Just as every city across the globe seems destined to have a Starbucks and a Gap, so it seems every city with global ambitions must eventually get its titanium-clad Frank Gehry civic structure, and its white glassy Richard Meier edifice. Now Miami is about to score its very own Meier tower--an ocean-front condominium called Beach House. Cars will turn off of Collins Avenue into a driveway flanked by tall hedges and sweep into a porte cochere drop off area leading to a three-story lobby. A glass wind screen will wrap a roof-top deck and pool. In this case, Meier has brought many of the elements he employed in his Charles Street tower in the West Village--the glass balconies, the white metal panels, the unending floor-to-ceiling windows. To us, this dedication to such a narrow set of materials and extremely limited palette seems a bit slavish. But, alas, it was E.B. White who advised elegant variation and not Le Corbusier. The shape of the lot and the local zoning have forced a thick, squat tower rather than the tall skinny form devotees of modern glass are usually accustomed to. South Florida sunlight can be awfully harsh. Our advice: make sure the glass is UV protected so your Warhol silkscreens don't fade.
Miami
New Yorkers look around their city and think they are in the midst of a development boom. The truth, however, is that compared to the number of new units being built or planned in Miami, the activity in New York is barely a blip on the radar. While the numbers are staggering and there doesn't seem to be a corner of waterfront that isn't being transformed, we only have one question: is any of it at all interesting from a design point of view? The answer is a qualified yes. There are indeed pockets of cool among the huge dull boxes that tend to go up down there.
Some of the most compelling work we've seen comes from the office of Chad Oppenheim. Above left is a rendering of ICE designed by both Oppenheim and Walter Chatham. The modernist lines may be rubbing off on other developers as these projects gain buzz and the market demands newer forms. In the works are Miami projects from Richard Meier and the sons of I.M. Pei.
In the coming weeks and months Triple Mint hopes to fill in the detail on these and other interesting new stuff in South Florida. We'll also have a more in-depth look at Oppenheim and his work. So check our Miami page for updates, but rest assured that we plan on being highly selective.
Books - Morris Lapidus
While there's more new development going on in Miami right now than anyone can reasonably keep track of, it's worth taking a moment to recall the work of the late Morris Lapidus who transformed the look of the city in the '50's with what he liked to call an "architecture of joy." A new slim little volume on Lapidus from the folks at Assouline seems destined to become the perfect gift-shop purchase in the lobbies of hip hotels up and down the beach. For design freaks this volume might as well go right next to the Gideon Bible in their room's night-table drawer. Most of the vintage photographs come directly from the Lapidus archives. Author Deborah Desilets fills in the detail on his career, which included designs for the Fontainebleau and Eden Roc hotels, as well as the Lincoln Road mall on Miami Beach, and for New Yorkers of a certain age, Bond department store and the Summit hotel.
