Urbanista!

“Miami Rain’’ washes over Marquis condo garage – see it best from Interstate 395.

Just in time for Art Basel/Miami Beach, the developers of the Marquis, one of the set of condo towers that rise over Bicentennial Park like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, have dressed up the building’s unfortunate garage facade with an appealing piece of public art.

The slanted arrangement of laminated, colored glass rectangles by Tom Patti is titled, sure enough, “Miami Rain.’’  (All photographs here are by the estimable Robin Hill.) I have watched the piece go up bit by bit over the past several weeks as I drive to work or take the Metromover downtown, and it does seem to work as it’s meant to, changing throughout the day as it catches light and movement and reflects it on the wall or back to the viewer. Metromover passengers and motorists eastbound on I-395, to whom the piece is oriented, have unquestionably the best view.

 

The developers are to be commended for fulfilling a pledge made to the city when they received development permits for Marquis. Too many make all sorts of promises during public hearings for, say, rich finishes or landscaping that – what do you know -- never materialize once the building goes up.

But, at the risk of sounding Scrooge-ish, I have to wonder whether the subtle artwork even begins to make up for the awful way in which Marquis and its three companions present their massive, unadorned rears to Northeast Second Avenue, now doomed forever at street level to look and feel like a row of blank warehouses.

Blame can probably go around to developers,  architects, the city planning department, hearing boards and – good riddance –  the city’s 11,000 zoning code, soon to be replaced by Miami 21. The new, pedestrian-friendly code requires a fuller lining of parking garage exteriors and would probably have prevented the Atrocities on NE Second.

City planners did manage to make the developers address Biscayne Boulevard in a more civil manner, with liner units and street-level retail space – though it remains to be seen how pedestrian-friendly the building fronts will turn out to be, limned as they are by stairs, steps and off-putting railings. Still, several ground-level restaurants on Biscayne have opened or are about to in the Horsemen, a promising development to be sure.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving,  though, let’s embrace the good with the bad, and appreciate Patti’s gift.  One thing’s certain: It sure beats a blank wall 14 stories tall.

Must-see at the Wolfsonian: Artful prints of early modern urban life and their contemporary counterparts, jaw-dropping aerial photos of L.A. freeways

We make a slight detour today into the rarefied galleries of the Wolfsonian-FIU, the little powerhouse museum on South Beach whose exhibits of art and objects should be mandatory for any self-respecting urbanista.

The unusual museum is hard to define -- that’s part of the appeal. One way to summarize the mission is to say it traces the roots of modern Western life through art, design, architecture, advertising and propaganda.

I went for the opening of Rhythms of Modern Life: British Prints, 1914-1939 – a remarkable and rarely seen collection of images of urban scenes that were then new and exciting, though sometimes with an edge of creeping alienation. Sometimes in abstract form, others faithfully representational, the prints depict speeding automobiles -- a particular fascination. London Underground stations and packed subway cars. Shipyards and docks. Sidewalk crowds on Oxford Street and Times Square bathed in the novelty of electric lights. The growing allure of sports as entertainment – from soccer players to wrestlers to rowers on the Thames, race-cars, sprinters and competitive ice skaters.

Here is one of my favorites, a 1935 linocut depiction of the cycling Tour of Switzerland, by Lill Tschudi:

In some ways, the exhibit, which draws mainly on the collection of Johanna and Leslie Garfield and is on view through the end of February, points the way to one contemporary urban dilemma: the fascination with speed and the automobile, which has made such a hash of American cities. (One print celebrates the Bluebird, which set a land-speed record of 246 mph at Daytona in 1931.)

The connection smacked me in the face on the way out. Hanging in the museum lobby are a set of colossal aerial color photographs of Los Angeles freeways by American Benny Chan. From above, the highways appear as massive scars on the landscape.

 

Does this seem familiar? For all the anonymity of the urban surroundings, this could just as well be I-95 at rush hour. (The Chan photos can be viewed for no charge since lobby access is free. A separate exhibit focuses on automobile design.)

Beth Dunlop is baaaack, weighs in on Gehry, Herzog & de Meuron and some other local notables, and likes what she sees.

 

For anyone who missed it: Miami Herald architecture critic Beth Dunlop, whose writings, alas, appear infrequently since she took over editing (and vastly improving) Home Miami mag, pronounced herself in print on various ongoing starchitect projects and one intriguing local showcase to come. And she was pleased. Which is a good sign for a place that has for too long settled for second-drawer work from the world’s greats. (Beth: It’s so nice to see you back where you belong.)

(And, BTW, it looks like Miami Art Museum/H & dM also let go another jealously guarded image of their new bayfront building:)

Here’s what Beth wrote, without further ado:

For any number of anonymous winters, the Swiss architect Jacques Herzog vacationed in Miami Beach -- walking around, looking around, taking in everything. To me this is one of the more interesting and salient points to be made in looking ahead to the two Herzog & de Meuron buildings we are getting. One might otherwise wonder how a firm from Switzerland (cold country) headed by two distinguished architects (reserved Europeans) could have come up with two buildings that so brilliantly express this particularly hot and ebullient place.

A REMARKABLE RUN

Architecture has its ebbs and flows, its glory years and dark decades. But right now in South Florida -- most particularly in Miami and Miami Beach -- we are building a roster of some remarkable buildings, world-worthy even. Some are indeed big and even flamboyant. Others are more modest in scale and aspiration.

In October, Miami Art Museum (MAM) released the latest drawings of its planned building to be constructed on Biscayne Bay in the park formerly known as Bicentennial. It looks to be a masterpiece, open and airy, architecture intertwined with vegetation and grand stairs, that could become one of the city's great public places. The building will be intimately connected with its surroundings, planned by Laurinda Spear, whose new venture at Arquitectonica is the landscape design firm ArquitectonicaGeo, and will stand next to the Miami Science Museum's environmentally progressive new building designed by the British firm, Grimshaw Architects.

But well before the first ground is broken, we will see Herzog & de Meuron's first local work, 1111 Lincoln Rd., a mixed-use building that is primarily a parking garage. And while I think it's actually bad luck to say too much about a building that is not quite finished, this one is a stunner. At once abstract and referential, it is of the world and of its time and yet somehow very much of its place.

Perhaps less in the public eye (its location at the edge of the Miami Design District is hardly so prominent as the foot of Lincoln Road Mall) is another almost-completed structure -- Miami designer John Marquette's simultaneously imposing and embracing private museum for the de la Cruz Collection. Like MAM, it will not only pose new ideas about how to see art but also offer unique public spaces in an urban center with far too few civic gathering spots. (Watch this space.)

Those qualities have always intrigued me about Frank Gehry's work, too. Gehry always creates buildings that represent his own ideas, as much about rhythm and movement as about the sculptural possibilities of architecture. And yet so much of what he designs also seems inevitable. I say this after observing his Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles, a building that seems to express the sublime movement of the music performed within and also to impart the ever-shifting quality of life around it, shifts that are demographic as much as tectonic.

Gehry's campus building for the New World Symphony, now taking fairly full shape, is almost the converse of Disney Concert Hall. It is not without its swooping, rhythmic forms -- the ``frozen music'' that is a Gehry trademark -- but these are contained within a glass-and-concrete box. What we have now is just a glimpse of what's yet to come but a promising one. Ultimately, the building will involve lots of innovative technology and programming -- film and video projections on the facade, for example -- and will preside over a park that likewise has enormous potential.

More here…

Exeunt Manny Diaz, visionary and...pothole mayor extraordinaire?

To hear admirers and detractors talk about Miami Mayor Manny Diaz, who left office today after eight eventful years, has been something like hearing about two completely different people – a visionary on the one hand and a “malevolent’’ figure (and that is just how someone once described him to me) on the other.

I tried to highlight an overlooked side of Diaz in my print story today (see below) examining his legacy – the near-obsessive, detail-oriented technocrat who has probably not gotten the credit he deserves for modernizing the city and its administration. (If Mayor Tomas Regalado finds a working computer and wireless Internet when he moves into his office this week, he has Diaz to thank for it.)

But then focusing on what’s actually been accomplished is not nearly so much fun as railing against evil developers and indiscriminately accusing everyone at City Hall of corruption, is it?

Whether you agree or not with Diaz’ goals, from the Marlins stadium to Miami 21 -- and Urbanista! does not think they’re all good, though I urge you, kind readers, to hash out which are which  -- the fact is he reached high and was remarkably effective in getting things done. It was refreshing and challenging to cover his administration after years of dreary antics and ineffectual doddering at City Hall. Did he overreach? His unrelenting agenda did wear down some residents in the end. But doesn’t anyone remember what it was like to walk up Biscayne Boulevard eight years ago?

And now we get to see now how that ambitious blueprint he’s left us turns out. Most interesting to see what and how Regalado does with Miami 21, which he of course voted against as a commissioner but is now bound by as mayor. 

Miami Mayor Manny Diaz's legacy: a big-ticket transformation

Manny Diaz leaves office after eight years of ushering in changes grand and small. How will the legacy be judged for the mayor who reshaped Miami?

The binder, almost a foot thick, sits by outgoing Mayor Manny Diaz's elbow at Miami City Hall. Methodically indexed, it's stuffed with plans, progress reports, charts and conclusions on dozens of quality-of-life initiatives -- a nuts-and-bolts scorecard on his eight years in office.

It's all there, in exhaustive detail: Code enforcement overhauls. Crime reduction. Computer labs at city parks. New sewers and street drains. Rebuilt sidewalks. Even a chicken-busters team.

The mayor who will likely best be remembered -- and in some quarters, reviled -- for presiding over an unprecedented development boom and an ambitious set of grand plans wasn't focused just on the big picture.

``There was not an area of the city that didn't get our attention, and this is something I'm very proud of,'' said Diaz, hauling out the binder during an interview just days before leaving office. ``This was my Bible, and we focused on everything.''

Diaz, who is term-limited, leaves office Wednesday in some respects to a tepid farewell. Public weariness over his big-ticket plans amid a recession loomed large in the landslide election of new mayor Tomás Regalado. The commissioner cast himself as the anti-Diaz, a champion of residents who felt ignored by the mayor.

But admirers believe Diaz will come to be regarded as a transformative mayor who ably channeled the high-rise condo boom to forge a grown-up Miami, bringing vision and basic competence to a city that had become the target of jokes and banana-chucking demonstrators.

``You want to know his legacy? Then look up,'' said historian and activist Marvin Dunn, who started a large food garden in Overtown in part with city support. ``Manny Diaz's low-key and unassuming but tough style is what Miami needed.''

This is a Manny Diaz even his admirers might find hard to recognize -- a sober, patient reformist up to his elbows in the minutiae of turning around a troubled city.

But this side of Diaz may be key to understanding his administration, which was relentless in enacting an agenda of a scope unmatched by any other Miami mayor in decades -- often in the face of fierce criticism.

Read the full story here.

It’s Architecture + Design month

We’re already into November and the AIA Miami chapter’s annual architecture and design celebration – alas, too late for the nifty student sand-sculpture competition in Crandon Park.

But lots of other goodies are yet to come, including a gaggle of public lectures by some of Miami’s best (and sometimes most undervalued) architects – Max Strang, Luis Trelles, Roney Mateu, Allan Shulman (he’s got a new book out), Rene Gonzalez.

Other highlights: A lecture by Seaside developer Robert Davis at UM’s architecture school (Nov. 11); Paul George’s Friday the 13th Ghost Tour of Miami Cemetery (Nov. 13, dummy); the always plummy Coral Gables Home Tour (Nov. 14); and (on Nov. 6, 7 and 8) the first Coral Gables Museum Canstruction, a design/build competition using – what else? -- cans of food (to be later donated to charity).

For the full schedule, go to www.aiamiami.com and scroll down the calendar announcements.

Urbanista! rides with Miami Critical Mass

Had a great time taking the road on a couple of rides with Miami Critical Mass, and was sorry to miss Friday’s evening’s Halloween ride (about 300! riders, apparently). Even though, as a conservative, road-rules and red-light observing (well, almost always) rider, Urbanista! felt ambivalent about the corking of intersections and rolling through lights. But I understood the reasoning, and it’s all over in a few seconds, so at most motorists miss only a single light cycle. I was actually more troubled about the group’s tendency to take the entire road on multiple-lane roadways, something that’s probably really necessary (and totally legal!) only when turning left. That said, the sense of freedom and relative safety was something to savor, and I hope to again soon.

Most of the comments posted online on my story were supportive -- that alone marks some kind of change -- and some though critical were reasonable. Others of course could not get past the I’m-in-a-car-get-out-of-my-way mindset that makes riding solo or in a smaller group such a freighted experience in Miami. Like this beautiful post from some ignoramus who apparently could not be bothered to take note of information in the story about cyclists’ right to the road:

From one fyshhead, who thinks he/she owns the road:

“I commute South on Old Cutler Road every day. Between COCO Plum and Eureka I see bikers ridng two or more abreast in my lane about twice a week. They won't move to the side or to the bike path and many times only one of them has lights. I contribute to this road every time I buy fuel, buy a tag, and get my driver's license. They contribute to nothing but want to hijack my car lane for their own use. They call themselves corkers and by their own admission they want to be enough of a danger to themselves and a nuisance to the rest of us that they will get what they want. Kind of like Somali pirates. I think they should turn critical mass into mass arrest. Then when they pay the fine, at least they will be giving something back to the community. They can organize an interruption, but if the county waited for them to contribute to building bike lanes there would not be one in the county. HOnk HOnk....’’

Sigh. We badly need an education campaign.

Far more relevant and thoughtful is the blog post (and ensuing comments) in a blog by former racer and framebuilder Dave Moulton (a critical voice on Critical Mass whom I quoted in the story).

My own parting thoughts: Yes, there are louts on bikes, but they usually threaten no one’s safety but their own and are vastly outnumbered by louts in cars, who can and do kill cyclists (and pedestrians and fellow motorists.) The hyperventilating anger of so many over being slowed for a few moments by someone on a bicycle is irrational, a sign of how warped we become behind the wheel of a car (and we’ve all been there, let’s be honest). I blame automakers, advertisers and all of us who have colluded in creating the myth of unfettered freedom for the automobile. But no Constitutional right provides for driving at 50 mph down Coral Way. And I say this as someone who really likes his little (mid-life red) Acura; when Peak Oil hits they can pry my cold dead fingers from the steering wheel. And bury me with my bikes.