A Letter from the Editor

By Stacey Butler Director of Marketing & Communications FES | ACEC Florida

Welcome to the Summer 2025 issue of Engineering Florida, where we explore the past, present and future of our profession through one powerful lens: Engineering Marvels.

Florida’s landscape is do ed with iconic works of design and ingenuity that continue to awe and inspire. In this issue, we take you on a journey across the state and beyond to rediscover some of the most fascinating engineering feats ever accomplished on our soil.

We begin in St. Augustine, home to the Castillo de San Marcos, the oldest masonry fort in the continental United States. Built from coquina stone in the late 1600s, this enduring structure is not just a marvel of military engineering; it’s a testament to sustainability and the use of local materials, long before these concepts became modern buzzwords.

Follow us down the King's Road, one of Florida’s earliest transportation corridors, which laid the groundwork for future development across the state. Then leap forward in time to the NASA Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center, a true cathedral of technology and one of the largest buildings in the world by volume. It’s where engineering and imagination collide to reach for the stars.

Of course, no issue on Florida’s marvels would be complete without spotlighting the incredible accomplishments in the Florida Keys. The Overseas Highway, with its crown jewel, the 7-Mile Bridge, remains one of the boldest infrastructural achievements of the 20th century. Even further out, we take a closer look at the challenging construction and maintenance of Dry Tortugas National Park, where history, preservation, and innovation meet at the edge of the Gulf.

We also recognize the role of architecture in our built environment by honoring the work of Frank Lloyd Wright and Yann Weymouth, whose visionary designs, including those found on the Florida Southern College campus and the Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, blend structure with se ing in a way that continues to influence engineers and architects alike.

In our Education Update, we’re proud to showcase Senior Design Days across several of Florida’s engineering schools. These capstone events are where theory meets real-world application, and tomorrow’s engineering marvels begin to take shape in the minds of emerging professionals.

From ancient forts to space-age structures, from coral rock roads to ocean-spanning bridges, this issue reminds us that engineering is not just about what we build; it’s about what we make possible.