140,000 READERS AND GROWING

 

TODAY, WE CELEBRATE MORE THAN 140,000 UNIQUE VISITORS TO THIS BLOG

While that is a total, cumulative readership, vs. daily readership...in gross numbers, it is within a few thousand of the daily circulation of the Miami Herald.

We have ranted for a better built environment, especially for people with disabilities.

We have shared more than 1,000 fine art images of Istanbul, New Orleans and dozens of other favorite destinations.

We have shared news of great urban design by firms we are proud to be affiliated with.

In more than 95 percent of the posts, the writing and photography is original -- as in we took the images and wrote the words.

When it is not, we give full credit to the original source.

Today, we share a picture from Bursa, Turkey.

About an hour before dusk, observant Muslims were lining up at bakeries to buy special loaves for Ramazan.

We were invited to share in this breaking of fast, simply when we were sitting in a park just after dark.

The fellowship was divine.

We are not very religious, certainly not of the Muslim faith.

And our kind, informal hosts knew this.

But they simply wanted to share in the holy month.

This is what travel is about.

This is what mankind is about.

Why our president or any other insane elected officials would falsely and maliciously associate Islamists with terrorists is beyond comprehension.

Today, we celebrate peace-loving, mankind loving people around the globe.

A few weeks per year, we are blessed to make these new friends.

MIAMI IN ISTANBUL

A STRANGENESS IN MY MIND

With thanks to Orhan Pamuk for borrowing the title of his fine book, I had quite the strangeness in my mind last month will walking the backstreets of Beyglu in Istanbul.

I was heading toward the Çukurcuma antiques district when I walked down a steep street past the Marina Cafe.

Something in the corner of my eye looked familiar.

It was the skyline of the Omni District of Miami, circa maybe 30 years ago.

Sure enough, a marina was prominent in the photo.

It's the marina on Biscayne Bay immediately east of the Miami Herald building and a complex of hotel-retail-mixed use.

How on earth a cafe in Istanbul -- which has its share of marinas -- in Turkey -- which has more than its share of marinas -- picked a faded photo of a marina in Miami, who knows.

Had I not been in a rush, I may have stopped in to try to find out.

Then again, my Turkish is pretty lousy and even with the google translate ap, just how would a barkeep understand my interest in a photo he probably doesn't even pay attention to?

Turns out the Miami Herald modernist headquarters building didn't die when it was razed months ago to make way for the future Genting development.

It didn't die, it just went to live, in faded color perpetuity, on Sadri Alisik Sok in Cihangir.

MY BEAUTIFUL WIFE

BOLD BEAUTY

Excerpted from the Miami Herald:

Heidi Johnson-Wright, an attorney and adjunct faculty member at UM’s School of Architecture, had a clear idea of how she wanted to be portrayed when she worked with photographer Gil Bitton. “I knew I didn’t want to be a princess in pink because that’s just not me,” she says. “I wanted something edgier, more like a punk rock aesthetic.”

She got that look exactly — and something more.

After the shoot, she felt stronger and more self-assured than ever. “Ebullient, euphoric, I really enjoyed it,” says Johnson-Wright, who was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis at age 8. “It was a little like taking on a different persona. How many women do you know get an opportunity to do something like this?”

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/visual-arts/article113933318.html#storylink=cpy

click to read full story 

If You Go

What: Bold Beauty Project Visual Arts Exhibit
When: Nov. 12-25. Opening reception 6-9 p.m. Nov. 12.
Where: Bakehouse Arts Complex, 561 NW 32nd St., Miami
Info: $20 advance admission, $25 at door. boldbeautyproject.com

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/visual-arts/article113933318.html#storylink=cpy

MIAMI’S CALLE OCHO IS A HIGHWAY TODAY

BUT CAN IT BE A MAIN STREET INSTEAD? 


Florida transportation officials embark on a two-year, $2 million study of the fabled street


The street was converted into a three-lane thruway for downtown commuters in the 1950s

But city officials and local residents want it restored to its original Main Street layout

THANKS TO ANDRES VIGLUCCI AT THE MIAMI HERALD FOR WRITING A FABULOUS STORY ABOUT THIS KEY ISSUE IN MIAMI

Click to read the entire Herald Story

Click here to learn more and sign the petition for MyCalle8

Wynwood Walls gets bigger

PLUS URBIA DESIGN'S WYNWOOD WORK PRAISED IN HERALD ART BASEL BLOG

It has been an honor to be part of the PlusUrbia Design team work with the Goldman Family on Wywnood Walls Garden, next to the famous Wynwood Walls and Wynwood Doors. 

We are humbled to be lauded by Andres Viglucci, the Miami Herald's longtime urban affairs reporter -- and one of the best urban design writers on the staff of a major daily newspaper in the nation.

Here's the item:

Wynwood Walls, the curated graffiti-mural project that jump-started the neighborhood's revitalization, keeps getting bigger and bigger -- literally. And better, too.

The Goldman family just expanded the murals project onto a vacant, nearly half-acre property next door and turned it into an enclosed, landscaped garden designed by a prize-winning Coconut Grove firm, PlusUrbia.

And while the opening was timed for Miami Art Week, the good news for locals is they get to enjoy it year-round.

The garden features four new murals in Wynwood Walls' recently completed "Walls of Change" installation. One of the new murals is painted on the side of a stacked set of shipping containers, another on the side of a warehouse that opens onto the new garden. During this week, the warehouse is serving as a studio for artist Peter Tunney's newest endeavor, taking really big Polaroid portraits using a giant vintage Polaroid camera from the '70s.

But the garden is not just a canvas for art. Goldman Properties and PlusUrbia say the garden provides "urban relief" for the rapidly evolving Wynwood industrial district -- which, given its origins, never had any parks or green spaces other than vacant lots.

PlusUrbia's Santiago Eliaschev says the garden was designed to give visitors different vantage points from which to view the murals, including angled benches and sloping planters that also provide seating -- perfect, the firm boasts, for "Wynwood selfies."

If the firm name sounds familiar, that's because it's also responsible for the new Wynwood zoning plan that's meant to spur housing development and improve streets and sidewalks in the neighborhood while preserving its distinctive warehouses and funky vibe.

The PlusUrbia Wynwood Neighborhood Revitalization District plan recently won the American Planning Association's 215 Great Neighborhoods award.

The new garden is immediately west of Wynwood Doors, the Walls project's last expansion.

ANDRES VIGLUCCI

Posted by Miami Herald