The Maxeville Office of Jean Prouvé | Galerie Patrick Seguin
Since its foundation in 1989, the Paris based Galerie Patrick Seguin has promoted a recovery of awareness, from the general public, about the work of the French designer Jean Prouvé, whose studies on prefabricated houses and shelters are still today, in the face of nowadays issues about refuges populations and emergency situations, as relevant as ever. As done for the recent past editions, the Miami/Basel Art fair has been chosen as one of the main stages for this initiative. This year the gallery displayed a fully restored structure called ‘the maxeville office’, a multipurpose building designed by Prouvé in the 1940s.
Raymond Jungles
1111 Lincoln Road © Steven Brooke from landezine.com
Raymond Jungles founded his landscape architecture firm Raymond Jungles, Inc. (RJI) in 1982, just after graduating in landscape architecture from the University of Florida in 1981. RJI realized many relevant projects, that redefined Miami’s urban landscape in the last years, working with several of the most important firm in todays’ architecture: from Frank Gehry in 2011 – for the rooftop garden of the New World Symphony campus – to more recent collaborations with Herzog & de Meuron – Jade Signature landscape project – and B.I.G., with the Grove at Grand Bay project. Through the display of a rich and lush vegetation, characterized by a variety of volumes, colors and textures, its work has been able to establish a dialogue with the strong personality of these buildings, while presenting design solutions that could recreate a balanced natural system at the micro-scale of the project.
The New Complex
Grove at Grand Bay © robin hill. From: designboom.com
In just a couple of years, the skyline of Miami is going to change dramatically. Thanks to the global economic recovery, a general increase in the development of high density districts can be observed in many cities in different continents, but what is currently happening in Miami may present some differences from other situations, and stands as an exception in a country like U.S. Moving from a mainly leisure city, to a more complex and cultural destination, thanks to events like the Miami/Basel art week and Design Miami, the city is attracting every year a greater and diversified public, driving the investments to focus not solely on high-rise residential buildings, but also on public spaces and cultural facilities. Frank Gehry inaugurated the New World Center in 2011, and not even two years later Oma started to work on the project for the Faena Forum, a cultural complex situated in central Miami Beach, that has just recently been completed. A lot of architecture’s big names are working on several projects for the city that are currently under construction, last of which will see the light no later than 2019: OMA, Zaha Hadid, Herzog & de Meuron, Renzo Piano, B.I.G, Fostner+Partners, just to name some. It is interesting to note how, for some of these designers, Miami will be the first experience in the United States, for that specific typology of building. 87 park will be the first large-size residential tower for Renzo Piano in the U.S, as it will be Park Grove residential complex for OMA.
May it be for the richer and complex cultural environment mentioned above, or for the great opportunity that the city still has to grow and develop, these new projects show often a bold design, that is more easy to find in the emerging realities of Middle and South East, than in a more stable context like the American one. What is for sure is that Miami is now facing great transformations, and will definitely be a hotspot destination in the next years, not only for leisure tourism.
Faena District Image © Iwan Baan from thearchitecturalinsight.com
