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In Miami, even architecture is all about the car
by Alistair Gordon
We often think of architecture in Miami as a symmetry between water and sky, hovering, distilled by subtropical light, detached from earthly constraints — from the ground plane, from traffic and social unrest. It’s all about the surf and the whiteness of sand and the multimillion-dollar water view. . . In fact, our first experience of a building is usually not from an ocean liner or the lofty perspective of an osprey. This being Miami, it more typically comes from the grittier perspective of the car, framed by a windscreen, moving past at high speed, or pulling up to a valet parking stand.
Brown Jordan
The white building on the south side of I-195, just across from the Billboard Building, is a showroom for Brown Jordan, an outdoor furniture company. The architects of Miami’s Touzet Studio created a white counterfoil to the hectic movement of the elevated highway with a series of box-like forms that step up from Woodson Mini Park — a patch of green wedged within a busy three-way intersection — mitigating the small triangular lot and the highway’s linear sprawl.
3711 Design District
Touzet Studio also designed the two-story structure at 3711 NW Second Ave. as the flagship showroom for Sub-Zero, the deluxe kitchen appliance company. . . The second level of 3711 is cantilevered so that it floats just above the edge of the highway and will appear to passing motorists as a living, throbbing entity, with programmed projections designed to make the walls fluctuate throughout the day and night in contrast to the changing colors of the sky.
Read the full article here or explore the project below.
