Fly's Eye's Are on Miami

This is the debut of a regular Miami Herald architecture column by Alastair Gordon, an award-winning architecture critic and author who has written about the built environment for many publications including the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. His books include "Weekend Utopia" and "Naked Airport."

The future officially arrived this week in Miami, and just in time. Not one, but two of Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller's glittering "Fly's Eye" domes have been unveiled for the Miami Art Week.

One is a 35-year-old prototype designed by Fuller and John Warren that now sits like a pristine art mseum Miami on Biscayne Boulevard. The other serves as sculptural counterpoint (and functioning skylight) in a luxury shopping complex 2.2 miles to the north in the middle of the Design District. The domes, both  owned by Dacra developer Craig Robins, are thin-skinned and almost completely transparent but loaded with significance. While identical, tlie domes represent different visions of the future: One is analogue; the other digital. One is avowedly utopian, the other materialist.