ARQUITECTONICA 1977

Quick Success

Arquitectónica—the name means "architectural" in Spanish—was responsible for placing Miami on the contemporary architectural map. In 1982, when the firm was only five years old, its row of fashionable condominium towers was completed on Brickell Avenue, and the people who could afford the $400,000 per unit could not move in fast enough. One of these towers, the Atlantis, became an icon—Miami's answer to an Eiffel Tower—partly due to its weekly appearance on the popular television show Miami Vice, This $11 million project was preceded by townhouses in Houston, a theater in Key West, an art gallery in Philadelphia, and an amusement park in Nigeria. Arquitectonica had its origins in the collaboration on the Pink House of Laurinda Spear and Bernardo Fort-Brescia, who would later become founding members of the firm, as well as husband and wife. As a student Spear, with the Dutch architect Ren Koolhaas, had received a Progressive Architecture award for the Pink House design in 1975; after Spear and Fort-Brescia's revisions, it was built in 1978 and received worldwide attention. The firm was overwhelmed with commissions by 1982.

Young Firm

The original firm was made up of a group of architects from Ivy League schools who were either friends or spouses. Spear, Fort-Brescia, and the other founder, Hervin Romney, were all in their thirties when they established the firm. They established a base in Miami, but to achieve their goal of becoming an inter-national firm they put satellite offices in Lima, Peru; Paris; and Hong Kong.
Flamboyant Style

Arquitectonica, and its lead designers Spear and Fort-Brescia, rejected some themes of the day, especially the historical eclecticism of postmodernism. Like the modernists, they preferred un-precedented, innovative structure, shocking viewers with bright primary colors, mirrors, and abstract geometric shapes with no references to the past. Their style has been called flashy and fantasy like. The prominent architect Philip Johnson described the firm as "the gutsiest team in the business."

Atlantis on Brickell

The Atlantis on Brickell is an arresting sight, with a thirty-seven-foot hole cut out of the middle of the mirrored rectangular building. The cut-out box frames a bright red spiral staircase, yellow walls, and a huge palm tree. Each side of the building is different, but they are all balanced visually with a red triangular roof on one side and yellow triangular balconies on the opposite side. The building holds ninety apartments and six duplexes on twenty floors. Four of the floors open to the cut-out space, which contains a whirl-pool, a hot tub, and a tremendous view. The bold, fun building set a new style for Miami Beach.

Courthouse

In Dade County, Florida, in 1988 Arquitectonica redefined American courthouse architecture with its first public building. Not wavering from its modernist stance, the firm designed the courthouse in an abstract style, with skylights, checkerboard floors, trapezoidal windows, and colors such as turquoise and purple. In an unmistakable nod to the Miami Moon motel a mile to the south, the firm placed three crescent-shaped windows in the roadside elevation. Local materials—stucco and tile—were used. Unlike the postmodernists, how-ever, Arquitectonica refused to make regional context a prominent feature of its buildings, instead striving for a classicism that could be repeated in any locale. Fort-Brescia describes the firm's idea of regional architecture: "We do want to create buildings that belong to Miami, but we don't want to imitate past architecture to be contextual. Our buildings try to capture a more intangible spirit of the place. That's what makes them timeless," In 1995 the firm competed against the postmodernist architect Michael Graves in a design competition for a $330 million skyscraper in Times Square in New York City; Arquitectonica won with a forty-seven-story glass tower.

Sources:

Charles Gandee, "Plunging Ahead," Vogue, 185 (August 1995): 22.6-231, 272;

Sidney Le Blanc, 20th Century Architecture (New York: Watson-Guptill, 1993);

Paul M. Sachner, "Miami Virtue," Architectural Record, 176 (May 1988): 122-129.