Bermello Ajamil & Partners

Bermello Ajamil & Partners is a Miami-based architecture, engineering and planning firm best known for cruise and marine terminal work. The practice combines architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, interior design and engineering under one roof, and its port portfolio includes passenger terminals across North America and the Caribbean alongside civic, hospitality and transportation buildings. B&A designed the expansion and renovation of Cruise Terminal 10 at Port Canaveral, a $95 million project taking the terminal past 145,000 square feet so it can handle vessels carrying as many as 6,700 passengers. The firm works internationally from its South Florida base and has been a regular presence in U.S. cruise port design for decades.

Established in 1939, the practice has carried the Bermello Ajamil name through a partnership that has now run three decades: Willy Bermello as chairman of the board and principal in charge, and Luis Ajamil as president and CEO, a planner and professional engineer with a maritime background. Between them the firm has taken more than two hundred design awards and won projects across six continents.

In January 2024 BA was acquired by Woolpert, the Dayton-based architecture, engineering and geospatial firm. At the time of the deal BA counted more than 160 staff and sat among the largest A/E firms in South Florida; it also describes itself as the largest Hispanic-owned A/E practice in the region. The combination pairs BA’s terminal and marine work with geospatial capability such as topographic, bathymetric and hydrographic data collection along coastlines.

The service list runs wider than drawing sets. Architecture, interior design, landscape architecture, urban design and planning, and engineering sit alongside a grants practice, a public involvement group and construction management. The firm also publishes an environmental and sustainability policy next to its firm profile.

Not all of the portfolio is maritime. Completed and announced work includes the T5 terminal for JetBlue at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International, designed in association with Gensler and HDR; a four-phase surgical expansion at Orlando Health covering roughly 76,000 square feet of a hospital’s fourth floor with ten new operating rooms; the 46,521-square-foot Gus Machado College of Business at St. Thomas University, connected by a sky bridge; Block 45, a mixed-income housing project in Miami’s Overtown; and an interior guest room renovation for Disney’s BoardWalk Villas.

Where the offices are

Headquarters is at 4711 South LeJeune Road in Coral Gables. The firm also works from Fort Lauderdale, Orlando, New York, Long Beach in California, and Copenhagen.