection maintains convenient access to the marina, plaza, golf course, beachside, and other resort amenities. Surrounded by extraordinary views of the marina and its surrounding community, the state-of-the-art recording studio attracts the world’s most famous recording artists to Albany to record their next chart-topping hits.

The studio’s circular shape dismisses the front side-back side logic of a conventional building and produces a non-hierarchical shape that becomes most appropriate in its context of public space. The circular footprint also maximizes its surrounding public space, allowing the recording studio to become more of a sculpture rather than a building. Because the program of the studio has different requirements for clear heights, the roof elevation is strategically varied to form three peaks. These peaks occur at the live room, artists’ private lounge, and academy studios to provide generous space to its users, creating a playful yet elegant roof line reminiscent of the fluidity of sound. The form is then optimized to produce a series of equal horizontal modules that maintain the readability of the undulating roof edge and efficiency of the building structure.

To achieve a comfortable level of privacy for the artists in the studio, the surfaces running east-west perpendicular to the most public space become opaque while the north-south glass façade connects its users with stunning marina views.

Divided into four zones – the tracking zone, academy of music, artists’ lounge, and support space – the spatial layout is rational and efficient despite its circular form.

The processional corridor along the south edge of the live room also strategically acts as a sound buffer to further isolate sound from the outside.

The interior treatments of these spaces, particularly the live room, take its geometric inspiration from a rigorous understanding of acoustic principles. Cladded floor to ceiling with highly polished oak, the live room possesses a naturally delicate ambience heavily favored by recording artists and provides an outstanding aural experience, inspiring artists to create their greatest hits.

The Coral is the cornerstone of the Albany Masterplan. Located at the southern tip of the  public promenade, it has a unique relationship with the harbor entry and with the South West Bay beyond. It is one of the largest buildings in Albany with wraparound balconies offering spectacular, panoramic views from the marina to the ocean, and beyond. Different unit sizes introduce dynamic irregularities in the pattern, similar to the staggered elevation of The Honeycomb and The Cube. The rounded motif of the plan is repeated in elevation and creates a natural opening that exposes a dipping pool for every balcony at the demising wall of the units below. These unique pools have a transparent edge towards the marina and ocean, eliminating the visual barrier between the pool and the surrounding environment and allow bathers to become fully immersed in the view of the marina and the ocean beyond.

Upon its completion in 2025, The Coral will become a beacon and spectacular introduction for yachts entering the marina. It completes the pearl necklace of marina residences along the waterfront.