“Something you once thought about, you’re now touching and people are habitating in it — it’s one of the most gratifying things,” says Garcia, the 67-year-old founder and CEO of GarciaStromberg | GS4Studios in West Palm Beach. “It’s really a remarkable experience.”
Garcia became interested in architecture in his native Cuba. He had an uncle who was an architect and remembers seeing his sketches and equipment.
“That made an impression on me that I never wavered from,” says Garcia, who lives in Boca Raton with his wife, Katina.
His family fled Cuba when he was 8. Garcia went on to get an architecture degree at the University of Miami and worked for several South Florida companies until 1987, when he opened his own firm. He and his business partner, Peter Stromberg, collaborate on commercial, institutional, mixed-use and residential projects, both nationwide and internationally.
Among the Florida projects Garcia is most proud of are the Floridian National Golf Club in Palm City, One Thousand Ocean condominiums in Boca Raton and the 110 Tower (formerly the AutoNation Tower) office building in Fort Lauderdale.
Currently, his firm is redesigning The Boca Raton Resort & Club for Dell Technologies founder Michael Dell, who bought the historic property.
“We have been blessed to do all the work in there — architecture and interior design,” says Garcia. “It has so many moving parts, between the rooms and the public spaces and spa,” he adds.
Garcia works out of a 13,000-square-foot space that is a combined architecture, interior design, art and music studio. He says architecture is a more encompassing field than it used to be.
“Economy, energy, life cycle — we’re designing for the world of prefabrication,” he says, citing “deconstructible” buildings that can be recycled or demounted.
Garcia, who is on the advisory board of the Boca Raton Center for Arts & Innovation, says that if someone recognizes a building as a Garcia Stromberg project, he has failed. “We have no signature,” he says. “We just like to think we’re damn good architects.”
