Moving Together, Faster
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It’s very straightforward - we could have this in Miami, too.
photo courtesy of freekpowerticket’s flickr account
The first thing I always want to talk about, when I talk about Miami, is Chad Oppenheim. Be forewarned, I may gush. Ever since this young architect appeared on the scene we have had the pleasure of one exciting building after another being proposed and built by this edgy, self-expressed talent. The level of achievement of both built and conceptual projects, by an architect so young, is nearly unprecedented.
Among his first built structures in Miami Beach was the boutique building Ilona. Tucked away on a secluded street south of fifth street, and having seen renderings of several projects it was a strange experience to happen upon the completed building by mistake. Oppenheim’s work began intimately connected to the tropical modernist precedents set forth by the MiMo school. After what was clearly a profound analysis of the period, Oppenheim set out to create a new, more minimal, purist and luxurious interpretation. Simply put, he created a housing for all of the most beautiful and unique properties of South Florida life: light, color, air…sea and sky, the passing of the day. Stopped in my tracks as the building came into view, I felt that I could see the future of design in Miami, and it was good. As with much of his work to date, the design is at first quiet, restrained, and yet continues to reveal itself and its subtle beauty.
Another South Beach jewel is yet another small residential building, Ilona Bay. Here we began to see the sophisticated relationship to the sculptor Donald Judd and his minimalist repetition of form. The geometric white grid enclosures that make up the balconies, are an apparent foreshadowing to the series of skyscrapers in store for downtown Miami. Judd’s complicated study of a numerous identical shapes, and the richness of such, based on perspective and light were the inspiration for the period in Oppenheim’s work that included Ice, Ice 2, and Ten Museum Park, as well as Sky and Space 01 in North Bay Village. As in the past, what seems at first, quite simple, is in truth an analysis of order and sublime proportion. That Oppenheim is able to achieve this in the face of program (number of units, required square footage, balconies etc.) and budgets is almost unbelievable.
To the great loss of Miami urbanists and art lovers, several of Oppenheim’s projects have been mired in difficulty with developers and the erratic whims of the real estate market, and may never come to fruition. Several of the above mentioned structures may never be realized, as well as the dynamic Park Lane Tower. 
Perhaps the greatest surprise, and disappointment is the recent news that 3 Midtown may not be built. This building, is what I believe to be, the most beautiful of the recent boom. Illustrating his sensitivity to each individual site and his desire to deliver to the future residents, an extraordinary experience of Miami, the building is brilliantly twisted and torqued out of the site lines of the two neighboring buildings. The resulting trapezoidal tower creates exciting relationships with the other portions of the buildings, the mews and the low-rise. The structural exoskeleton is a constantly evolving composition of obscuring elements and reveals. This exercise is even carried out on the roof, wrapping the top of the tower in an artful camouflage of the buildings service features, a feature sadly absent in most contemporary building designs. The fenestration on the exposed sides develops into a massive abstract canvas of light absorbing concrete and light reflecting glass, hence blackness in opposition to emitting light after dark. I sincerely hope that the cancellation of this project is a misrepresentation.
While the very lofty conversation of Donald Judd and architecture may be to abstruse for the taste of some, it seems that another parallel can easily be drawn with the discussion of the very nearly finished Ten Museum Park. Like a diamond, that on one hand seems only to be a white shape of a stone, the 50 story tower on Biscayne Boulevard, towers above us as a simple gleaming white shape. Upon closer examination of the stone, the facets inside emit an ever shifting, evolving show of extraordinary shadow and brilliant light, that is undeniably hypnotic. So too, as the South Florida sun rises and illuminates the many complicated facets of the tower’s design, there is a most enjoyable, ever transforming display of darkness and luminosity, straight through til the sun sets, and reflects off of the vastly contrasting, elegantly proportioned back facade. Check it out.
The Good:
“All buildings downtown should be required to have awnings. The city needs to improve the condition and appearance of the streets and sidewalks, including landscaping where possible. Street lighting at night is horrendous. Businesses and people will not be attracted to downtown if it’s ugly and poorly lit at night. People don’t feel safe.”
-David“It’s a MESS. Dingy, dirty, smelly and rat infested. Let’s take pride in our city and get it cleaned up now not wait for the usual red tape and politics.”
-Katherine” I enjoyed the Macy’s CEO’s comments and I am glad the Herald gave her some ink. I like downtown. True, it is a bit of a dump, relatively speaking, but it is Miami, and Miami is a poor city. What never ceases to amaze me is that city fathers know exactly what it takes to refurbish the area but they haven’t the will to act. Condo towers, performing art centers, new waterfront museums, you can choke the area with expensive, exclusive and garish embellishments but without investment in infrastructure it will continue to be poor, underemployed and at times unsightly. I frequent downtown often and love workday and weekend mornings when it is abuzz with work-a-day or tourist/local activity. But when I jump on the metrorail to the metromover and ride from Government Center to Omnistation for the occasional Carnival Center event, my spirit sinks. So much soul, so much potential, and so much waste. Gentrifying and more cops will not address the matter. We need to work with the beauty already there.”
-305tillidie
The Bad:
“Last January I asked a police officer where the nearest public restroom was and he pointed to a Metro Bus and we both laughed for a minute or two and went on our different paths. After he turned a corner, I urinated on a New Times dispenser. I figured the officer was joking about the bus.”
-Daniel Rothstein” We need mor cats downtawn to eet all the ratz.”
-Javier J
The Absent Minded:
“Thats what you get when you build up and not out. It creates a perminet shadowscape for pestilence and riff-raff. Let me put this way so Paris Hilton can understand it: “Like, no duh.”"
-Anonymous“Why are there homeless people still around Miami-Dade when we are paying a half penny of sales tax?It was just another socialist scam that produces nothing.”
-JAV“Ever since Mayor Manny Diaz became mayor,we never hear negative criticism of his administration.He appears to be the darling of the Herald,etc.If Mayor Carollo were in office they would be wanting his head.This man has done nothing,but get richer.He is a dolittle that the media just loves.”
-JAV
“We see preserved natural resources, increased density in urban areas with sufficient existing infrastructure and along mass transportation corridors within the urban development boundary. There are more greenways, water access, pedestrian friendly parks, improved historic neighborhoods and landmarks still recognizable and protected.”
The
The Plan:
For High Resolution images and a full detail plan of the park, click here… More on this issue later…
Although I have been generally pleased with This is exacerbated by the excessive minimum parking standards set by the City Code.
Perhaps even more worrisome is that people won’t even do the little bit of walking I mentioned above. They often may not need to. If you’re living in a high-rise in Brickell, you surely have a large parking garage pedestal. Say you want to go shopping at a downtown building with ground floor retail. It’s highly likely, especially if the building is new, that it will also have plenty of on-site parking. All you would have to do, in this case, is take the elevator to the parking garage (or valet), pull out and drive to the on-site garage at your destination. In many instances, there may even be direct access from the parking garage to the ground-floor retail. The same is true if you’re planning on visiting a friend in another building; just drive from one garage to another without ever setting food outdoors.
To see if this is happening, I went downtown and to Brickell to do some qualitative observation to gauge the ratio of pedestrian-to-automobile traffic coming and going from various buildings. I started at the One Miami building, where one of my friends resides. First of all, it doesn’t help that the building is almost entirely designed to interact with automobiles, not the pedestrian realm (seen here on the left), as Gabe pointed out in a recent post. Unfortunately, just as I suspected, one car after another came and went from the building’s massive parking garage. As for pedestrians? I was one of only a handful during about a 45 minute stretch between 1:45 pm and 2:30 pm.
Next, I took the Metromover down to Brickell so I could survey another building where a friend resides – the Club at
Some of my friends have told me to relax, that things will improve a lot once the area matures and more retail is added nearby. This may be true to some degree, especially downtown, where pretty much everything is closed by 8:00 pm. However, I don’t think we can rely upon the major proposed retail projects to help a whole lot. For example, City Square is planning on providing a whopping 4,052 parking spaces! Same goes for Bayview Market
Furthermore, we can’t blame a lack of transit for people deciding to drive everywhere in downtown and Brickell. These two locales are served by multiple modes of transit including taxi cabs, pitting them among the best transit-served areas in the southeastern
In fairness, I know there are many people who have moved downtown or to Brickell so they could leave the car at home (or behind). We’ve even had commenters on TransitMiami mention their delight for being able to walk or take transit to most destinations. However, I believe these people are still very much in the minority.
I don’t want
top photo courtesy of James Good’s flickr account
Via James Good’s Flickr…
It’s an idealistic situation, I’ll admit, but the fact that there isn’t a comprehensive governing body with the authority to draft area-wide planning/zoning, transit, development, greenways, etc. is pretty archaic.
Example 1:
MDT and county planning has had a plan to maximize density along the US-1 corridor (as they should) to maximize the overall system benefit of metrorail and the busway, allow for less westward growth, etc. However, each city along the corridor has final say on the TOD along their particular portion of the corridor. MDT and TOD developers have to therefore seek planning/density/zoning approval from whichever city their project resides as well as the county. It’s redundant! To make matters worse, every city has its own agenda: Pinecrest for example, has reduced density along their portion of the corridor (in a futile attempt to “prevent” further traffic.) Newsflash kids, the growth south and westward will cause far worse traffic through Pinecrest than any expanded development along US-1.
Example 2:
After the passage of the PTP in 2002, one of the first rail projects to come under consideration was the
Neighborhoods have incorporated into proper municipalities to escape the corruption, abuse, or neglect that evolved in
A recent article in The Biscayne Times discussed the possibility of Museum Park going back to the drawing boards, at least to a certain extent. I find it hard to believe that the debate over Bicentennial Park/Museum Park still goes on as some of the greatest architects in the world are currently designing museums for the space.
The complaint over rising expenditure will only be exacerbated by this continuous bait and switch over the future of the city’s greatest park, long since a derelict shame for the great city of Miami. There is a constant grousing over the lack of public waterfront access, and yet one of the proposed solutions would be to infill the waterway adjacent to the park, diminishing the waterfront footage by as much as fifty percent. The idea of using landfill from the tunnel project will push the execution of Museum Park back by years.
The park as it is designed now is a stunning example of dynamic urban planning. The structures of the two museums occupy only a small fraction of the green space of Bicentennial Park and will create a vibrant cultural intersection for this valuable piece of publicly held real estate. The current design gives the parkgoer many, many, diverse options to experience the waterfront and green space in a thrilling new downtown of exceptional design quality.
The selection of Swiss architects Herzog and De Meuron to design the new Miami Art Museum is a coup of historical scale. One only has to look at the success of the new DeYoung Museum, in the middle of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, to leave themselves craving the realization of such a park for Miami, now.
The cultural campus being created by the trifecta of the Carnival Center and the two new museums will be absolutely world class. The fulfillment of which defines true great urban environments. I have walked by this park hundreds of times, mourning its potential and wondering if we will all live to see it come to its fruition.
Furthermore, as pointed out in a recent SSC posting by Rx727sfl2002, the park is to0 deep (distance from waterfront to Biscayne Boulevard) to ensure the security of parkgoers. The museums would provide lighting and security that would render the park much more user friendly even into the evening hours.
As several of the exciting elements of the new downtown near completion it is unfortunate that Museum Park is still a distant reality. There will soon be a decisive moment in the growth of Miami and it’s perception by people around the globe. It would be a disservice not to have the greatness of this Museum Park as part of that moment, particularly when the process has very carefully come this far, under the watchful eye of those most qualified.
Terence Riley being named the director of the Miami Art Museum was yet another coup, whose enormous benefits cannot be understood at this early date. His time as the architecture and design director of MoMA in NYC and his overseeing the complete redesign and construction of that institution clearly show we are in for greatness in Miami.
As a member of the community who treasures the unique natural wonders of Miami, I can only hope that we honor and highlight those qualities with Museum Park and its museums as a scintillating backdrop.
Photo Credits: JamesGood, Marshall Astor/Life of the Edge, Kevotravel, The Tables Have Turned
A recent article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution about the city really illustrates how Vancouver operates on a different plane than most U.S. cities. Below are several excerpts and quotes from the article, which I feel illustrate my point well:
Note: We are always mentioning on TransitMiami how many aspects of smart growth, like higher densities and less parking, are very counter-intuitive.
photo courtesy of clashmaker’s flick account
For those of us who can’t get enough of Chad Oppenheim’s possible tower rising at MDC, here is a Video clip of the tower in 3D:
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