MAISON&OBJET Americas
Issue link: http://digital.greengale.com/i/503691
m i a m i Historic Italian villas, passed from generation to gen- eration, often incorporate wildly diverse architectural styles, so to make Vizcaya look authentic, Chalfin included nods to the Renaissance, Baroque, rococo, and neoclassical periods. He even built a working rep- lica of a 16th-century Italian farm village, the kind an Italian nobleman would have surrounding his estate. Vizcaya was a sort of theme park for the rich, with star guests like actress Lillian Gish and painter John Singer Sargent, but it also features practical details. The rooms, for example, open onto a central courtyard, allowing for cross-ventilation. In Miami, the 1920s were truly roaring, and the city was dominated by two visionary developers, Miami Beach's Carl Fisher and Coral Gables' George Merrick. Both favored the Mediterranean revival style, and both employed one of the leading architectural frms of the day, Schultze & Weaver, the New York – based company that reinvented Los Angeles with the 1923 Biltmore Hotel. The architects put their mark on the Miami area with several iconic properties, includ- ing a Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables (still the city's centerpiece) and the since-demolished hotel Roney Plaza, which helped defne the look of Miami Beach during the period. Each property included a replica of Seville's Giralda Tower. Even when Schultze & Weaver designed a downtown Miami offce building (still stand- ing), it included a replica Giralda Tower. The grandeur of Vizcaya had a profound infuence on Miami in the '20s. Merrick hired Phineas Paist, who had worked on Vizcaya, as his architectural director and created a series of international villages in a range of styles, including Chinese and Dutch South African, and they're still the best part of Coral Gables. The villages have all the whimsy and elaborate detail of Vizcaya, as did most large private homes in Coral Gables and Miami Beach at that time. Both Merrick and Fisher also had a flair for promotion, which included having gondolas with gondoliers ply a canal. It was possible to take a gondola from the Biltmore to Biscayne Bay, a surefre sales gimmick. The 1930s and much of the 1940s belonged to Art Deco, mostly concentrated in South Beach. The Mediterranean revival style evoked a kind of old-world luxury that was out of sync with the Great Depression, while the South Beach version of Art Deco was new, cheap, fun, and as bright and modern as the escapist movie musicals of the era. During these decades, archi- tects mixed the thoroughly decorative style of 1920s European Art Deco with the streamlined version of American industrial designers. Curved wraparound windows, portholes, and central vertical elements, such as spires, lent a sense of motion. Stucco friezes embraced the tropical setting with images of starfsh and the like. Some of the better efforts, such as 1940's Raleigh hotel (designed by Lawrence Murray Dixon The annex of the Bacardi building, adorned with multicolored stained glass and known as the "Jewel Box," was designed in 1974 by Ignacio Cabrera-Justiz to expand the Bacardi Rum Company's headquarters. From the beginning, Miami was defned by the exoticism of the natural world, which was refected in its architecture and design. photography by mr. interior / shut terstock.com m&O 76 m a i s o n - o b j e t. c o m