"There was clearly a gap in the market where I could serve with excellence, with good service. That’s how it started—just a natural way of connecting dots."

– Antonio Torres

Antonio Torres was expected to follow a different path. In a family of surgeons, success was synonymous with medicine. But Antonio felt the pull of a different discipline—one grounded not in anatomy, but in architecture.

“I come from a family where everybody is a surgeon,” he recalls. “So challenging that status quo was a little bit difficult at the beginning.”

Instead of scalpels, he was drawn to structure: roads, bridges, and eventually, buildings. A global upbringing exposed him to great cities, where he found himself captivated by museums and architecture. His mother, the only non-doctor in the family, left a subtle mark—remodeling their homes and leaving Architectural Digest magazines scattered around the house. “I always browsed through those magazines and found myself immersed in this world of beauty.”

That early curiosity formed the foundation of Navicon, a construction company Antonio built to do more than just build. “We focus on the ultra-custom aspects of homes, with a sense of aesthetics, architecture, and design,” he explains. “Even though we're not the designer or the architect, we really understand design. We really speak architecture.”

Navicon began not from a business plan, but from a sense of natural alignment. “Some friends came to me and said, ‘I have this apartment I’d like to remodel. Can you take care of it?’ They knew I had a sense for material selection, for aesthetics. They’d ask, ‘Can you take care of everything?’ And I said absolutely—because to me, it was a natural flow.”

Still, stepping away from corporate life wasn’t easy. “When I told my father I was transitioning into forming my own business, he was very concerned. But now that he sees what we've built, the brand presence… he's proud.”

Antonio saw an opportunity in the Miami market—one plagued by unreliable contractors and unmet promises. “There was clearly a gap in the market where I could serve with excellence, with good service,” he says. “That’s how it started—just a natural way of connecting dots.”

Each project, he says, tells a story. Some, however, leave a deeper imprint. He recalls a home in Miami Shores: “The owner was an architect. Her father was an architect. Then they hired two more architects,” he laughs. “You’d think it would be intimidating, but I didn’t feel that. It was the right foundation for us to build something extraordinary. We outperformed ourselves.”

Another standout is a recent project in Miami Beach’s Sunset Islands. “It’s one of the most complex homes we’ve built. The level of engagement from the client, the interior design, the architecture—everything is spectacular. And the professionals have turned into friends.”

Antonio credits these projects’ success to one thing: his team. “You're always going through emotional roller coasters and critical decisions. Our focus is always: how do we score? How do we stay aligned? How do we keep swimming to the shore?”

That resilience is core to Navicon. “It takes a village,” he says. “It’s not something you do on your own.”

If someone shadowed Antonio for a day, he says they’d likely be surprised by one thing: “My character,” he laughs. “There’s a duality to it.”

And perhaps that duality—precision and creativity, discipline and beauty—is exactly what’s made Navicon stand out. Antonio Torres didn’t follow the blueprint he was handed. He created one of his own—and in the process, he’s redefining what building beautifully really means.

Connect with founders Antonio Torres and Miguel Circelli at naviconus.com