MAISON&OBJET Americas
Issue link: http://digital.greengale.com/i/503691
m i a m i photography by paul clemence and now owned by Tommy Hilfger), remain delights of South Beach. Its ship smokestack – inspired pool house once made the perfect backdrop for the aquatic spectacles of Esther Williams. After World War II, the 1950s saw the rise of American high rollers and the reinvention of Miami Beach by architect Morris Lapidus, a former store designer. In that era, the International Style—seen in such celebrated landmarks as Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye—embodied polite good taste. When the great Le Corbusier visited Miami in 1950, he toured the city's more exuberant build- ings and wrote in his journal, "Enough to make one utterly sick from so much artifce." But Lapidus, who thought of his work as the "architecture of joy," was all about piling on artifce. The 1954 Fontainebleau still has a "staircase to nowhere," intended to add a bit of spectacle to the lobby. The hotel debuted with French statuary scattered about the lobby and grounds; original owner Ben Novack wanted what he called a "modern French chateau" look. Next door, Lapidus's Eden Roc hotel is topped by an artful rendition of a ship's smokestack, a nod to Art Deco. Lapidus jumbled architecture's historical periods and added dollops of ornamentation, irregular shapes, and whatever else struck his fancy. The Fontainebleau also inspired the design of Las Vegas's themed pleasure palaces. In the 1960s, America's Mad Men era, architec- ture and design refected corporate power. Seagram, for instance, hired Ludwig Mies van der Rohe to create its headquarters in New York. At Bacardi in 1962, Jose "Pepin" Bosch brought in Mies to create a severe building for the company in Mexico City, but he lightened up in Miami, where he and Bacardi fed after the rise of Fidel Castro. Here, Bosch worked with Cuban modernist architect Enrique Gutierrez, who had helped design a planned Mies building for Bacardi in Cuba. Miami's Bacardi building is not concerned with strict Miesian purity. Muralist Francisco Brennand created traditional Brazilian murals on the entire north and south walls of the 1964 building, a shim- mering expanse of tropical imagery in blue and white tile that looks as if it can't wait to pop off the surface. The 1970s were a quiet era in Miami, a period when the city still felt like a sleepy Southern town, but Bacardi added to the brilliance of its Miami building with an ambitious annex. The 1973 Ignacio Carrera-Justiz structure is wrapped in glass murals by Johannes Dietz depicting the history of rum production. (The Bacardi complex is now owned by the National YoungArts Foundation, a charitable organization that helps aspiring artists, which recently com- missioned Frank Gehry to create an adjacent arts center.) In the 1980s, the skyline of downtown Miami ceased to be a modest, less-is-more affair and embraced tropical modernism. Miami Tower, an I.M. Pei master- piece immortalized in the opening credits of Miami Vice, is still lit at night in bright colors, as alluring as a frefy. The former Southeast Bank brought in Skidmore, Owings & Merrill for its corporate headquarters. Now the Southeast Financial Center, the building still has a Miami touch, with rows of royal palms planted in the glass-covered atrium. Te 1950s saw the rise of American high rollers and the reinvention of Miami Beach by architect Morris Lapidus, who thought of his work as the "architecture of joy." The Bleau Bar at the Fontainebleau Hotel, a landmark structure in the evolution of Miami architectural design. m&O 78 m a i s o n - o b j e t. c o m