ML - Maison & Objet Americas

Maison & Objet Americas - 2015 - Issue 1

MAISON&OBJET Americas

Issue link: http://digital.greengale.com/i/503691

Contents of this Issue

Navigation

Page 89 of 99

structures opened last December as part of the Palm Court retail complex, capped off by Tokyo-based architect Sou Fujimoto's striking blue-glass building. Pedestrians exit the underground garage, designed by SB Architects, by ascend- ing a spiral staircase into a reproduction of Buckminster Fuller's Fly's Eye Dome—a bubblelike structure embedded within Palm Court's plaza. The real showstopper, however, is the newly opened City View Garage, located along the edge of the district and adjacent to I-195. The envelope of the six-story building ("a triumph," Dunlop calls it), which also includes retail stores and offi ce space, is a collaboration between the design fi rms Leong Leong and Iwamoto Scott and acts as a kind of shimmering billboard for the district, complete with two commissioned artworks by John Baldessari. "There are few places that celebrate architecture at the scale of a neighborhood like the Design District," says Christopher Leong, a director of the New York – and Los Angeles – based Leong Leong, which wrapped the garage's western façade in gold titanium-coated stainless steel. "It has the feeling of being both experimental and grounded at the same time." Art institutions, including the de la Cruz Collection Contemporary Art Space and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, which opened last December in temporar y quarters in the Moore Building, add to the neighborhood's cultural ballast. Locust Projects, a nonprofit exhibition space founded in 1998 by a trio of Miami artists, moved from Wynwood to the Design District in 2009 and has since upgraded to larger digs on North Miami Avenue. "Freed from sales pressure and institutional limitations, exhibiting artists create work that is grander, both physically and conceptually, than their resources previously allowed," says Executive Director Chana Budgazad Sheldon. During Maison&Objet Americas, Locust Projects will present the debut solo exhibition of Costa Rican – born, Miami-based artist Roberto Gómez, who "will create an installation of poured-paint panels that will be stretched throughout the gallery on a structure resembling a clothes- line," says Sheldon. "In our Project Room, sculptor Mia Feuer will present an immersive installation that continues her investigation into transforming landscapes." As the Design District continues its own transfor- mation, its challenge will be to remain a hotbed of design amidst rapid retail expansion. For Thais Roda, CEO of Christian Liaigre, the common thread running through the neighborhood's fashion, furniture, and interior design companies is their orientation around an atelier, or cre- ative workshop, whether the fi nished product is a sofa or a stiletto. Says Liaigre, "The Miami Design District has sur- passed all stereotypes and has created its own identity of art and culture on an international stage." ■ Zaha Hadid's Elastika, in the landmark 1921 Moore Building. M I A M I M&O PHOTOGRAPHY BY ROBIN HILL 88 M A I S O N - O B J E T. C O M

Articles in this issue

Archives of this issue

view archives of ML - Maison & Objet Americas - Maison & Objet Americas - 2015 - Issue 1