Private Residence

A private residence on Star Island, designed by Peter Marino Architect, clad entirely in Dominican Coquina, a fossil limestone quarried in the Dominican Republic. A porous natural stone in a marine climate required a fully engineered approach: from block selection at the quarry to structural testing of the anchoring system, every phase was designed, documented and verified.

The blocks were selected directly at the quarry, inspected for color consistency and structural soundness, then shipped to Italy for cutting and finishing into dimensioned facade panels.

The entire facade was drawn before fabrication. Shop drawings covered every elevation with plans, sections and construction details. From these came the laying drawings: over a thousand panels, each numbered and assigned an exact position on the facade, with the location of every anchor point. Each facade zone had its own cutting list.

Before shipping, the full facade was dry-laid on the ground at the workshop in Italy, with every panel in its final position, openings included. This allowed the team to verify color blending, joint alignment and correspondence with the laying drawings, resolving any issue before the panels crossed the ocean.

The panels were installed as a ventilated facade: mechanical anchoring on adjustable stainless steel brackets fixed to the concrete structure, with an air cavity behind the cladding. The system requires no adhesives, allows the wall to drain and ventilate, and keeps every panel individually replaceable.

The scope extended inside the villa: the master bathroom lined in bookmatched green onyx, a media wall in vertical green stone and white stone cladding in the living spaces.