Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
sometimes the economically practical and innovative way forward. In a city built on fast
real estate, it's a bit delicious that the heart of the sexiest neighborhood is the child of pre-
servation and smart planning.
A fun way to conduct an art-deco walking tour is to seek out certain design trends, such
as Meso American temple flourishes, cruise-liner-modeled buildings, space-age struc-
tures and the like. Certain Miami buildings are exemplars of one or more themes.
Italians were the first hired to create terrazzo floors, popular in Florida. They'd pour vari-
ous colors of terrazzo - crushed stones, shells, marble chips or granite, mixed with con-
crete - into a patterned grid and then polish it. This remarkable marriage of form and
function also cools the feet.
Post-Deco, Miami Modern & Beyond
The tale of Miami architecture is defined by more than deco. As in all cities, Miami's ar-
chitecture reflects the tastes and attitudes of its inhabitants, who tend to adhere to the aes-
thetic philosophy espoused by Miami Beach's favorite architect, Morris Lapidus: 'Too
much is never enough'. The earliest examples of this homegrown over-embellishment are
the Mediterranean-revival mansions of Coral Gables and the Fabergé egg fantasy of the
Vizcaya. These residential wedding cakes established Miami's identity as a city of fantas-
ies and dreams, outside the boundaries of conventional tastes, where experimentation was
smiled upon as long as it was done with flash. They also spoke to a distinct Miami attitude
that is enshrined in city tastes to this day: If you've got it, flaunt it, then shove it back in
their faces for a second serving.
This penchant for imaginative, decorative flair overlaid the muscular postwar hotels and
condos of the 1950s, giving birth to Miami Modernism (or Mimo). Mimo drew off the
sleek lines and powerful presence of International Modernism, but led by Lapidus, it also
eschewed austerity for grand, theatrical staging. Lapidus himself described his most fam-
ous structure, the Fontainebleau, as influenced by the most popular mass media of its time:
Hollywood and cinema. The glamour Lapidus captured in his buildings would go on to
define Miami's aesthetic outlook; Versace incorporated it into his clothes and Ian Schrager
has decked out his hotels with this sense of fairy-tale possibility. Which makes sense: the
word 'glamour' originally meant a kind of spell that causes people to see things differently
