MIAMI ARCHITECTURE: An AIA Guide Featuring Downtown, the Beaches and Coconut Grove

MIAMI ARCHITECTURE: An AIA Guide Featuring
Downtown,the Beaches and Coconut Grove

Thousands of architects will descend on Miami June 10-12 to attend the American Institute of Architects (AIA) national convention.

Just in time for the conventioneers, and all of us who try to make sense of all of Greater Miami's built environment, the AIA has published a guidebook of architecture from Miami Beach to Coconut Grove to Little Havana and beyond.

The University Press of Florida book was authored by Allan Shulman, an architect, University of Miami professor; planner and landscape architect Randall Robinson Jr.; and historian James Donnelly, the former chair of the City of Miami Beach Historic Preservation Board and an expert tour guide for the Art Deco District there.

This is not a lush and huge coffee table book with stunning color photos and little text. It is the opposite, a thick guidebook-sized publication with only black and white photos -- many of them barely the size of a thumbnail.

So while it might not be a pretty pictures collection for a tourist gift, it is an outstanding field manual well-organized for driving, biking or walking tours through significant Miami architecture on the sandbar and mainland.

The nearly 400-page, $29.95 publication is by far the most exhaustive and up-to-date guide of Greater Miami's built environment -- from the Art Deco confections, to the preserved Spanish Mission and Mediterranean styles from the 20s and 30s to Mid-Century Miami Modern to the modern skyscrapers of Arquitectonica and others.

Everything is in there, from the classics you love and fight to preserve to the out of scale monstrosities some love to hate.

The best thing about Miami Architecture is that it has room for the little gems among the boastful and famous structures. One such example is the San Juan Bautista Mission in Miami's Wynwood District.

The modest structure at 3116 NW 2nd Avenue was designed by Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company (DPZ) and built in 1999. The beautiful edifice was heavily influenced by Oscar Machado -- a Cuban-born architect, DPZ alum and professor at the University of Miami School of Architecture.

Machado is one of the most humble and talented architects in Miami -- his name is not in the Miami Architecture book or on any plaque at the San Juan Bautista Mission -- but he is a master of human scale and contextual architecture.

Quoting from the book "The mission building allows the residents of Wynwood to walk to church. It also acts as a substantial anchor for the community's main street...hosting a variety of religious and non-religious activities..."

"The building's design follows that of traditional neighborhood churches in Latina America and the Caribbean. The stucco has been convincingly applied and molded to give the appearance of a much older building. The cloistered courtyard...contains a baptismal font and bell tower."

What the guide book doesn't mention is the Mission, an outreach of the Catholic Corpus Christi Parish, is an expression of the gentle, humankind-serving soul of the unsung Oscar Machado.


http://www.upf.com/book.asp?id=DONNES08