52 Florida InsideOut

N&N ARCHITECTURE PRODUCTS NEWS TRENDS SHOPS DESIGNER EXHIBITIONS

DCOTA’S NEW LOOKChange is good; and so over the next four years DCOTA (the Design Center of theAmericas), a massive three-building campus in Dania Beach, Florida, is having amakeover. Charles S. Cohen purchased DCOTA in 2005. He hopes the new land-scaping, water features and architectural changes will bring new showrooms anddesigners into the fold. The architectural firm Area Design will suspend brightlycolored geometric shapes in public spaces, with layered lighting by Kaplan,Gehring, McCarroll. Landscaping will fall to Thomas Balsley and Associates and toMario Nievera Design. Pentagram, the New York graphics company, will work onthe logos on the outside of the buildings. DCOTA is at 1855 Griffin Road, DaniaBeach, 954 920-1997. www.dcota.com.

SOME STAR ARCHITECTSAnd a developing new neighborhood BY ELLIOT KOTLYAR

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MIAMI’S NEW COURTHOUSEWhat may be America’s boldest federal courthouse has arrived in downtownMiami. The Wilkie D. Ferguson Jr. U.S. Courthouse—the first ever named foran African-American—is a standout. It has drawn acclaim for its architect,Bernardo Fort-Brescia of Arquitectonica, and for its monumental features: a45-foot-high gate aligning with the Fourth Street Promenade, and a tilting,eight-story conical atrium sheathed in blue glass.

Sitting at the end of the promenade, the shiplike mass of bluish glass (a tri-umph considering Miami’s tough hurricane codes) and smooth concrete risesfrom a landscaped plaza of native plantings, meandering pathways and asculpted lawn of grassy waves by Maya Lin. In this heavily paved neighbor-hood, the effect is as much public oasis as government bastion.

The project is part of the U.S. General Services Design Excellence program. Butfor those not awaiting a felony trial, a glimpse from afar may be the closest we’llget. Because of security considerations, federal marshals are considering fenc-ing in the whole site—a move that would retract a generous gift to the city.

Yet some government sources say the site is already among the safestdesigned, and it’s clearly intended for public use. “The park itself functionsas a barricade, with its 100-foot setback, dense plantings and raised lawnthat form a natural and secure perimeter,” Fort-Brescia said.

OVERTOWNBeginning in the 1920s, Overtown,the area just north of downtownMiami, was home to African-American theaters, hotels andnightclubs. After the communitywas bisected in the ’60s byInterstates 95 and 395, it becamenotable for its desolation andcrime. But new construction in thearea—bounded on the south byNorthwest Fifth Street, on thenorth by Northwest 20th Street,and extending from NorthwestFirst Avenue to NorthwestSeventh Avenue—is making theneighborhood’s future lookbrighter. Renovations and expan-sions are underway on the historicLyric Theater, at Eighth Street andNorthwest Second Avenue and aHilton hotel is said to be in theworks. There are plans for a 30-story tower, MaxMiami, includingfilm studios and a hotel, nearby at16th Street and Northeast FirstAvenue.

ICE Development Group brokeground on February 13 on thefirst tower of Logik, a 31-storycondo office-retail project atNorthwest First Court and FifthStreet. Tower I will have 134,000square feet of office space and10,000 square feet of retail space.The Miami-based ICE Developmenthas hired Aaxis Architecture in Miamito do the design. The area is expectedto be a new commercial hub in Miami.

All of the units are already committed,so Logik Tower II will surely be on theway soon. Logik is going up at 530Northwest First Court, Miami,www.logiktower.net.

54 Florida InsideOut

N&N ARCHITECTURE PRODUCTS NEWS TRENDS SHOPS DESIGNER EXHIBITIONS

GEHRY GOES SOBEFrank Gehry’s New World Symphony building plans have been released. The$200 million building, which will include performance space, rehearsal space,learning zones and parking, will go up on land owned by the City of MiamiBeach just north of Lincoln Road, where the symphony is currently based, in theLincoln Theater.

Anyone expecting another Gehry building made of swoopy titanium might bedisappointed in the blocky white structure. But Gehry, who won the Pritzkerarchitecture prize in 1989, has added plenty of curved and wavy organic formsinside the 95,000-square-foot building. The performance space will seat 738 inwedge-shaped rows. An internal atrium will allow those outside to see sympho-ny members practicing and performing.

The building will have space dedicated to recording and webcasting facilities,allowing someone like Yo-Yo Ma to present a master class that is webcast tomusic schools across the country. The project is expected to break ground thissummer and slated to open in 2010. The present home of the New WorldSymphony is at 541 Lincoln Road, Miami Beach, 305 673-3330; www.nws.edu.

FORGET ST. BART’SHere’s a new business scheme: buy an island and then get six tal-ented architects to design buildings there, including private villas.Dr. Cem Kinay, the Turkish travel entrepreneur, bought an uninhab-ited mangrove swamp in Turks and Caicos called Dellis Cay, about575 miles southeast of Miami. Dr. Kinay, who has a home in Miami,will restrict his resort to 210 acres of the 560-acre island. AMandarin Oriental hotel, already underway (rendering at right), isby the Italian architect Piero Lissoni with a 30,000-square-foot spaby the Japanese architect Kengo Kuma; Zaha Hadid created a mas-ter plan, a marina and a lighthouse.

But the real fireworks are reserved for the villas. Shigeru Ban(Tokyo) is designing beach villas; the Singapore-based CarlEttensperger is designing villas on stilts over the water (somethingcommon in the South Pacific but rare in the Caribbean). The Britishminimalist David Chipperfield is creating a peninsula and thendesigning homes to for it; Kuma is doing villas near the spa. Hadidis creating villas around the marina and Lissoni has designed eightbeach villas, each with its own pool, and nine luxury villas facingwest over the ocean. The villas will sell for $1.5 million to $10 mil-lion. For more information, see www.delliscay.com.

NOTICE: A JOB ZAHA HADID DOES NOT YET HAVE A woman who apparently never sleeps, Zaha Hadid recently won a commissionfor a new cultural center in Abu Dhabi, top left, and created an Ideal House forthe recent furniture fair in Cologne, bottom left. To make the conceptual house,which some compare to Saarinen’s Pan Am terminal, Hadid started with a bigred cube and then hollowed out spaces inside, including a cavelike staircase butno roof. Visitors to the fair, in January, found inspection a little complicated bythe uneven floor, which occasionally rose up into pieces of furniture. Her AbuDhabi performing arts center, which will hold 6,300 people in five theaters (amusic hall, a concert hall, an opera house, a legitimate theater and a flexible the-ater space) is many years off. The performing arts center will be just one elementof a larger cultural district on Saadiyat Island, being developed by the SolomonR. Guggenheim Foundation on behalf of Abu Dhabi tourism and development.The other buildings will be a contemporary arts museum by Frank Gehry, a clas-sical art museum by Jean Nouvel and a maritime museum by Tadao Ando.

Attention Rem Koolhaas and Herzog & de Meuron: No architect has yet beenannounced for the Sheikh Zayed National Museum.

Hadid said at a news conference in Abu Dhabi that her performing arts centeris “a sculptural form that emerges from a linear intersection of pedestrian pathswithin the cultural district.” One thing is clear. It is on the water. Hadid’s otherproject in Abu Dhabi, the Sheikh Zayed Bridge, is already under construction.