Press Articles
 |
The New York Times
By Julia Chaplin
February 3, 2008 In Miami, the Beach Party Moves Indoors |
THE art and cocktail bacchanal known as Art Basel Miami Beach was still three months away, but that didn't stop a hundred artists and their hangers-on from cramming into a raw and unoccupied restaurant in Miami's Design District last fall. Glasses of Red Bull and vodka flowed freely. A noise band, armed with electric guitars and homemade synthesizers, jammed so loudly that it seemed to disturb the entire neighborhood. A gang of fresh-faced artists in tight T-shirts and worn-out jeans suspended a six-foot-long digital timer from the ceiling that counted down the milliseconds left in the party.
At the same time, another crowd had gathered at World Class Boxing, an old gym in a strip mall about 20 blocks away that had been delicately transformed by art collectors into a climate-controlled gallery. Guests admired works by international artists like Jim Lambie and Olafur Eliasson as more drinks flowed - this time from the gallery owners' private wine label.
The most unusual thing about this art-saturated Saturday night in Miami was that it wasn't unusual at all. Since Art Basel Miami Beach touched down on this city's palm- and condo-strewn shores six years ago, a contemporary art wave has swept across Miami like a tropical storm. Art is everywhere, from the walls of boutique hotels where works by young art stars have replaced the stark minimalism of the 1990s, to what might be the nation's first contemporary art shopping mall, the Aventura Mall.
So if you missed all the hullabaloo of Art Basel, with its 43,000 visitors, countless receptions and exhibits crammed into four days in early December, not to worry. A dizzying amount of art and its whimsical after-parties now rages on all season long.
"Every gallery and institution plans their best shows during Art Basel," said Terence Riley, the director of the Miami Art Museum, who is spearheading an ambitious $220 million new home for the museum designed by the Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron. "But they generally stay up for a few months afterwards. It's a secret time to see international, museum-quality art."
The best part of heading down to Miami now for a sun-kissed art crawl is that there are no lines, super-tight guest lists or jacked-up hotel rates. Add to that several high-profile private collections, the meteoric rise of local artists and a rush of new galleries to showcase them, and Miami has matured from a fleeting, skin-deep art showcase into an unlikely cultural oasis.
And unlike cities with long artistic roots, Miami offers a uniquely high-low thrill: you can glimpse museum-grade art at impressive private galleries in the morning, then dodge loitering crack dealers and prostitutes in the afternoon, as you search for promising new talent in the city's sketchier areas.
"The Miami art scene is somewhere between young adulthood and late adolescence," Mr. Riley said. "It's no longer a kid, but it's still happy-go-lucky and trying to figure out what it wants to do with its future."
The prime place to witness Miami's art odyssey is not in glittery Miami Beach, but across Biscayne Bay, along the sun-bleached avenues of the once-derelict Wynwood Art District. Before Art Basel came to town, Wynwood was an industrial wasteland with just a handful of pioneering galleries and private collections like the Rubell Family Collection and the Margulies Collection at the Warehouse. But over the last few years, a bevy of enterprising new galleries have either relocated or opened up shop.
"CONTEMPORARY art is the new glamour," said Rosa de la Cruz, the Miami-based art collector and philanthropist. "Of course, there's a danger that it will become trendy. But it's better to have a glam image than a crime image."
Now there are some 70 galleries and counting, from upstarts like the Spinello Gallery and David Castillo Gallery, to internationally regarded galleries like Fredric Snitzer, Kevin Bruk and Emmanuel Perrotin. Sandwiched between tire shops and clothing wholesalers, their concrete facades are freshly painted in purples, pinks and charcoals - giving the area the feeling of a discount bohemian frontier, where idiosyncratic experiments in art and commerce are possible because of cheap rents, too much space and plenty of parking.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the quality of the work is uneven, ranging from captivating to horribly clichéd. During my visit in early December, I saw trite performances that involved a woman suspended from a harness, and art installations that looked like art school projects.
More thought-provoking work was found at Twenty Twenty, a scrappy gallery that opened near vacant lots where prostitutes and drug dealers ply their trade. It was started by Scott Murray, a 27-year-old with tousled hair and a sunburn who was wearing skinny jeans when he greeted me outside. Inside, scattered on the floor, was a piece called "How to Become A Millionaire in 100 Days." The artist, a 24-year-old named Jen Stark, spent 100 days tearing a million scraps of colored paper - a not-so subtle statement about the hyper-commercialized art market.
Hoping to see more, I accidentally pushed through a white curtain and ended up in Mr. Murray's tiny bedroom.
In this young art pond, places like Fredric Snitzer Gallery are held as the art establishment. A sort of godfather of the local art scene, Mr. Snitzer championed Miami artists like Hernan Bas and Naomi Fisher long before contemporary art was considered cool in Miami. Three years ago, he moved his gallery from Coral Gables to a sprawling warehouse in Wynwood.
"An adventurous collector can wade through and find something good amongst the heap," Mr. Snitzer said of Wynwood. "A space will have terrible shows for months and then a great one. You really have to look."
Where you won't have to look too hard is at the district's private art collections. Places like Rubell and Margulies have blossomed in recent years into world-class viewing opportunities, and their numbers continue to grow.
Among the splashiest is the Cisneros Fontanals Arts Foundation, founded in 2002 by the Venezuelan philanthropist Ella Fontanals-Cisneros. From the outside, the collection looks like a glassy high-end boutique - a stark contrast to the surrounding concrete blight. Inside, the gleaming structure has works by Damien Hirst, Mateo López and Ai Weiwei that would be the envy of any contemporary art museum.
After dark, the Wynwood art scene moves to a clutch of new restaurants and bars that few of Art Basel's high-rolling sophisticates would be caught dead in. Popular among the upwardly mobile art set is the Lost and Found Saloon, a kitschy Western-themed restaurant with wagon-wheel chandeliers, a desertscape mural and cowhide wall hangings.
I was joined there on a recent Tuesday by two artists in their late 20s, Daniel Newman and Nick Lobo, who were making a pit stop between visits with gallery owners. "Before Miami had import-export and tourism," said Mr. Lobo, a sculptor who attended Cooper Union in New York City but has returned to Miami to jump-start his career. "Now art is our No. 1 export."
That might be an overstatement, but since Art Basel was first held in 2002, Miami artists have been snapped up by galleries in New York, Tokyo and Berlin. Hernan Bas, for example - Miami-born and known for his romantic, vaguely homoerotic paintings - now exhibits at Daniel Reich in New York and Saatchi Gallery in London and is part of MoMA's permanent collection. And last November three Miami artists - Bert Rodriguez, William Cordova and Adler Guerrier - were chosen for the Whitney Biennial, giving the budding scene a high-profile imprimatur.
Not insignificantly, the art scene also has the support of Miami developers and real estate brokers, who offer up free space to young artists and gallery owners for exhibitions as a way of adding cachet to marginal neighborhoods like Wynwood.
"Bank towers, unsold condos, empty office spaces, you name it," Mr. Lobo said. After all, many of the local art collectors are also real estate developers, among them Don and Mera Rubell, Craig Robins and Marty Margulies.
Hoteliers have also gotten into the act, turning lobbies and suites along South Beach into veritable galleries. Last October, the Sagamore Hotel commissioned the photographer Spencer Tunick to shoot photos and videos at the hotel. An image of 500 nude revelers was unveiled during Art Basel. And at the new Angler's Resort, the walls are adorned with luscious photos of indigenous flowers by the local photographer Sheila DeLemos.
The hubbub has more recently spread to the Design District, 18 blocks dotted with pastel-colored furniture stores from the 1920s and '30s. While several high-end design showrooms like Kartell and Vitra have set up there in recent years, the surplus of raw space has drawn numerous artists.
Indeed, if you're walking around and see a blacked-out storefront or a colorful unmarked door, chances are there's an art project in the works. Wander into the Moore Building - where Design Miami, the design offshoot to Art Basel Miami Beach, is held - and stumble across a white futuristic installation by the architect Zaha Hadid. Push through a door on the second floor and find yourself in the Moore Space, a nonprofit gallery that consistently exhibits internationally acclaimed artists like Tracey Emin and Paul McCarthy.
Or find your way inside the Art Deco Buena Vista office building, where you might see young artists and their friends hauling canvases to the top floor. It is the home of the Bas Fisher Invitational, a so-called "no-profit" space run by the artists Naomi Fisher and Jim Drain.
Behind one of the walls, through a secret cut-out in the sheet rock, is a studio filled with old slide projectors and yarn that is shared by Ms. Fisher and her boyfriend, Mr. Drain, an artist who recently moved to Miami from Rhode Island. In lieu of rent, Mr. Drain pays his landlord with works of art - most recently, a sculpture made of painted toilet seats. (The landlord, Craig Robins, is an avid art collector and a leading Design District developer.)
Around the corner, along a row of purple storefronts, is Nektar De Stagni's Shop, whose windows were recently filled with hundreds of pairs of Ferragamo shoes. Is it a boutique or gallery? Turns out, it is a little of both. Run by Nektar De Stagni, a fashion designer, and her boyfriend, the artist Martin Oppel, the storefront serves as a lifestyle boutique that sells Ms. De Stagni's glammed-up fashions, along with art books, T-shirts and jewelry by local artisans. In the back is a studio cluttered with paintbrushes and sewing machines.
BUT for many of the district's young artists, the shop also doubles as a party information booth. Ms. De Stagni, who moonlights as a D.J. (called Faux Real) at popular artist parties like Poplife on Saturdays at the White Room, is eager to pass along tidbits about the latest hot spots.
If it's the second Saturday of the month, she'll probably clue you into Second Saturday, a loosely organized arts circuit when many galleries time their new shows. Besides the usual white-wine receptions and mobbed openings, there are barbecue competitions judged by artists and impromptu D.J. sets at unlikely venues like Mike's at Venetia, an Irish sports bar on the ninth floor of a condo complex.
Even on nights when there are no receptions, the art party rages. At midnight on a recent Friday, a crowd had gathered at Circa 28, a chill bar that opened in Wynwood in December. It happened to be during the Art Basel fair, but there was not a dolled-up socialite or dark-suited corporate sponsor in sight. Abstract paintings hung crookedly on the walls, and young artists sat languidly under a bookshelf - in marked contrast to the hedonistic, bottle-service hangouts of South Beach. Outside on the deserted sidewalk, a truck pulled up and opened its flatbed to reveal a portable art exhibit and D.J. booth that began to play lounge music.
Soon people trickled out of the bar, beers and all, creating an ad hoc tailgate party. A police car was parked a block away but seemed uninterested. A good clean party is tolerated here, almost protected, in a neighborhood with a history of more serious crime.
No Need to Wait for Art Basel. It's an Art Fair All Year Long.
Miami's go-go art scene is no longer confined to the four-day December circus known as Art Basel Miami Beach. Galleries, private collections and alternative spaces are popping up faster than weeds, particularly in the Wynwood Art District and the Design District. Here are a few places to view art-fair caliber works all season long.
WYNWOOD ART DISTRICT
The Rubell Family Collection (95 Northwest 29th Street; 305-573-6090; www.rubellfamilycollection.com) seems to get bigger and more impressive every year. Housed in an austere warehouse formerly owned by the Drug Enforcement Agency, the collection recently added a leafy sculpture garden. Check out the wondrous videos by the Miami-based artist Hernan Bas, alongside works by the European artists Urs Fischer and Anselm Reyle, until May 31.
For emerging young artists, check out Twenty Twenty (2020 Northwest Miami Court, second floor; 786-217-7683; www.twentytwentyprojects.com), a year-old alternative space on a dodgy industrial stretch. It has generated much buzz for its high-grade talent and festive openings.
The Parisian gallery Emmanuel Perrotin has a satellite location in a former refrigerator warehouse (194 Northwest 30th Street; 305-573-2130; www.galerieperrotin.com). Works by the sculptor Peter Coffin and the French installation artist Tatiana Trove are on view.
Anthony Spinello, 25, runs the jewel-box-size Spinello Gallery (2294 Northwest Second Avenue; 786-271-4223; www.spinellogallery.com), with trendy openings that often feature graffiti and graphic artists.
Andreina Fuentes, owner of Hardcore Art Contemporary Space (3326 North Miami Avenue; 305-576-1645; www.hardcoreartcontemporary.com) fills the space with works centered around social and political issues and pop culture.
DESIGN DISTRICT
You can see tomorrow's art stars at the Bas Fisher Invitational (180 Northeast 39th Street, Suite 210), a so-called "no profit" gallery devoted to edgy, non-commercial work, started by the local artists Hernan Bas and Naomi Fisher.
The low-key Moore Space (4040 Northeast Second Avenue; 305-438-1163; www.themoorespace.org) has exquisitely curated contemporary art shows, thanks to the deep pockets of one of its patrons, Rosa de la Cruz. "French Kissin'," an exhibit of emerging French artists, is on view until March 8.
For a mix of art, fashion and music, stop by Nektar De Stagni's Shop (155 Northeast 38th Street; 786-556-3033; www.nektardestagni.com), a boudoir-esque boutique run by the local fashion designer and D.J. An adjoining studio is used by the artist Martin Oppel, who is also her boyfriend.
WHERE TO PARTY
Circa 28 (2826 North Miami Avenue; 305-722-1858; www.circa28.com), a bar in Wynwood, is decorated like a gentlemen's club and is often the spot for after-parties and impromptu musical performances by visiting bands like the Brazilian Girls and Rapture.
To dance with Miami's young art intelligentsia, hop over to Poplife (www.epoplife.com), the Saturday night party held at the White Room (1306 North Miami Avenue; 305-995-5050; www.whiteroommiami.com), a sleek club that opened in December on the edge of Overtown, an up-and-coming night-life district.
The trendy Japanese bistro Domo Japones (4000 Northeast Second Avenue; 305-573-5474) draws a post-opening crowd with innovative dishes like black edamame, and mirin-glazed short ribs. Dinner, about $75 for two including wine, is served until midnight.
Lost and Found Saloon (185 Northwest 36th Street; 305-576-1008; www.thelostandfoundsaloon-miami.com) is a popular pit stop for gallery hoppers and paint-splattered artists. The laid-back cafe has a campy, frontiersman décor and serves Southwestern fare like "posse energy burritos" ($6.75) and piñon-and-pepita-crusted tofu ($9.25).
At the same time, another crowd had gathered at World Class Boxing, an old gym in a strip mall about 20 blocks away that had been delicately transformed by art collectors into a climate-controlled gallery. Guests admired works by international artists like Jim Lambie and Olafur Eliasson as more drinks flowed - this time from the gallery owners' private wine label.
The most unusual thing about this art-saturated Saturday night in Miami was that it wasn't unusual at all. Since Art Basel Miami Beach touched down on this city's palm- and condo-strewn shores six years ago, a contemporary art wave has swept across Miami like a tropical storm. Art is everywhere, from the walls of boutique hotels where works by young art stars have replaced the stark minimalism of the 1990s, to what might be the nation's first contemporary art shopping mall, the Aventura Mall.
So if you missed all the hullabaloo of Art Basel, with its 43,000 visitors, countless receptions and exhibits crammed into four days in early December, not to worry. A dizzying amount of art and its whimsical after-parties now rages on all season long.
"Every gallery and institution plans their best shows during Art Basel," said Terence Riley, the director of the Miami Art Museum, who is spearheading an ambitious $220 million new home for the museum designed by the Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron. "But they generally stay up for a few months afterwards. It's a secret time to see international, museum-quality art."
The best part of heading down to Miami now for a sun-kissed art crawl is that there are no lines, super-tight guest lists or jacked-up hotel rates. Add to that several high-profile private collections, the meteoric rise of local artists and a rush of new galleries to showcase them, and Miami has matured from a fleeting, skin-deep art showcase into an unlikely cultural oasis.
And unlike cities with long artistic roots, Miami offers a uniquely high-low thrill: you can glimpse museum-grade art at impressive private galleries in the morning, then dodge loitering crack dealers and prostitutes in the afternoon, as you search for promising new talent in the city's sketchier areas.
"The Miami art scene is somewhere between young adulthood and late adolescence," Mr. Riley said. "It's no longer a kid, but it's still happy-go-lucky and trying to figure out what it wants to do with its future."
The prime place to witness Miami's art odyssey is not in glittery Miami Beach, but across Biscayne Bay, along the sun-bleached avenues of the once-derelict Wynwood Art District. Before Art Basel came to town, Wynwood was an industrial wasteland with just a handful of pioneering galleries and private collections like the Rubell Family Collection and the Margulies Collection at the Warehouse. But over the last few years, a bevy of enterprising new galleries have either relocated or opened up shop.
"CONTEMPORARY art is the new glamour," said Rosa de la Cruz, the Miami-based art collector and philanthropist. "Of course, there's a danger that it will become trendy. But it's better to have a glam image than a crime image."
Now there are some 70 galleries and counting, from upstarts like the Spinello Gallery and David Castillo Gallery, to internationally regarded galleries like Fredric Snitzer, Kevin Bruk and Emmanuel Perrotin. Sandwiched between tire shops and clothing wholesalers, their concrete facades are freshly painted in purples, pinks and charcoals - giving the area the feeling of a discount bohemian frontier, where idiosyncratic experiments in art and commerce are possible because of cheap rents, too much space and plenty of parking.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the quality of the work is uneven, ranging from captivating to horribly clichéd. During my visit in early December, I saw trite performances that involved a woman suspended from a harness, and art installations that looked like art school projects.
More thought-provoking work was found at Twenty Twenty, a scrappy gallery that opened near vacant lots where prostitutes and drug dealers ply their trade. It was started by Scott Murray, a 27-year-old with tousled hair and a sunburn who was wearing skinny jeans when he greeted me outside. Inside, scattered on the floor, was a piece called "How to Become A Millionaire in 100 Days." The artist, a 24-year-old named Jen Stark, spent 100 days tearing a million scraps of colored paper - a not-so subtle statement about the hyper-commercialized art market.
Hoping to see more, I accidentally pushed through a white curtain and ended up in Mr. Murray's tiny bedroom.
In this young art pond, places like Fredric Snitzer Gallery are held as the art establishment. A sort of godfather of the local art scene, Mr. Snitzer championed Miami artists like Hernan Bas and Naomi Fisher long before contemporary art was considered cool in Miami. Three years ago, he moved his gallery from Coral Gables to a sprawling warehouse in Wynwood.
"An adventurous collector can wade through and find something good amongst the heap," Mr. Snitzer said of Wynwood. "A space will have terrible shows for months and then a great one. You really have to look."
Where you won't have to look too hard is at the district's private art collections. Places like Rubell and Margulies have blossomed in recent years into world-class viewing opportunities, and their numbers continue to grow.
Among the splashiest is the Cisneros Fontanals Arts Foundation, founded in 2002 by the Venezuelan philanthropist Ella Fontanals-Cisneros. From the outside, the collection looks like a glassy high-end boutique - a stark contrast to the surrounding concrete blight. Inside, the gleaming structure has works by Damien Hirst, Mateo López and Ai Weiwei that would be the envy of any contemporary art museum.
After dark, the Wynwood art scene moves to a clutch of new restaurants and bars that few of Art Basel's high-rolling sophisticates would be caught dead in. Popular among the upwardly mobile art set is the Lost and Found Saloon, a kitschy Western-themed restaurant with wagon-wheel chandeliers, a desertscape mural and cowhide wall hangings.
I was joined there on a recent Tuesday by two artists in their late 20s, Daniel Newman and Nick Lobo, who were making a pit stop between visits with gallery owners. "Before Miami had import-export and tourism," said Mr. Lobo, a sculptor who attended Cooper Union in New York City but has returned to Miami to jump-start his career. "Now art is our No. 1 export."
That might be an overstatement, but since Art Basel was first held in 2002, Miami artists have been snapped up by galleries in New York, Tokyo and Berlin. Hernan Bas, for example - Miami-born and known for his romantic, vaguely homoerotic paintings - now exhibits at Daniel Reich in New York and Saatchi Gallery in London and is part of MoMA's permanent collection. And last November three Miami artists - Bert Rodriguez, William Cordova and Adler Guerrier - were chosen for the Whitney Biennial, giving the budding scene a high-profile imprimatur.
Not insignificantly, the art scene also has the support of Miami developers and real estate brokers, who offer up free space to young artists and gallery owners for exhibitions as a way of adding cachet to marginal neighborhoods like Wynwood.
"Bank towers, unsold condos, empty office spaces, you name it," Mr. Lobo said. After all, many of the local art collectors are also real estate developers, among them Don and Mera Rubell, Craig Robins and Marty Margulies.
Hoteliers have also gotten into the act, turning lobbies and suites along South Beach into veritable galleries. Last October, the Sagamore Hotel commissioned the photographer Spencer Tunick to shoot photos and videos at the hotel. An image of 500 nude revelers was unveiled during Art Basel. And at the new Angler's Resort, the walls are adorned with luscious photos of indigenous flowers by the local photographer Sheila DeLemos.
The hubbub has more recently spread to the Design District, 18 blocks dotted with pastel-colored furniture stores from the 1920s and '30s. While several high-end design showrooms like Kartell and Vitra have set up there in recent years, the surplus of raw space has drawn numerous artists.
Indeed, if you're walking around and see a blacked-out storefront or a colorful unmarked door, chances are there's an art project in the works. Wander into the Moore Building - where Design Miami, the design offshoot to Art Basel Miami Beach, is held - and stumble across a white futuristic installation by the architect Zaha Hadid. Push through a door on the second floor and find yourself in the Moore Space, a nonprofit gallery that consistently exhibits internationally acclaimed artists like Tracey Emin and Paul McCarthy.
Or find your way inside the Art Deco Buena Vista office building, where you might see young artists and their friends hauling canvases to the top floor. It is the home of the Bas Fisher Invitational, a so-called "no-profit" space run by the artists Naomi Fisher and Jim Drain.
Behind one of the walls, through a secret cut-out in the sheet rock, is a studio filled with old slide projectors and yarn that is shared by Ms. Fisher and her boyfriend, Mr. Drain, an artist who recently moved to Miami from Rhode Island. In lieu of rent, Mr. Drain pays his landlord with works of art - most recently, a sculpture made of painted toilet seats. (The landlord, Craig Robins, is an avid art collector and a leading Design District developer.)
Around the corner, along a row of purple storefronts, is Nektar De Stagni's Shop, whose windows were recently filled with hundreds of pairs of Ferragamo shoes. Is it a boutique or gallery? Turns out, it is a little of both. Run by Nektar De Stagni, a fashion designer, and her boyfriend, the artist Martin Oppel, the storefront serves as a lifestyle boutique that sells Ms. De Stagni's glammed-up fashions, along with art books, T-shirts and jewelry by local artisans. In the back is a studio cluttered with paintbrushes and sewing machines.
BUT for many of the district's young artists, the shop also doubles as a party information booth. Ms. De Stagni, who moonlights as a D.J. (called Faux Real) at popular artist parties like Poplife on Saturdays at the White Room, is eager to pass along tidbits about the latest hot spots.
If it's the second Saturday of the month, she'll probably clue you into Second Saturday, a loosely organized arts circuit when many galleries time their new shows. Besides the usual white-wine receptions and mobbed openings, there are barbecue competitions judged by artists and impromptu D.J. sets at unlikely venues like Mike's at Venetia, an Irish sports bar on the ninth floor of a condo complex.
Even on nights when there are no receptions, the art party rages. At midnight on a recent Friday, a crowd had gathered at Circa 28, a chill bar that opened in Wynwood in December. It happened to be during the Art Basel fair, but there was not a dolled-up socialite or dark-suited corporate sponsor in sight. Abstract paintings hung crookedly on the walls, and young artists sat languidly under a bookshelf - in marked contrast to the hedonistic, bottle-service hangouts of South Beach. Outside on the deserted sidewalk, a truck pulled up and opened its flatbed to reveal a portable art exhibit and D.J. booth that began to play lounge music.
Soon people trickled out of the bar, beers and all, creating an ad hoc tailgate party. A police car was parked a block away but seemed uninterested. A good clean party is tolerated here, almost protected, in a neighborhood with a history of more serious crime.
No Need to Wait for Art Basel. It's an Art Fair All Year Long.
Miami's go-go art scene is no longer confined to the four-day December circus known as Art Basel Miami Beach. Galleries, private collections and alternative spaces are popping up faster than weeds, particularly in the Wynwood Art District and the Design District. Here are a few places to view art-fair caliber works all season long.
WYNWOOD ART DISTRICT
The Rubell Family Collection (95 Northwest 29th Street; 305-573-6090; www.rubellfamilycollection.com) seems to get bigger and more impressive every year. Housed in an austere warehouse formerly owned by the Drug Enforcement Agency, the collection recently added a leafy sculpture garden. Check out the wondrous videos by the Miami-based artist Hernan Bas, alongside works by the European artists Urs Fischer and Anselm Reyle, until May 31.
For emerging young artists, check out Twenty Twenty (2020 Northwest Miami Court, second floor; 786-217-7683; www.twentytwentyprojects.com), a year-old alternative space on a dodgy industrial stretch. It has generated much buzz for its high-grade talent and festive openings.
The Parisian gallery Emmanuel Perrotin has a satellite location in a former refrigerator warehouse (194 Northwest 30th Street; 305-573-2130; www.galerieperrotin.com). Works by the sculptor Peter Coffin and the French installation artist Tatiana Trove are on view.
Anthony Spinello, 25, runs the jewel-box-size Spinello Gallery (2294 Northwest Second Avenue; 786-271-4223; www.spinellogallery.com), with trendy openings that often feature graffiti and graphic artists.
Andreina Fuentes, owner of Hardcore Art Contemporary Space (3326 North Miami Avenue; 305-576-1645; www.hardcoreartcontemporary.com) fills the space with works centered around social and political issues and pop culture.
DESIGN DISTRICT
You can see tomorrow's art stars at the Bas Fisher Invitational (180 Northeast 39th Street, Suite 210), a so-called "no profit" gallery devoted to edgy, non-commercial work, started by the local artists Hernan Bas and Naomi Fisher.
The low-key Moore Space (4040 Northeast Second Avenue; 305-438-1163; www.themoorespace.org) has exquisitely curated contemporary art shows, thanks to the deep pockets of one of its patrons, Rosa de la Cruz. "French Kissin'," an exhibit of emerging French artists, is on view until March 8.
For a mix of art, fashion and music, stop by Nektar De Stagni's Shop (155 Northeast 38th Street; 786-556-3033; www.nektardestagni.com), a boudoir-esque boutique run by the local fashion designer and D.J. An adjoining studio is used by the artist Martin Oppel, who is also her boyfriend.
WHERE TO PARTY
Circa 28 (2826 North Miami Avenue; 305-722-1858; www.circa28.com), a bar in Wynwood, is decorated like a gentlemen's club and is often the spot for after-parties and impromptu musical performances by visiting bands like the Brazilian Girls and Rapture.
To dance with Miami's young art intelligentsia, hop over to Poplife (www.epoplife.com), the Saturday night party held at the White Room (1306 North Miami Avenue; 305-995-5050; www.whiteroommiami.com), a sleek club that opened in December on the edge of Overtown, an up-and-coming night-life district.
The trendy Japanese bistro Domo Japones (4000 Northeast Second Avenue; 305-573-5474) draws a post-opening crowd with innovative dishes like black edamame, and mirin-glazed short ribs. Dinner, about $75 for two including wine, is served until midnight.
Lost and Found Saloon (185 Northwest 36th Street; 305-576-1008; www.thelostandfoundsaloon-miami.com) is a popular pit stop for gallery hoppers and paint-splattered artists. The laid-back cafe has a campy, frontiersman décor and serves Southwestern fare like "posse energy burritos" ($6.75) and piñon-and-pepita-crusted tofu ($9.25).
 |
The New York Times
By Julia Chaplin
November 27, 2005 Parties, Boldface Names and, Yes, Some Art |
The most sought after invitation at Art Basel Miami Beach, the four-day annual art fair spinoff from Basel, Switzerland, that began in Miami Beach in 2002, has always been the lavish garden party at the Key Biscayne estate of Rosa de la Cruz, the Cuban-born art collector, and her husband, Carlos, chairman of Eagle Brands. Held the Tuesday night before the fair opens, it's where prominent art world figures have sipped champagne overlooking the ocean and viewed the couple's museum-quality contemporary art collection. But last December, after more then 2,000 people showed up to a dinner for 700 people, a few so unruly that they had to be escorted out by security people, Ms. de la Cruz, pulled the plug on her celebration.
"Friends said, just make people wear wristbands this time," said Ms. de la Cruz?. "But I would be embarrassed to do that at a private house. I guess the fair has outgrown my home."
Such are the growing pains of what has become the biggest contemporary art fair in the world and increasingly a "must stop" on international social calendars. Last year over 35,000 people attended the fair, according to Art Basel Miami Beach's director, Samuel Keller. This year, beginning on Dec. 1, thousands more, with their asymmetrical haircuts, platinum cards, and/or European accents, are expected to descend on Miami Beach's convention center where 195 galleries from Sao Paolo to Tel Aviv will be exhibiting. And that doesn't even include the ever-expanding sprawl that has cropped up around the show, with alternative art fairs, rogue openings and parties held in slickly designed hotel lobbies, boozy dive bars and warehouses in emerging arts districts across the bay in greater Miami.
But when too may people arrive at the party, especially when an increasing number have more interest in the open bar than in buying art, is that a good thing?
"Its starting to feel like Cannes film festival," said Jeffrey Deitch, the New York-based gallery owner whose party, the "it" event for the 10 p.m.-to-2 a.m. time slot on Wednesday night, will have the Citizens Band, a loose collective of 26 artists, performing cabaret-style around the oh-so-chic Raleigh Hotel pool. "But I think it's healthy for the art world because it creates a dynamic situation."
If anything, the fair's appeal reflects a general mainstreaming of contemporary art. Art Basel Miami Beach is a trend-spotter's paradise, where the latest ideas in art, fashion and music are on display in one electric setting.
Naturally, the corporate world wants in. Gift bags stuffed with T-shirts and schwag, corporate banners and logoed invitations are now staples at the dizzying number of after-parties and receptions as brands in-cluding DKNY, Bombay Sapphire and Gucci piggyback on the fair's reputation. And Fer-ragamo, will be host for a luncheon for area socialites on a yacht rented out for the fair by Esquire magazine.
"It's about spreading more of an underground vibe in terms of what our brand stands for," said James Gager, creative director for MAC cosmetics, comparing the Miami Beach affair to other events the company sponsors during the Oscars and Golden Globes. (MAC is sponsoring Mr. Deitch's party at the Raleigh.) Hotels have been booked up since early October, despite inflated room rates 40 percent above normal prices and four- and five-night minimum stays, according to Nicholas Christopher, president of Turon Travel, the official travel agent for the fair.
In mid-November, the Victor was charging $815 for rooms, while the Delano had a deluxe city-view room for $830. The Sagamore had sold out of $630 standard suites.
And R.S.V.P. lists for hot-ticket events such as Visionaire's "Taste" party for 500 lucky guests at the recently opened Setai Hotel, where rooms start at $900 a night, are full up. This may be why many important art collectors and V.I.P.'s jet in on Tuesday before the fair starts for private viewings and dinners and leave town the day the fair opens to the public.
"Obviously we'd prefer attracting big collectors or art students then just a group of people who don't know what to do on the weekends," said Mr. Keller. "But we see no reason why one can't party while being very serious about the quality of art."
But the much-hyped socializing, instead of diluting the fair's purpose, may have the side-effect bonus of contributing to the value of the contemporary art market. "Collectors want the scene to be fun and have a good time," said Mr. Deitch, who says he jogs every morning on the beach to maintain his stamina during the fair. "It's part of the reason why there is so much excitement around contemporary art right now. Last year at a party we co-hosted with Taschen for Terry Richardson, Benedikt ended up naked in the pool. The fair shouldn't feel like its work." Mr. Deitch was referring to Benedikt Taschen, the publisher of art books.
Exclusive private dinners at collectors' homes, like the one Craig Robbins is giving for Zaha Hadid, the Pritzker architecture prize winner, are not yet extinct, but are much harder to finagle. Mr. Robbins, a real estate developer, is starting a companion design fair at the same time as the art event, called design.05 that will show the work of architects and designers including Ms. Hadid, Ron Arad and Mattia Bonetti in galleries throughout the design district.
But this year, in the spirit of art's democratic nature, many events are designed to be more inclusive.
Collectors are now holding morning receptions, a safer way to let the public view their art, as most hard-core revelers will still be sleeping off their hangovers. But it will be worth setting alarms for the debut breakfast of the curated private collection of Ella Fontanals Cisneros, a Venezuelan philanthropist, in a 12,000-square-foot converted boxing gym in downtown Miami along with exhibited such artists as Marina Abramovic and Bill Viola.
The Delano Hotel is actually putting away the velvet rope for its Art Bar evening events featuring celebrity hosts including Lauren Hutton and Ms. Hadid. "Last year there was some frustration about not getting into parties because of tight guest lists so we just decided to let everyone in," said Mark Tamis, general manager of the Delano. "It's not like the summer where we need to pick and chose to get the right crowd."
Furthermore, the next young art star probably has better and more cutting-edge parties to attend. And the obsession with discovering this new talent has reached a frenzied pitch. At least four alternative fairs will showcase "emerging artists" this year. Scope Miami has 70 exhibitors set up in the guest rooms of the Townhouse hotel; Aqua Art Miami will have 35 at the Aqua Hotel; 60 galleries will try their luck at Pulse in a 30,000-square-foot space in the Wynwood district of Miami; and the New Art Dealers Alliance, a favorite among the hip cognoscenti when it made its debut at the Ice Palace Film Studios in downtown Miami last year, is a cooperative effort involving 83 galleries in 18 countries.
The art fair has kept pace by expanding its emerging artists section, called Art Nova, where 54 booths will sell works that have been made in the last two years. Most of them cost under $5,000.
"The problem is there is not enough young talent to meet the demand," said Dennis Scholl, a Miami-based collector whose recently renovated private collection space, World Class Boxing, will open during the fair with an exhibit by Julie Mehretu, a painter who won a MacArthur "genius award" in September. "But the thing is, you never know at which out-of-the-way exhibit one might turn up," Mr. Scholl said.
Which explains why chauffeur-driven BMW's will be prowling around the sun-bleached streets of Wynwood, an industrial area filled with wholesale outlets and factories across the bay from Miami Beach.
Miami's fast-track art scene is now firmly entrenched in Wynwood. Near the already established Rubell Family Collection and the Margulies Collection at the Warehouse are several new high-profile offerings that will debut during this year's fair. The Paris-based gallery owner Emmanuel Perrotin will open his complex, designed by Chad Op-penheim, the minimalist Miami architect, in a converted I950's Miami Modern concrete building, with a show of emerging artists, and the MOCA at Goldman Warehouse will unlock its iron gate a few blocks away with a virtual funhouse, called "Cloud City," by the Miami art duo Friends With You. One of Miami's most important dealers of young artists' work, Fredric Snitzer, recently relocated to the neighborhood and will have an opening by emerging art stars Luis Gispert and Jeffrey Reed. The vacant lot next door is being converted into a drive-in theater with old cars as seating for art videos projected on a concrete wall.
Still, the best place to spot new talent will likely be in plain view right on Collins Ave nue in South Beach. The French proprietors of Le Baron, the Paris nightclub of the moment, are taking over the divey karaoke bar in basement of the Shelborne hotel for five nights, the perfect place for the art world's hi-lo inhabitants to collide late into the strobe-lit night.
"Friends said, just make people wear wristbands this time," said Ms. de la Cruz?. "But I would be embarrassed to do that at a private house. I guess the fair has outgrown my home."
Such are the growing pains of what has become the biggest contemporary art fair in the world and increasingly a "must stop" on international social calendars. Last year over 35,000 people attended the fair, according to Art Basel Miami Beach's director, Samuel Keller. This year, beginning on Dec. 1, thousands more, with their asymmetrical haircuts, platinum cards, and/or European accents, are expected to descend on Miami Beach's convention center where 195 galleries from Sao Paolo to Tel Aviv will be exhibiting. And that doesn't even include the ever-expanding sprawl that has cropped up around the show, with alternative art fairs, rogue openings and parties held in slickly designed hotel lobbies, boozy dive bars and warehouses in emerging arts districts across the bay in greater Miami.
But when too may people arrive at the party, especially when an increasing number have more interest in the open bar than in buying art, is that a good thing?
"Its starting to feel like Cannes film festival," said Jeffrey Deitch, the New York-based gallery owner whose party, the "it" event for the 10 p.m.-to-2 a.m. time slot on Wednesday night, will have the Citizens Band, a loose collective of 26 artists, performing cabaret-style around the oh-so-chic Raleigh Hotel pool. "But I think it's healthy for the art world because it creates a dynamic situation."
If anything, the fair's appeal reflects a general mainstreaming of contemporary art. Art Basel Miami Beach is a trend-spotter's paradise, where the latest ideas in art, fashion and music are on display in one electric setting.
Naturally, the corporate world wants in. Gift bags stuffed with T-shirts and schwag, corporate banners and logoed invitations are now staples at the dizzying number of after-parties and receptions as brands in-cluding DKNY, Bombay Sapphire and Gucci piggyback on the fair's reputation. And Fer-ragamo, will be host for a luncheon for area socialites on a yacht rented out for the fair by Esquire magazine.
"It's about spreading more of an underground vibe in terms of what our brand stands for," said James Gager, creative director for MAC cosmetics, comparing the Miami Beach affair to other events the company sponsors during the Oscars and Golden Globes. (MAC is sponsoring Mr. Deitch's party at the Raleigh.) Hotels have been booked up since early October, despite inflated room rates 40 percent above normal prices and four- and five-night minimum stays, according to Nicholas Christopher, president of Turon Travel, the official travel agent for the fair.
In mid-November, the Victor was charging $815 for rooms, while the Delano had a deluxe city-view room for $830. The Sagamore had sold out of $630 standard suites.
And R.S.V.P. lists for hot-ticket events such as Visionaire's "Taste" party for 500 lucky guests at the recently opened Setai Hotel, where rooms start at $900 a night, are full up. This may be why many important art collectors and V.I.P.'s jet in on Tuesday before the fair starts for private viewings and dinners and leave town the day the fair opens to the public.
"Obviously we'd prefer attracting big collectors or art students then just a group of people who don't know what to do on the weekends," said Mr. Keller. "But we see no reason why one can't party while being very serious about the quality of art."
But the much-hyped socializing, instead of diluting the fair's purpose, may have the side-effect bonus of contributing to the value of the contemporary art market. "Collectors want the scene to be fun and have a good time," said Mr. Deitch, who says he jogs every morning on the beach to maintain his stamina during the fair. "It's part of the reason why there is so much excitement around contemporary art right now. Last year at a party we co-hosted with Taschen for Terry Richardson, Benedikt ended up naked in the pool. The fair shouldn't feel like its work." Mr. Deitch was referring to Benedikt Taschen, the publisher of art books.
Exclusive private dinners at collectors' homes, like the one Craig Robbins is giving for Zaha Hadid, the Pritzker architecture prize winner, are not yet extinct, but are much harder to finagle. Mr. Robbins, a real estate developer, is starting a companion design fair at the same time as the art event, called design.05 that will show the work of architects and designers including Ms. Hadid, Ron Arad and Mattia Bonetti in galleries throughout the design district.
But this year, in the spirit of art's democratic nature, many events are designed to be more inclusive.
Collectors are now holding morning receptions, a safer way to let the public view their art, as most hard-core revelers will still be sleeping off their hangovers. But it will be worth setting alarms for the debut breakfast of the curated private collection of Ella Fontanals Cisneros, a Venezuelan philanthropist, in a 12,000-square-foot converted boxing gym in downtown Miami along with exhibited such artists as Marina Abramovic and Bill Viola.
The Delano Hotel is actually putting away the velvet rope for its Art Bar evening events featuring celebrity hosts including Lauren Hutton and Ms. Hadid. "Last year there was some frustration about not getting into parties because of tight guest lists so we just decided to let everyone in," said Mark Tamis, general manager of the Delano. "It's not like the summer where we need to pick and chose to get the right crowd."
Furthermore, the next young art star probably has better and more cutting-edge parties to attend. And the obsession with discovering this new talent has reached a frenzied pitch. At least four alternative fairs will showcase "emerging artists" this year. Scope Miami has 70 exhibitors set up in the guest rooms of the Townhouse hotel; Aqua Art Miami will have 35 at the Aqua Hotel; 60 galleries will try their luck at Pulse in a 30,000-square-foot space in the Wynwood district of Miami; and the New Art Dealers Alliance, a favorite among the hip cognoscenti when it made its debut at the Ice Palace Film Studios in downtown Miami last year, is a cooperative effort involving 83 galleries in 18 countries.
The art fair has kept pace by expanding its emerging artists section, called Art Nova, where 54 booths will sell works that have been made in the last two years. Most of them cost under $5,000.
"The problem is there is not enough young talent to meet the demand," said Dennis Scholl, a Miami-based collector whose recently renovated private collection space, World Class Boxing, will open during the fair with an exhibit by Julie Mehretu, a painter who won a MacArthur "genius award" in September. "But the thing is, you never know at which out-of-the-way exhibit one might turn up," Mr. Scholl said.
Which explains why chauffeur-driven BMW's will be prowling around the sun-bleached streets of Wynwood, an industrial area filled with wholesale outlets and factories across the bay from Miami Beach.
Miami's fast-track art scene is now firmly entrenched in Wynwood. Near the already established Rubell Family Collection and the Margulies Collection at the Warehouse are several new high-profile offerings that will debut during this year's fair. The Paris-based gallery owner Emmanuel Perrotin will open his complex, designed by Chad Op-penheim, the minimalist Miami architect, in a converted I950's Miami Modern concrete building, with a show of emerging artists, and the MOCA at Goldman Warehouse will unlock its iron gate a few blocks away with a virtual funhouse, called "Cloud City," by the Miami art duo Friends With You. One of Miami's most important dealers of young artists' work, Fredric Snitzer, recently relocated to the neighborhood and will have an opening by emerging art stars Luis Gispert and Jeffrey Reed. The vacant lot next door is being converted into a drive-in theater with old cars as seating for art videos projected on a concrete wall.
Still, the best place to spot new talent will likely be in plain view right on Collins Ave nue in South Beach. The French proprietors of Le Baron, the Paris nightclub of the moment, are taking over the divey karaoke bar in basement of the Shelborne hotel for five nights, the perfect place for the art world's hi-lo inhabitants to collide late into the strobe-lit night.
|
The New York Times
By PAMELA ROBIN BRANDT
May 21, 2004 In Miami, a Landlocked District Is Making a Splash |
For Trey Spiegel, who lives in an apartment in the gritty meat-packing district of Manhattan, the role of urban pioneer has been a familiar one for more than two decades. ''I had a brownstone in Brooklyn before that became cool,'' explains Mr. Spiegel, who is the art director of US Weekly. ''I have a vacation home on the Delaware River,'' he said, ''and was going to get T-shirts printed up that said, 'This Is Not the Hamptons.' '' When he moved to Avenue B in the East Village of Manhattan in 1982, he recalls, one editor at Vogue, where he was working at the time, grabbed his arm and implored him, ''No, my dear! You can't.''
So, true to form, when Mr. Spiegel decided to buy a vacation spot in Miami, he shunned the more fashionable waterfront neighborhoods of South Beach and Star Island and instead bought a studio condo in the city's relatively little known ? and decidedly landlocked ? Design District.
Roughly 20 blocks north of the Downtown section of Miami, the Design District got its name from the many upscale furniture showrooms that were in the area in the first half of the 20th century. Among the most notable was the famed (and still-standing) building whose imposing four-story columned interior atrium housed the business of T. W. Moore, a 1920's pineapple planter turned furniture tycoon. Over the years, though, the area fell on hard times, eventually succumbing to drug-riddled decrepitude after a series of riots in the 1980's.
But in recent years, led by internationally known design companies like Holly Hunt and Via Solferino, the Square Mile of Style (the district's nickname from before the riots) has emerged as a hot commercial- and creative-arts area. On wide, squeaky-clean streets and sidewalks that seem made for strolling, spruced-up showroom and gallery buildings, with looks ranging from old Spanish stucco to glass-and-concrete warehouse industrial, are peppered with public-art eye candy. Conelike metal brassieres jut from the humorously rehabbed Madonna building on North Miami Avenue and Northeast 39th Street. A three-story outdoor cutaway living room, created by the husband-wife art team of Roberto Behar and Rosario Marquardt, looms over a one-story building a block north. And there is the sculptor Antonio Miralda's huge mirror-tiled high-heeled shoe in the courtyard of the Melin Building at 180 Northeast 40th Street. Among the newest projects are a 6,500-square-foot glass-and-concrete showroom that the real estate developer Craig Robins is building for Fendi Casa's first home-furnishings collection in the United States.
The showrooms and design stores are increasingly sharing sidewalk space with developments like the Aria, a 14-story residential-retail complex scheduled to open next year where Mr. Spiegel has his condo. Meanwhile, Mr. Robins's firm, Dacra, has a smaller arts-oriented mixed-use living-working space, Palm Court, planned among its 35 mostly commercial projects scheduled for completion by 2006 in the Design District. He has already converted the top two floors of the Moore Building to 40 arts-oriented work-residence studios.
Other condo projects under construction include a second Aria building and Ice, currently a hole in the ground but soon to be a 36-story glass-walled tower slightly southeast of the Design District; its developers say it is 95 percent sold. Tony Cho, a real estate agent and a former South Beach nightclub owner, is renovating several warehouses on the northern fringes of the nearby Buena Vista residential neighborhood into luxury lofts with 19-foot ceilings.
The Design District is being quickly redefined by real estate agents to describe not only the square-mile area itself, but also the less-developed and largely residential neighborhoods on its fringe, like Buena Vista to the north and Wynwood just to the southwest. ''That whole 33137 ZIP code was just ranked one of the U.S.A.'s top ZIP's in terms of appreciation in value,'' said Jeff Morr, president of Majestic Properties, referring to a recent CNN/Money report. ''In the next three years,'' added Mr. Morr, whose company is marketing Aria, ''there will be no less than 40 new condo high rises with over 20,000 new apartments going up there and in nearby areas.'' About 3,000 of those will be in Midtown Miami ? a pedestrian-friendly project that will also have a hotel, cafes and stores ? to be built on 56 acres at Northeast 36 Street, just south of the Design District.
Easy access to some of Miami's better-known attractions seems to be a key reason for the district's new popularity. ''People like the idea of proximity to South Beach ? five minutes away,'' Mr. Morr said.
Terence Riley, the chief architecture and design curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, agreed that being ''halfway between the airport and South Beach'' is among the district's key selling points. He is designing and building two 1,600-square-foot courtyard houses with John Bennett, a New York architect, and Mr. Robins, the real estate developer. The glass pavilions, inspired by Mies van der Rohe, will be on Northeast 43rd Street, just north of the official Design District.
''I am looking for something that's an alternative to New York but still urban,'' Mr. Riley said. ''I imagine that someday the Design District will be a walking neighborhood.''
That day is certainly not here yet. The streets surrounding the Aria are largely deserted after business hours, and places where vacationing residents can eat, dance or buy sunscreen, for example, are nearly nonexistent. ''I think, 'What am I doing buying there when I hardly know anything about the area and the building isn't even there?' '' Mr. Spiegel said.
He said he bought his condo after seeing an ad for the project while he was visiting South Beach in February. He got the smallest of the so-called residential lofts ? 25 by 25 feet with 10-foot ceilings and a 240-square-foot balcony ? for $230,000. ''It's the kind of space I would have in Manhattan, if I could afford it there,'' he said. ''And I kind of missed out on pioneering in South Beach for that price. Plus it was very cold this winter. It was kind of an impulse buy.''
Karen Mock of Coldwell Banker, who sells mostly in Buena Vista, said she was seeing a shift in the kind of buyers in the area. ''I sold mostly to out-of-towners in the last year, but for use as primary residences,'' she said. ''For second-home buyers, it'll happen soon. It's like having a house in the Hamptons, for one-third to half the price.'' Her top listing, for $589,900, is a restored coral rock-fronted three-bedroom, two-bathroom house, with a separate cottage, on an extra-large lot. Many of the other houses for sale are from $200,000 to $400,000.
It's not just the relatively low cost that is attracting buyers. ''The architecture is incredible,'' said Danny Santiago, a fashion stylist who has lived in Manhattan and Buena Vista for the last seven years. ''The full range of Miami styles is here: bungalow like mine, Deco, Mediterranean, Arts and Crafts, even Moorish-looking places.''
There are signs that a cosmopolitan style may be taking root. On some nights, the velvet roping at Grass, a hot restaurant lounge, goes up at 7:30. District, a more neighborhood-oriented spot with a reasonably priced menu, opened this month. And talks are under way with a fine-foods grocery for the Aria's ground-floor retail level. Midtown Miami's planned retail component will provide additional amenities beyond the district's trendy furniture stores. ''Our goal is to see that the Design District is alive 24 hours a day, seven days a week,'' said Mr. Morr of Majestic Properties.
Homeowners are counting on that. ''I would never have bought over here instead of South Beach if I thought this area would stay the same instead of growing into a genuine urban cultural neighborhood that's fun to walk around,'' said Tom Semmel, who owns a poster-licensing company in New York. He recently bought an 1,800-square-foot loft-style duplex in the Ice complex. ''The condo is cutting edge,'' he said. ''But let's face facts ? the area is still somewhat dilapidated. I'm buying the future.''
So, true to form, when Mr. Spiegel decided to buy a vacation spot in Miami, he shunned the more fashionable waterfront neighborhoods of South Beach and Star Island and instead bought a studio condo in the city's relatively little known ? and decidedly landlocked ? Design District.
Roughly 20 blocks north of the Downtown section of Miami, the Design District got its name from the many upscale furniture showrooms that were in the area in the first half of the 20th century. Among the most notable was the famed (and still-standing) building whose imposing four-story columned interior atrium housed the business of T. W. Moore, a 1920's pineapple planter turned furniture tycoon. Over the years, though, the area fell on hard times, eventually succumbing to drug-riddled decrepitude after a series of riots in the 1980's.
But in recent years, led by internationally known design companies like Holly Hunt and Via Solferino, the Square Mile of Style (the district's nickname from before the riots) has emerged as a hot commercial- and creative-arts area. On wide, squeaky-clean streets and sidewalks that seem made for strolling, spruced-up showroom and gallery buildings, with looks ranging from old Spanish stucco to glass-and-concrete warehouse industrial, are peppered with public-art eye candy. Conelike metal brassieres jut from the humorously rehabbed Madonna building on North Miami Avenue and Northeast 39th Street. A three-story outdoor cutaway living room, created by the husband-wife art team of Roberto Behar and Rosario Marquardt, looms over a one-story building a block north. And there is the sculptor Antonio Miralda's huge mirror-tiled high-heeled shoe in the courtyard of the Melin Building at 180 Northeast 40th Street. Among the newest projects are a 6,500-square-foot glass-and-concrete showroom that the real estate developer Craig Robins is building for Fendi Casa's first home-furnishings collection in the United States.
The showrooms and design stores are increasingly sharing sidewalk space with developments like the Aria, a 14-story residential-retail complex scheduled to open next year where Mr. Spiegel has his condo. Meanwhile, Mr. Robins's firm, Dacra, has a smaller arts-oriented mixed-use living-working space, Palm Court, planned among its 35 mostly commercial projects scheduled for completion by 2006 in the Design District. He has already converted the top two floors of the Moore Building to 40 arts-oriented work-residence studios.
Other condo projects under construction include a second Aria building and Ice, currently a hole in the ground but soon to be a 36-story glass-walled tower slightly southeast of the Design District; its developers say it is 95 percent sold. Tony Cho, a real estate agent and a former South Beach nightclub owner, is renovating several warehouses on the northern fringes of the nearby Buena Vista residential neighborhood into luxury lofts with 19-foot ceilings.
The Design District is being quickly redefined by real estate agents to describe not only the square-mile area itself, but also the less-developed and largely residential neighborhoods on its fringe, like Buena Vista to the north and Wynwood just to the southwest. ''That whole 33137 ZIP code was just ranked one of the U.S.A.'s top ZIP's in terms of appreciation in value,'' said Jeff Morr, president of Majestic Properties, referring to a recent CNN/Money report. ''In the next three years,'' added Mr. Morr, whose company is marketing Aria, ''there will be no less than 40 new condo high rises with over 20,000 new apartments going up there and in nearby areas.'' About 3,000 of those will be in Midtown Miami ? a pedestrian-friendly project that will also have a hotel, cafes and stores ? to be built on 56 acres at Northeast 36 Street, just south of the Design District.
Easy access to some of Miami's better-known attractions seems to be a key reason for the district's new popularity. ''People like the idea of proximity to South Beach ? five minutes away,'' Mr. Morr said.
Terence Riley, the chief architecture and design curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, agreed that being ''halfway between the airport and South Beach'' is among the district's key selling points. He is designing and building two 1,600-square-foot courtyard houses with John Bennett, a New York architect, and Mr. Robins, the real estate developer. The glass pavilions, inspired by Mies van der Rohe, will be on Northeast 43rd Street, just north of the official Design District.
''I am looking for something that's an alternative to New York but still urban,'' Mr. Riley said. ''I imagine that someday the Design District will be a walking neighborhood.''
That day is certainly not here yet. The streets surrounding the Aria are largely deserted after business hours, and places where vacationing residents can eat, dance or buy sunscreen, for example, are nearly nonexistent. ''I think, 'What am I doing buying there when I hardly know anything about the area and the building isn't even there?' '' Mr. Spiegel said.
He said he bought his condo after seeing an ad for the project while he was visiting South Beach in February. He got the smallest of the so-called residential lofts ? 25 by 25 feet with 10-foot ceilings and a 240-square-foot balcony ? for $230,000. ''It's the kind of space I would have in Manhattan, if I could afford it there,'' he said. ''And I kind of missed out on pioneering in South Beach for that price. Plus it was very cold this winter. It was kind of an impulse buy.''
Karen Mock of Coldwell Banker, who sells mostly in Buena Vista, said she was seeing a shift in the kind of buyers in the area. ''I sold mostly to out-of-towners in the last year, but for use as primary residences,'' she said. ''For second-home buyers, it'll happen soon. It's like having a house in the Hamptons, for one-third to half the price.'' Her top listing, for $589,900, is a restored coral rock-fronted three-bedroom, two-bathroom house, with a separate cottage, on an extra-large lot. Many of the other houses for sale are from $200,000 to $400,000.
It's not just the relatively low cost that is attracting buyers. ''The architecture is incredible,'' said Danny Santiago, a fashion stylist who has lived in Manhattan and Buena Vista for the last seven years. ''The full range of Miami styles is here: bungalow like mine, Deco, Mediterranean, Arts and Crafts, even Moorish-looking places.''
There are signs that a cosmopolitan style may be taking root. On some nights, the velvet roping at Grass, a hot restaurant lounge, goes up at 7:30. District, a more neighborhood-oriented spot with a reasonably priced menu, opened this month. And talks are under way with a fine-foods grocery for the Aria's ground-floor retail level. Midtown Miami's planned retail component will provide additional amenities beyond the district's trendy furniture stores. ''Our goal is to see that the Design District is alive 24 hours a day, seven days a week,'' said Mr. Morr of Majestic Properties.
Homeowners are counting on that. ''I would never have bought over here instead of South Beach if I thought this area would stay the same instead of growing into a genuine urban cultural neighborhood that's fun to walk around,'' said Tom Semmel, who owns a poster-licensing company in New York. He recently bought an 1,800-square-foot loft-style duplex in the Ice complex. ''The condo is cutting edge,'' he said. ''But let's face facts ? the area is still somewhat dilapidated. I'm buying the future.''
 |
The New York Times
By ABBY GOODNOUGH
December 21, 2003 A Century-Old City Still in the Process of Being Invented |
Just past the shadows of a highway overpass, a curiosity rises from the sidewalk: two walls of a giant living room, papered in pink and open to the sky, with a beckoning couch and a window looking west, away from the beaches that have long been this region's wealth and pride.
The artists who created this unfinished room, in a neighborhood most visitors never glimpse, say the work is a metaphor for Miami, the so-called Magic City - just over 100 years old and still deciding what it wants to make of itself.
Miami, as ever, is yearning to be taken seriously. Not as a workaday annex of its hedonistic neighbor, Miami Beach, but as a cosmopolitan center in its own right.
Evidence of the city's ambitions is abundant these days. Along Biscayne Boulevard, whose 40's-era motels became ramshackle drug and prostitution dens after Interstate 95 drained it of tourist traffic, billboards trumpet planned luxury condominiums named Nirvana, Blue and Mist.
A Four Seasons just opened downtown, in a new building that Miami brags is the tallest in Florida. Two miles north, a $344 million performing arts center is going up, the largest built in this country since the Kennedy Center. Its vision statement proclaims that the center, designed by Cesar Pelli, "will transform Miami into the cultural capital of the Americas."
The city is also competing to be the headquarters of the Free Trade Area of the Americas - it bristled when one of it rivals, Atlanta, proclaimed itself the "Gateway to the Americas," a moniker Miami has long considered its own.
Pointing to the real-estate frenzy - not along the ocean, for once, but in the long-blighted downtown, which used to be as deserted as a suburban office park after 5 p.m. - some people say Miami is on the brink of attaining the status it has coveted for years.
"I can't think of any city that's had more development energy and ambition than Miami has at the moment," said Michael Hardy, president of the Performing Arts Center Trust, which will run the center after it opens in 2006. "The city and county leadership finally believe it's important to develop everything and not just be a beach community if they're going to have a future beyond tourist dollars."
With 362,500 residents, Miami proper ranks nowhere near the nation's largest cities - according to the 2000 census, it is less populous than Albuquerque, Fresno, even Tulsa.
Yet its social problems are those of a megalopolis. It has a history of racial tensions, drug-fueled violence and corrupt political leaders giving developers free rein. It has a higher percentage of people in poverty than any other American city of 250,000 or more, census figures show.
This is a city with few common memories, since most residents come from somewhere else. And since it is just a way station for many, Miami, which was incorporated in 1896, has historically lacked a collective civic soul.
Though dizzyingly diverse, it is not a melting pot: Miami's many communities - Cuban, Haitian and Colombian, New York Jewish, African-American, gay and European - often clash and many are still focused on the places they left behind, pledging their money and sympathies there.
But that may be changing: a recent poll found that Cuban-Americans 45 and younger are more focused on improving their quality of life here than on overthrowing Fidel Castro. Younger residents have the potential to make Miami a world-class city, some longtime residents say.
To those people, Miami is the kind of mecca that New York has been to so many. But unlike immigrants in New York and Los Angeles, who are often stuck at the bottom of the economic ladder for at least a generation, many Latin Americans here move quickly into the middle class, and even into wealth.
They are contributing to Miami's evolving identity on every level: in low-paying service jobs, as artists and musicians, as political leaders and banking executives, even as developers helping to revitalize downtown.
"In L.A., if you're Latin you're in the restaurant kitchen," said Roberto Behar, half of a husband-wife artistic team that created the model living room on North Miami Avenue in 2001. "Here, the mixing of cultures occurs in the banks, at the art openings, on every level. And Miami is such a baby - whatever you do, you feel you can be part of the history of the place."
Mr. Behar and his wife, Rosario Marquardt, have made their mark with toylike art projects, which they say befit a young city playing with ideas for its future. In addition to "The Living Room," they include a giant red M at a downtown commuter-train station and a house of cards surrounded by scaffolding, a symbol of Miami's state of precariousness.
Mr. Behar, who moved here in the mid-1980's from Argentina by way of New York City, compared Miami to New York in the early 1900's, when that city's cultural institutions, landmark buildings and neighborhood characteristics were still being created. Mr. Behar and Ms. Marquardt are among a small but vocal group calling for more careful, creative urban planning here. One bright example they point to is the so-called Design District, a gritty neighborhood just north of downtown that one developer is trying to transform into the city's creative laboratory.
The developer, Craig Robins, started buying up buildings in the neighborhood in 1994 and now owns 35. He is replacing neglected, nondescript structures with provocative designs, each by a different architect.
Mr. Robins is picky not just about who designs his buildings, but about whom they attract as tenants. He wants artists, furniture and clothing designers, architects and music executives.
Is this place on its way to becoming something big? The answer, people like Mr. Behar say, lies in what Miami can teach other cities about the future. Miami may be the prototype for what American cities will look like a century from now, with residents from other countries bringing new languages, interests and values to transform the culture, economy and landscape.
Approaching this city from the air, the view is often of ocean, then the island that is Miami Beach, then islands scattered in the bay, the city sprawling just beyond. Mr. Behar and Ms. Marquardt have a vision for one of the islands, a tiny patch named for Henry Flagler, the oil baron who built a railroad to Miami, opening it to the world.
Their idea is to carve Flagler Island into a star, so that the myriad people who arrive by plane can latch onto a landmark.
"In every culture, stars stand for destiny, for finding your future," Ms. Marquardt said. "It seems right to have such a thing be part of the invention of this place."
The artists who created this unfinished room, in a neighborhood most visitors never glimpse, say the work is a metaphor for Miami, the so-called Magic City - just over 100 years old and still deciding what it wants to make of itself.
Miami, as ever, is yearning to be taken seriously. Not as a workaday annex of its hedonistic neighbor, Miami Beach, but as a cosmopolitan center in its own right.
Evidence of the city's ambitions is abundant these days. Along Biscayne Boulevard, whose 40's-era motels became ramshackle drug and prostitution dens after Interstate 95 drained it of tourist traffic, billboards trumpet planned luxury condominiums named Nirvana, Blue and Mist.
A Four Seasons just opened downtown, in a new building that Miami brags is the tallest in Florida. Two miles north, a $344 million performing arts center is going up, the largest built in this country since the Kennedy Center. Its vision statement proclaims that the center, designed by Cesar Pelli, "will transform Miami into the cultural capital of the Americas."
The city is also competing to be the headquarters of the Free Trade Area of the Americas - it bristled when one of it rivals, Atlanta, proclaimed itself the "Gateway to the Americas," a moniker Miami has long considered its own.
Pointing to the real-estate frenzy - not along the ocean, for once, but in the long-blighted downtown, which used to be as deserted as a suburban office park after 5 p.m. - some people say Miami is on the brink of attaining the status it has coveted for years.
"I can't think of any city that's had more development energy and ambition than Miami has at the moment," said Michael Hardy, president of the Performing Arts Center Trust, which will run the center after it opens in 2006. "The city and county leadership finally believe it's important to develop everything and not just be a beach community if they're going to have a future beyond tourist dollars."
With 362,500 residents, Miami proper ranks nowhere near the nation's largest cities - according to the 2000 census, it is less populous than Albuquerque, Fresno, even Tulsa.
Yet its social problems are those of a megalopolis. It has a history of racial tensions, drug-fueled violence and corrupt political leaders giving developers free rein. It has a higher percentage of people in poverty than any other American city of 250,000 or more, census figures show.
This is a city with few common memories, since most residents come from somewhere else. And since it is just a way station for many, Miami, which was incorporated in 1896, has historically lacked a collective civic soul.
Though dizzyingly diverse, it is not a melting pot: Miami's many communities - Cuban, Haitian and Colombian, New York Jewish, African-American, gay and European - often clash and many are still focused on the places they left behind, pledging their money and sympathies there.
But that may be changing: a recent poll found that Cuban-Americans 45 and younger are more focused on improving their quality of life here than on overthrowing Fidel Castro. Younger residents have the potential to make Miami a world-class city, some longtime residents say.
To those people, Miami is the kind of mecca that New York has been to so many. But unlike immigrants in New York and Los Angeles, who are often stuck at the bottom of the economic ladder for at least a generation, many Latin Americans here move quickly into the middle class, and even into wealth.
They are contributing to Miami's evolving identity on every level: in low-paying service jobs, as artists and musicians, as political leaders and banking executives, even as developers helping to revitalize downtown.
"In L.A., if you're Latin you're in the restaurant kitchen," said Roberto Behar, half of a husband-wife artistic team that created the model living room on North Miami Avenue in 2001. "Here, the mixing of cultures occurs in the banks, at the art openings, on every level. And Miami is such a baby - whatever you do, you feel you can be part of the history of the place."
Mr. Behar and his wife, Rosario Marquardt, have made their mark with toylike art projects, which they say befit a young city playing with ideas for its future. In addition to "The Living Room," they include a giant red M at a downtown commuter-train station and a house of cards surrounded by scaffolding, a symbol of Miami's state of precariousness.
Mr. Behar, who moved here in the mid-1980's from Argentina by way of New York City, compared Miami to New York in the early 1900's, when that city's cultural institutions, landmark buildings and neighborhood characteristics were still being created. Mr. Behar and Ms. Marquardt are among a small but vocal group calling for more careful, creative urban planning here. One bright example they point to is the so-called Design District, a gritty neighborhood just north of downtown that one developer is trying to transform into the city's creative laboratory.
The developer, Craig Robins, started buying up buildings in the neighborhood in 1994 and now owns 35. He is replacing neglected, nondescript structures with provocative designs, each by a different architect.
Mr. Robins is picky not just about who designs his buildings, but about whom they attract as tenants. He wants artists, furniture and clothing designers, architects and music executives.
Is this place on its way to becoming something big? The answer, people like Mr. Behar say, lies in what Miami can teach other cities about the future. Miami may be the prototype for what American cities will look like a century from now, with residents from other countries bringing new languages, interests and values to transform the culture, economy and landscape.
Approaching this city from the air, the view is often of ocean, then the island that is Miami Beach, then islands scattered in the bay, the city sprawling just beyond. Mr. Behar and Ms. Marquardt have a vision for one of the islands, a tiny patch named for Henry Flagler, the oil baron who built a railroad to Miami, opening it to the world.
Their idea is to carve Flagler Island into a star, so that the myriad people who arrive by plane can latch onto a landmark.
"In every culture, stars stand for destiny, for finding your future," Ms. Marquardt said. "It seems right to have such a thing be part of the invention of this place."
 |
The New York Times
By Donna Paul
May 31, 2001 Living Large in Miami |
What has the Miami Design District needed? Why, a gigantic outdoor living room, of course. Roberto Behar and Rosario Marquardt, two Miami Beach architects, took a warehouse and tacked on 42-foot-high walls, a stucco sofa, two 15-foot lamps and a 40-foot curtain. The Living Room Building (photograph above), at 4000 North Miami Avenue, explores "where public and private space collide and become one," Mr. Behar said. Locals seem happy to plunk down on the street-level sofa and read the paper.
From June 25 to 27, Miami Beach plays host to a Design and Culture conference ($1,795; www.designandculture.org for details). When else can you catch Milton Glaser, Isaac Mizrahi and Michael Graves at the Fountainebleau?
From June 25 to 27, Miami Beach plays host to a Design and Culture conference ($1,795; www.designandculture.org for details). When else can you catch Milton Glaser, Isaac Mizrahi and Michael Graves at the Fountainebleau?
 |
The New York Times
By CHRISTOPHER MASON
May 4, 2000 Come on Down for a Tan and a Sofa |
AFTER an exasperating search in New York for set of dining chairs for a Sunday night dinner party at his Riverside Drive apartment, Augustus Butera was exhilarated when he found the perfect chair at Room ? a sleek new store in Miami.
?I ordered six, and they were delivered in three days,? marveled Mr. Butera, a commercial photographer who stumbled onto the Miami design district, a formerly desolate home-furnishings quarter north of downtown, while shooting an advertising campaign nearby. Since 1998, more than 50 stores, many of them beacons of fresh, new design, have opened in that 10-block area.
When Milly de Cabrol headed to Florida not long ago to unwind from the cruel vexations of life as a New York interior designer, she paid a first-time visit to the newly dynamic district and was startled by what she saw. ?I found a fantastic mix of ethnic and contemporary stuff at incredibly reasonable prices,? she said. ?And I discovered that it?s a lot more fun to shop in Miami. The sun?s shining, everyone?s helpful and you get to see a lot in a short time because everything?s concentrated in one area.?
At Orson, a store crammed with decorative American and French furniture, Ms. Cabrol found a 1940?s sofa for $2,400. It would cost, she said, $8,000 in New York. In June, she plans to come to Miami again, bringing a client who has a Park Avenue town house. ?We?re going to fly down there, fill a container and have it sent,? she said.
Until recently, the notion of traveling to Miami for furnishings would have struck many as preposterous. But with the expanding lineup of sophisticated stores and with cheap round-trip air fares, the design district is emerging as a mecca for those in search of high style, welcoming the public with none of the to-the-trade restrictions of many New York showrooms.
?Spectacular, huh?? said Craig Robins, the neighborhood?s foremost developer, as he bounded up a glass stairway at the new Holly Hunt store, designed by Alison Spear. Mr. Robins is leading an ambitious effort to revitalize the formerly woebegone district, once plagued by muggings and burglaries.
For Mr. Robins, 37, a Miami Beach native, the opening of Ms. Hunt?s showroom is a remarkable coup. Just two years ago, he said, the building was a dark, dilapidated quilting factory. Over the last year, however, news of the 25,000-square-foot Holly Hunt store has spurred confidence in the district. It has become a gleaming showcase for the wares of innovators like Rose Tarlow and Christian Liaigre, current darlings of design.
These days, there are 120 or so storefronts in the district, many concentrated along Northeast 40th Street and Northeast Second Avenue ? the principal thoroughfares of an area that is now abuzz with commerce.
In a controversial move, the Chicago-based Ms. Hunt has abandoned to-the-trade-only rules for her Miami showroom. Like Mr. Robins, she believes that the best way to expand the market for upscale furnishings is to admit the public. Such populist tactics are crucial to Mr. Robins?s agenda, which has been driven by past successes. In 1987, he was one of the first to redevelop the shabby, boarded-up Art Deco hotels of South Beach and to reap a handsome profit when the area became a booming resort. Now, in his efforts to reinvigorate the design district, he hopes to capture some of the dynamism of South Beach, a five-minute drive across Biscayne Bay.
?The goal is to be a place that inspires creativity, where it?s fun for the public to come and check out great design and hang out at cool cafes,? Mr. Robins said. So far, however, the cafes are in the planning stage. And just how eager Miami?s thong, sarong and bikini set will be to abandon the beach and come ogle furniture remains to be seen.
If anyone stands to profit from that eventuality, it is Mr. Robins. Through Dacra, his real estate company, he has since 1994 bought 18 buildings in the area, investing about $25 million, which makes him its biggest landlord. ?To me, it?s not about what percentage we own,? he said, earnestly. ?What?s important is that the whole neighborhood be vibrant and successful.?
RENTS in Mr. Robins?s buildings in the district are $20 to $25 a square foot, he said, and 85 percent of the 500,000 square feet he controls is rented. When Dacra began investing in there, 50 percent of the neighborhood was vacant, and rents were about $5 a square foot.
At the end of the 1980?s, when the district took a nose dive, store owners fled to the Design Center of the Americas, an immense, corporate-looking edifice on the outskirts of Fort Lauderdale. The 120-showroom center is, like the Design and Decorating Building in New York, open officially to the trade only. Anyone wishing to view or buy its upscale wares must be accompanied by an interior designer, a restriction that has long exasperated sellers and buyers. An April visit to the fortresslike Design Center of the Americas proved how intractable the to-the-trade-only rule can be.
This writer, intent on shopping, was met with questions and comments like these: ?Are you a designer?? ?You can?t come in without an appointment.? ?Are you registered with us?? ?If you need any help, I have to have a letter from your architect or designer.?
By contrast, at Sola Topee, in the Miami design district, where Indian daybeds, arches and columns summon up tropical splendor, a jug of fresh iced tea awaits visitors who wander in from Northeast Second Avenue. Espresso, wine and Champagne are also available.
?If our guests are furnishing their home, we want them to feel at home, so they can experience what it?s like to live with our furniture,? said Bruce Platt, the store?s sales director. A former model, Mr. Platt worked at the Polo Ralph Lauren store on Madison Avenue before moving to Miami in 1996.
That Miami is a resort destination for visitors with large disposable incomes has contributed to the district?s rising fortunes. Mr. Platt said that a majority of Sola Topee?s out-of-town clients are from New York, Europe and South America, either vacationers or owners of second or third homes. ?Because of where we are, we?re tapping a huge audience,? he said. ?The design district is only five minutes from Miami Beach, the airport and the port of Miami, so it?s easy for people to drop by.?
After 5 p.m., the district is usually deserted. But lately, openings for photography exhibitions in the neighborhood have drawn large crowds after dark. So far, Room, the smallest of the furniture showrooms, is making the biggest splash. It is run by Juan-Carlos Arcila-Duque, an interior designer who furnished a waterfront home in Coconut Grove for the architects Laurinda Spear and Bernardo Fort-Brescia, founders of Arquitectonica. Room recently played host to a packed reception for Fernando Bengoechea, a New York-based interiors photographer.
Unlike South Beach, with its winning cluster of Art Deco buildings, the design district holds little appeal beyond the convenience of storefront buildings within easy walking distance of one another.
Determined to transform the district and set the design standard for others to follow, Mr. Robins hired the New York architect Walter Chatham in 1997, starting him with a slender budget of $1 million to spruce up Dacra properties.
?The first time I saw it, the district was completely shabby and deserted,? Mr. Chatham said. ?So we began by giving the buildings a fresh coat of paint, putting on awnings, adding new signs and planting trees in order to cultivate a sense of neighborhood.? Mr. Chatham?s efforts with Dacra properties have prompted others to play catch-up.
Mr. Robins persuaded city officials to underwrite a detailed plan for improvements conceived by Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, the Miami-based urban designers known for their New Urbanist plans for Seaside, Fla. The design district plan, based on a workshop held three years ago, takes note of Little Haiti, a low-income community to the north, and sets guidelines for everything from street plantings and improved signs to the creation of public spaces and improved access from the expressway.
Mr. Chatham has also worked on the art-filled waterfront home on nearby Sunset Island that Mr. Robins shares with his Cuban-born wife, Ivelin, and their two young children. That house has been furnished with acquisitions from the design district. A family favorite, Mr. Robins said, is a new living room sofa from Dilmos, a fashionable Milan-based company that has opened a showroom on Northeast Second Avenue. The sofa has surprisingly comfortable clear-plastic cushions stuffed with straw. ?I love it,? he said. ?Because it makes you ask, What?s art, and what?s furniture??
Visitors intrepid enough to venture into the design district before last year were unlikely to come away with anything resembling a chic straw-filled sofa. In 1994, the area was mostly composed of showrooms and quiet antiques stores. Mr. Robins lured his first tenant, Knoll, with an offer of a prime corner and, as he put it, ?an extremely affordable rent,? roughly half the market rate. Jim Lutz, the national sales manager for KnollStudio, said that the gamble paid off. Since the store relocated from upscale Coral Gables in June 1998, he said, retail sales have doubled. Since Knoll?s arrival, other well-known showrooms have followed, including ICF and Waterworks, where gleaming faucets designed by Thomas O?Brien of Aero Studios are on display.
Mr. Robins also rented the Moore Building, a majestic four-story 1921 structure at 191 Northeast 40th Street, to Leah Kleman, who arrived from Lincoln Road in Miami Beach in 1998 with a following for a mad mix of neo-Classical-style, vaudevillian and Deco antiques. ?For me, the design district is a major gig,? said Ms. Kleman, who counts Sylvester Stallone, Cher, Elton John and Michael Jackson as clients.
Ms. Kleman has observed a turnaround in the district in two years. ?First off, it was like a war zone,? she said. ?But I started renting out my space for events, and everyone came.? In 1999, she was one of the first in the district to open her store on Saturdays for weekend visitors. ?The South Americans love glamour, and they?re compulsive buyers,? she said. ?They all have pied-a-terres, and they come in on Saturdays in the complete Chanel hardware, his and hers couture.?
Leading Miami interior designers have also set up offices in the district. ?It?s handy, having everything on the doorstep,? noted Peter Page, a New York transplant, whose projects include elegant redesigns of the Astor and Nash hotels in South Beach. ?Without getting in my car, I can check out samples at Knoll, ICF, Dilmos, Waterworks or Holly Hunt. And I can walk my clients over to check out the marble for their bathroom without having samples shipped in.?
When Alison Spear, a celebrated interior designer, architect and social force in New York, relocated to her native Miami in 1998, she was reluctant to take an office in the district. She said: ?A friend told me, ?You can?t do that, it?s too dangerous. You could never bring your kids there.? ?
But she has seen the neighborhood improve. Much of the turnaround, she noted, is owed to the marketing and advertising by Mr. Robins?s company. ?It makes you wonder ? is the hype driving the success, or is the success driving the hype?? Ms. Spear said. ?Whatever it is, it seems to be working.?
?I ordered six, and they were delivered in three days,? marveled Mr. Butera, a commercial photographer who stumbled onto the Miami design district, a formerly desolate home-furnishings quarter north of downtown, while shooting an advertising campaign nearby. Since 1998, more than 50 stores, many of them beacons of fresh, new design, have opened in that 10-block area.
When Milly de Cabrol headed to Florida not long ago to unwind from the cruel vexations of life as a New York interior designer, she paid a first-time visit to the newly dynamic district and was startled by what she saw. ?I found a fantastic mix of ethnic and contemporary stuff at incredibly reasonable prices,? she said. ?And I discovered that it?s a lot more fun to shop in Miami. The sun?s shining, everyone?s helpful and you get to see a lot in a short time because everything?s concentrated in one area.?
At Orson, a store crammed with decorative American and French furniture, Ms. Cabrol found a 1940?s sofa for $2,400. It would cost, she said, $8,000 in New York. In June, she plans to come to Miami again, bringing a client who has a Park Avenue town house. ?We?re going to fly down there, fill a container and have it sent,? she said.
Until recently, the notion of traveling to Miami for furnishings would have struck many as preposterous. But with the expanding lineup of sophisticated stores and with cheap round-trip air fares, the design district is emerging as a mecca for those in search of high style, welcoming the public with none of the to-the-trade restrictions of many New York showrooms.
?Spectacular, huh?? said Craig Robins, the neighborhood?s foremost developer, as he bounded up a glass stairway at the new Holly Hunt store, designed by Alison Spear. Mr. Robins is leading an ambitious effort to revitalize the formerly woebegone district, once plagued by muggings and burglaries.
For Mr. Robins, 37, a Miami Beach native, the opening of Ms. Hunt?s showroom is a remarkable coup. Just two years ago, he said, the building was a dark, dilapidated quilting factory. Over the last year, however, news of the 25,000-square-foot Holly Hunt store has spurred confidence in the district. It has become a gleaming showcase for the wares of innovators like Rose Tarlow and Christian Liaigre, current darlings of design.
These days, there are 120 or so storefronts in the district, many concentrated along Northeast 40th Street and Northeast Second Avenue ? the principal thoroughfares of an area that is now abuzz with commerce.
In a controversial move, the Chicago-based Ms. Hunt has abandoned to-the-trade-only rules for her Miami showroom. Like Mr. Robins, she believes that the best way to expand the market for upscale furnishings is to admit the public. Such populist tactics are crucial to Mr. Robins?s agenda, which has been driven by past successes. In 1987, he was one of the first to redevelop the shabby, boarded-up Art Deco hotels of South Beach and to reap a handsome profit when the area became a booming resort. Now, in his efforts to reinvigorate the design district, he hopes to capture some of the dynamism of South Beach, a five-minute drive across Biscayne Bay.
?The goal is to be a place that inspires creativity, where it?s fun for the public to come and check out great design and hang out at cool cafes,? Mr. Robins said. So far, however, the cafes are in the planning stage. And just how eager Miami?s thong, sarong and bikini set will be to abandon the beach and come ogle furniture remains to be seen.
If anyone stands to profit from that eventuality, it is Mr. Robins. Through Dacra, his real estate company, he has since 1994 bought 18 buildings in the area, investing about $25 million, which makes him its biggest landlord. ?To me, it?s not about what percentage we own,? he said, earnestly. ?What?s important is that the whole neighborhood be vibrant and successful.?
RENTS in Mr. Robins?s buildings in the district are $20 to $25 a square foot, he said, and 85 percent of the 500,000 square feet he controls is rented. When Dacra began investing in there, 50 percent of the neighborhood was vacant, and rents were about $5 a square foot.
At the end of the 1980?s, when the district took a nose dive, store owners fled to the Design Center of the Americas, an immense, corporate-looking edifice on the outskirts of Fort Lauderdale. The 120-showroom center is, like the Design and Decorating Building in New York, open officially to the trade only. Anyone wishing to view or buy its upscale wares must be accompanied by an interior designer, a restriction that has long exasperated sellers and buyers. An April visit to the fortresslike Design Center of the Americas proved how intractable the to-the-trade-only rule can be.
This writer, intent on shopping, was met with questions and comments like these: ?Are you a designer?? ?You can?t come in without an appointment.? ?Are you registered with us?? ?If you need any help, I have to have a letter from your architect or designer.?
By contrast, at Sola Topee, in the Miami design district, where Indian daybeds, arches and columns summon up tropical splendor, a jug of fresh iced tea awaits visitors who wander in from Northeast Second Avenue. Espresso, wine and Champagne are also available.
?If our guests are furnishing their home, we want them to feel at home, so they can experience what it?s like to live with our furniture,? said Bruce Platt, the store?s sales director. A former model, Mr. Platt worked at the Polo Ralph Lauren store on Madison Avenue before moving to Miami in 1996.
That Miami is a resort destination for visitors with large disposable incomes has contributed to the district?s rising fortunes. Mr. Platt said that a majority of Sola Topee?s out-of-town clients are from New York, Europe and South America, either vacationers or owners of second or third homes. ?Because of where we are, we?re tapping a huge audience,? he said. ?The design district is only five minutes from Miami Beach, the airport and the port of Miami, so it?s easy for people to drop by.?
After 5 p.m., the district is usually deserted. But lately, openings for photography exhibitions in the neighborhood have drawn large crowds after dark. So far, Room, the smallest of the furniture showrooms, is making the biggest splash. It is run by Juan-Carlos Arcila-Duque, an interior designer who furnished a waterfront home in Coconut Grove for the architects Laurinda Spear and Bernardo Fort-Brescia, founders of Arquitectonica. Room recently played host to a packed reception for Fernando Bengoechea, a New York-based interiors photographer.
Unlike South Beach, with its winning cluster of Art Deco buildings, the design district holds little appeal beyond the convenience of storefront buildings within easy walking distance of one another.
Determined to transform the district and set the design standard for others to follow, Mr. Robins hired the New York architect Walter Chatham in 1997, starting him with a slender budget of $1 million to spruce up Dacra properties.
?The first time I saw it, the district was completely shabby and deserted,? Mr. Chatham said. ?So we began by giving the buildings a fresh coat of paint, putting on awnings, adding new signs and planting trees in order to cultivate a sense of neighborhood.? Mr. Chatham?s efforts with Dacra properties have prompted others to play catch-up.
Mr. Robins persuaded city officials to underwrite a detailed plan for improvements conceived by Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, the Miami-based urban designers known for their New Urbanist plans for Seaside, Fla. The design district plan, based on a workshop held three years ago, takes note of Little Haiti, a low-income community to the north, and sets guidelines for everything from street plantings and improved signs to the creation of public spaces and improved access from the expressway.
Mr. Chatham has also worked on the art-filled waterfront home on nearby Sunset Island that Mr. Robins shares with his Cuban-born wife, Ivelin, and their two young children. That house has been furnished with acquisitions from the design district. A family favorite, Mr. Robins said, is a new living room sofa from Dilmos, a fashionable Milan-based company that has opened a showroom on Northeast Second Avenue. The sofa has surprisingly comfortable clear-plastic cushions stuffed with straw. ?I love it,? he said. ?Because it makes you ask, What?s art, and what?s furniture??
Visitors intrepid enough to venture into the design district before last year were unlikely to come away with anything resembling a chic straw-filled sofa. In 1994, the area was mostly composed of showrooms and quiet antiques stores. Mr. Robins lured his first tenant, Knoll, with an offer of a prime corner and, as he put it, ?an extremely affordable rent,? roughly half the market rate. Jim Lutz, the national sales manager for KnollStudio, said that the gamble paid off. Since the store relocated from upscale Coral Gables in June 1998, he said, retail sales have doubled. Since Knoll?s arrival, other well-known showrooms have followed, including ICF and Waterworks, where gleaming faucets designed by Thomas O?Brien of Aero Studios are on display.
Mr. Robins also rented the Moore Building, a majestic four-story 1921 structure at 191 Northeast 40th Street, to Leah Kleman, who arrived from Lincoln Road in Miami Beach in 1998 with a following for a mad mix of neo-Classical-style, vaudevillian and Deco antiques. ?For me, the design district is a major gig,? said Ms. Kleman, who counts Sylvester Stallone, Cher, Elton John and Michael Jackson as clients.
Ms. Kleman has observed a turnaround in the district in two years. ?First off, it was like a war zone,? she said. ?But I started renting out my space for events, and everyone came.? In 1999, she was one of the first in the district to open her store on Saturdays for weekend visitors. ?The South Americans love glamour, and they?re compulsive buyers,? she said. ?They all have pied-a-terres, and they come in on Saturdays in the complete Chanel hardware, his and hers couture.?
Leading Miami interior designers have also set up offices in the district. ?It?s handy, having everything on the doorstep,? noted Peter Page, a New York transplant, whose projects include elegant redesigns of the Astor and Nash hotels in South Beach. ?Without getting in my car, I can check out samples at Knoll, ICF, Dilmos, Waterworks or Holly Hunt. And I can walk my clients over to check out the marble for their bathroom without having samples shipped in.?
When Alison Spear, a celebrated interior designer, architect and social force in New York, relocated to her native Miami in 1998, she was reluctant to take an office in the district. She said: ?A friend told me, ?You can?t do that, it?s too dangerous. You could never bring your kids there.? ?
But she has seen the neighborhood improve. Much of the turnaround, she noted, is owed to the marketing and advertising by Mr. Robins?s company. ?It makes you wonder ? is the hype driving the success, or is the success driving the hype?? Ms. Spear said. ?Whatever it is, it seems to be working.?
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