Miami: The Latest Architecture and News

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Miami-based Arquitectonica and 360 Architecture have unveiled preliminary details for a 25,000-seat, open-air Major League Soccer (MLS) stadium at the Port of Miami. One of 30 locations currently being reviewed as a potential site, the downtown location could serve as the home for David Beckham’s MLS expansion team as early as 2018.

Rio de Janeiro-based writer Robert Landon has shared with us his experience exploring Herzog and de Meuron's Perez Art Museum Miami.

I am standing with Christine Binswanger, senior partner of Herzog & de Meuron, a few hours before the Perez Art Museum Miami opens it doors to the public for the first time. All around us, construction workers are making last minute adjustments, while troublesome clusters of VIPs take their first peak into the museum's airy, austere galleries. The excitement is palpable.

And yet I can't unpeel my eyes from the huge, hurricane-proof window before us. They offer enormous views of resplendent Biscayne Bay and the six-lane, 5.6km Macarthur Causeway that crosses it. Throbbing with traffic, the causeway is the kind of thing that, I imagine, people come to museums to forget. So I ask Binswanger, the museum's project architect, how her team approached this design problem.

"Problem? What problem?" says Binswanger. "That is what Miami is about. Anyway, I find it beautiful. Don't you?"

Suddenly I do. Or at least I find beautiful the building's wide-open embrace of Miami, causeways and all. And I suspect that this visual (and programmatic) permeability to the city's realities—natural and manmade—will define PAMM's institutional success.

La Maison au Bord de L'Eau, an unrealized beach house in Miami designed by architect, designer, planner and photographer Charlotte Perriand, has been built by Louis Vuitton for a Design Miami 2013 satellite exhibition. Designed in 1934, the house was first conceived for a design contest held by L’architecture d’aujourd’hui magazine with the aim of creating a simple, economical form of holiday lodging for the mass market. After winning second prize it was never built but, eight decades later, "Perriand’s studies prove quite contemporary in light of the advancements in wooden architecture."

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Miami Beach city commissioners have unanimously agreed to abandon the $1 billion redevelopment of its 52-acre convention center district, which aimed to radically reinvent the area. This decision comes just six months after the city awarded developer South Beach ACE and OMA the bid after an international, highly-publicized competition that pitted OMA against BIG.

“For the purposes of getting this project done fast, on time, on budget, it’s unfortunate that we’ll have to make a very tough, challenging decision,” said Miami Beach Mayer Philip Levine, “To some people, it’s a little disheartening. To other people, it’s a very fresh start.”

As reported by the Miami Herald, the city plans to reinstate a bid for the renovation of the city-owned convention center as well as another for the development of a nearby hotel. Under the new bid, the city will no longer be required to attain 60 percent of voter approval to build. By doing this, Levine believes the renovation will be expedited.

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Alan Faena — prominent argentine developer — is partnering with an all-star cast of celebrated artists, architects and Hollywood darlings to revive the decadence of the roaring twenties, envisioning a booming cultural "epicenter" for the city of Miami. The development, Faena Miami Beach, would include the restoration of the historic Saxony Hotel (the original symbol of opulent resorts along Florida beaches), the construction of new luxury apartments by Foster + Partners and the Rem Koolhaas/OMA-designed Faena Arts Center and Artist Residency. Review them all after the break.

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Each December, Design Miami/ commissions early-career architects to build a designed environment for the fair's entrance as part of its biannual Design Commissions program. This year's winning proposal, dubbed "Tent Pile," was designed by the New York-based architectural practice formlessfinder. Its design harnesses the properties of sand and aluminum to create shade, seating, cool air and a space to play for Miami's public.

The Miami Design District, an 18 square-block neighborhood between Miami’s downtown and South Beach, has announced that the facade of its new mixed-use retail building will be designed by Sou Fujimoto. The two-floor, 17,000 square foot structure, which will feature "an elongated series of glass fins extending from the rooftop down to the open courtyard," will create unique pedestrian arcades covered by a "structural waterfall."

The Miami Design District, owned by Miami Design District Associates, aims to combine commerce with high-quality design, fashion, art and architecture, and has chosen Fujimoto on the merit of his past award-winning works, from House N in Tokyo, to the Musashino Art University & Library, to - most recently - his design of the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in London.

Foster + Partners have released new images of the luxurious, 18-story Faena House currently being constructed in Miami. The project, which is commissioned by Argentinean developer Alan Faena who is best known for transforming Buenos Aires’ abandoned Puerto Madero neighborhood into the city’s most vital culture center, will mark the first phase of the anticipated Faena District Miami Beach. Once complete, the district will include a five-star hotel, a large and versatile Arts Center, an OMA-designed parking complex, a luxury retail complex, and a marina.

The Miami Beach Convention Center, a giant box of a building constructed in 1957, is in desperate need of a makeover and two design teams have bravely accepted the challenge. Team 1 is dubbed South Beach ACE (Arts, Culture, Entertainment District) and is a collaboration between Rem Koolhaas's OMA firm, Tishman, UIA, MVVA, Raymond Jungles and TVS. Team 2 goes by the name of Miami Beach Square and includes BIG, West 8, Fentress, JPA and Portman CMC. Both proposals completely re-imagine 52 acres of prime beach real estate and cost over a billion dollars in public and private funds. So, who does it better?

Vote for your favorite after the break...

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South Beach ACE just unveiled their master plan for the redevelopment of the Miami Beach Convention Center site. Currently in a battle with BIG and Portman CMC for the right to overhaul the 52-acre site, national developer Tishman, international architecture firm OMA, international firm TVS, and Miami Beach developer UIA Management comprise the South Beach ACE team. The vision involves bringing to life one of Miami Beach’s most underutilized public sites with a fully-revamped convention center capable of luring major events from around the world, an iconic hotel, inviting green spaces, low-density retail uses, and cultural venues.

More images and the team's description after the break...