THESIS
DESIGNING THE HYPHEN: LINKING IDENTITY AND ARCHITECTURE IN BACARDI’S FORMER MIAMI HEADQUARTERS
Claudia Sans Werner Interior Design
In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the Degree of Master of Art Corcoran College of Art and Design Washington, DC Spring 2013
Thesis Statement
Observation
Buildings do not stand still. They reflect the cultural, political and historical
identity of the moment in which they were created – and both reflect and affect the
moments that follow.
Proposition/Argument
Shifts in culture often produce a sense of dislocation, a questioning of identity.
The resulting dichotomies (traditional-modern, local-international, public-private, preservation-innovation, past-present, art-architecture, etc.) offer the designer an opportunity to peer into the spaces in between and reveal both the connections and ruptures. Mutability defines the hyphen, a state that should be exposed, exploited and celebrated.
Direction
The former Bacardi headquarters in downtown Miami, Florida – an interstitial space in many ways – should be reconceptualized into a kinetic place where Cuban and
Cuban-American artists work, art from the past and the present is exhibited, and the public interacts with them. In this way the campus will reflect the changes in Cuban-
American identity since the buildings were erected for the Cuban spirits company shortly after the 1959 Cuban Revolution; it will continue and expand upon the cultural exchanges for which Miami is becoming known, and it will reintegrate an isolated office park into its current urban landscape.
Abstract
Designing the Hyphen:
Linking identity and architecture in Bacardi’s former Miami headquarters
Buildings do not stand still. They reflect and affect the cultural, political and
historical identity of the moment in which they were created – and both reflect and affect
the moments that follow.
Shifts in culture often produce a sense of dislocation, a questioning of identity.
The resulting dichotomies (traditional-modern, local-international, public-private,
preservation-innovation, past-present, art-architecture, etc.) offer the designer an
opportunity to peer into the spaces in between and reveal both the connections and
ruptures. Mutability defines the hyphen, a state that should be exposed, exploited and
celebrated.
The former Bacardi headquarters in downtown Miami, Florida should be
reconceptualized into a kinetic place where Cuban and Cuban-American artists work, art from the past and the present is exhibited, and the public interacts with them. In this way the campus will reflect the changes in Cuban-American identity since the buildings were erected for the Cuban spirits company shortly after the 1959 Cuban Revolution; it will continue and expand upon the cultural exchanges for which Miami is becoming known, and it will reintegrate an isolated office park into its current urban landscape.
Approaching a culturally and historically significant structure such as the former
Bacardi headquarters as a palimpsest will reveal not only the influence of the past, but also the significance of societal shifts through time and the relevance of the buildings
today. Through analyzing precedents, and by engaging scale, exposing and concealing
traces and layers, designing circulation, and considering the fluid relationship between art
and architecture, this project proposes creating gallery and studio/residential spaces on
the Bacardi campus that will revel in the hyphenated state.
This study explores the relationship of the former Bacardi headquarters to the
pronounced transformations in not only the Cuban exile community in Miami, but also in
its immediate surroundings, and in the artistic communities that have sprouted around it.
By exploiting the “hyphens,” the points where shifts in identity are occurring, where the
traces of previous physical incarnations bump into the present, and where art and
architecture become entangled, this thesis will attempt to reactivate the Bacardi campus
and propose a dynamic force that responds to as well as provokes the Miami of yesterday, today and tomorrow.
The author on the Bacardi campus in Miami, Florida, in January 2013.
Contents
PART 1: Sides of the Hyphen……………………………………….…...1
PART 2: Site and Program
Site: The Bacardi campus……………………………..….6
Program: Cuban-American arts center….…………...…..17
PART 3: Materials……………………………………………………....34
Existing Materials: Modernist underpinnings with a tropical slant
Proposed Materials: Innovative interventions that promote interactions
PART 4: Design, Research and Methodology
Palimpsests……………………………………...….…….38
Scale…………………………...….…………….…….…..40
Circulation………………………………….....…………..43
Synthesis of the Arts…………………….……..……..…..48
PART 5: Design Study
Opening Up the Jewel Box: An exploration into internal tensions and external projections………….…….54
Negotiating the Hyphen: Scaling interventions into the plaza……………………………………………...72
The Tiled Tower: Vistas within and beyond……….…….80 PART 6: Findings and Moves Towards Resolution………….….………83
PART 7: Contributions………………………………………………….102
NOTES………………………………………………….………..……..107
BIBLIOGRAPHY
APPENDIX: Final Presentation Boards
Figures
1. Flagler Development. http://flagler.matrix2hosting.com/index.php?view=properties&id=102&option=com_jea&Itemid=52
2. Robin Hill Photography. http://robinhill.photoshelter.com/
3. Google Earth
4. City of Miami Historic and Environmental Preservation Board. “The Bacardi Buildings Designation Report”
5. Author’s rendering
6. Robin Hill Photography. http://robinhill.photoshelter.com/
7. Robin Hill Photography. http://robinhill.photoshelter.com/
8. Author’s rendering
9. Robin Hill Photography. http://robinhill.photoshelter.com/
10. Author’s rendering
11. Author’s map
12. Author’s chart
13. Author’s chart
14. Author’s rendering
15. Author’s chart
16. Author’s sketch
17. Author’s chart
18. Author’s chart
19. Robin Hill Photography. http://robinhill.photoshelter.com/
20. Juxtapoz magazine. http://www.juxtapoz.com/Street-Art/jr-in-miamis-wynwood-arts-district
21. Bridge House Events. http://www.bridgehouseevents.com/venues_moore06.php
22. Herzog & de Meuron
23. Author’s sketch
24. Robin Hill Photography. http://robinhill.photoshelter.com/
25. Author’s chart
26. Robin Hill Photography. http://robinhill.photoshelter.com/
27. Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania. http://www.icaphila.org/exhibitions/garaicoa.php
28. BBC News website. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-20266899
29. Andy Battaglia in Art Forum. http://artforum.com/diary/id=26046
30. Author’s sketches
31. Smithsonian.com, courtesy of Freelon Adjaye Bond/SmithGroup
32. Author’s tracings of Burle Marx plans and landscapes from Roberto Burle Marx: The Unusual Art of the Garden by William Howard Adams
33. Bicycle/Pedestrian Mobility Plan for the Miami Downtown Development Authority Area, prepared by the Miami Dade Metropolitan Planning Organization and the Miami Downtown Development Authority, (2011).
34. Brickell Reporter
35. STUDIOS Architecture
36. Kimbell Art Museum website. https://www.kimbellart.org/architecture/kahn-building/light
37. Photo by Rory Hyde. ArchDaily website. http://www.archdaily.com/84988/ad-classics-ronchamp-le- corbusier/ronchamp_roryrory/
38. Author’s model
39. Author’s model
40. Flickr photostream of Helen Sotiriadis. http://www.flickr.com/photos/toomanytribbles/3674845560/
41. Fabric Architecture website. http://fabricarchitecturemag.com/articles/0712_app_fabric_walls.html
42. Author’s sketch.
43. Author’s rendering
44. Compilation of paintings from online sources. Clockwise from top left: http://www.trienalsanjuan.org/exhibiciones/guido-Llinás/; http://www.cubaartny.org/pages/artists/guidoLlinás/work4.html; http://guidoLlinás.com/paintings.htm; http://www.latinamericanartsale.com/all-paintings/guido-Llinás/2
45. http://www.latinamericanartsale.com/all-paintings/guido-Llinás/2
46. Author’s sketch
47. Author’s sketch
48. Author’s sketch
49. Author’s sketch
50. Author’s rendering
51. Author’s drawing
52. Author’s drawing
53. Author’s drawing
54. Author’s drawing
55. Author’s drawing
56. Author’s drawing
57. Author’s drawing
58. Robin Hill Photography. http://robinhill.photoshelter.com/
59. Author’s sketch
60. Author’s collage
61. Author’s collage
62. Author’s collage
63. Author’s collage
64. Author’s model
65. Author’s rendering
66. Author’s rendering
67. Author’s rendering
68. Author’s model
69. Author’s rendering
70. Author’s drawing
71. Architects and Artisans website notes the photo is provided by Bacardi International: http://architectsandartisans.com/index.php/2010/06/miami-modern-at-the-aia-convention/
72. Author’s drawing
73. Author’s rendering
74. Author’s drawing
75. Author’s rendering
76. Author’s drawing
77. Author’s drawing
78. Author’s rendering
79. Author’s drawing
80. Author’s rendering
81. Author’s drawing
82. Author’s drawing
83. Author’s drawing
84. Author’s drawing
85. Author’s rendering
86. Author’s rendering
87. Author’s drawing
88. Author’s drawing
89. Author’s rendering
90. Author’s rendering
91. Author’s drawing
PART 1: SIDES OF THE HYPHEN
The hyphen is a geography of change. –Lynette M. F. Bosch
With time, perception of a building’s appearance changes. It changes in relation to the landscape and structures surrounding it, or because of the people occupying it, or with the angle of sight, with the movement of light across its façade, or with the reflection of clouds or concrete in its windows. Partitions are moved or created to accommodate emerging or receding needs. Windows are sealed shut or covered with bars to protect the inhabitants or those outside. Railings, ramps and doors are added to bring the building up to code. A building’s walls and floors shift as the ground below it settles; the paint fades, metal hinges gain a patina, and floors are worn by millions of accumulated footsteps.
Buildings do not stand still.
People erect buildings, inhabit them, glimpse them from the window of a passing car or pause to consider them from the sidewalk. People and buildings are inextricably linked, and thus changes in a building cannot help but reflect shifts in people, cultural dislocations and societal upheavals. Identity, both individual and collective, is not static; it is perceived, formed and transformed.
Identity took precedence when the Bacardi family, having recently fled Fidel
Castro’s 1959 Cuban Revolution, built a new headquarters for its rum company in
Miami, Florida between 1963 and 1973. According to professor and architect Gray Read, at the time, “Bacardi became a company without a country.”1 Aware of the “rhetorical power of architecture,” the head of Bacardi, Jose “Pepin” Bosch, used the buildings’ design to reorient Bacardi and Cuban exiles in Miami and situate them in a forward-
1 looking position following the losses they suffered.2 The efficiency of modern architecture was juxtaposed with the exuberance of Latin American color and imagery,
“creating something new in the fusion, much the way Latin percussion affected the meter of American jazz in the 1950s.”3 As Read notes: “When it was built…seeming contradictions in the images projected by the Bacardi Corporation, the exiled Cuban rum distiller, were a pointed statement of identity that conveyed corporate strength and political will in the tumultuous early years of Fidel Castro’s rule. The Bacardi Building’s mixed messages directly addressed members of Miami’s nascent Cuban community, making reference to their recent displacement and the role played by Bacardi under the leadership of Jose ‘Pepin’ Bosch.”4
For Bacardi, establishing an identity in the United States – and on the broader international stage – was a negotiation between recognizing the company’s Latin
American roots while planting its flag on a new horizon. The same can be said of the large Cuban diaspora that also began making Miami its home in the early 1960s. Multiple generations of families left Cuba to begin lives that straddled the traditions, language, food and culture of their homeland with those of their adopted land. In his book, Life on the Hyphen: The Cuban-American Way, Gustavo Pérez Firmat highlights the importance of one of the Cuban immigrant generations, those called the “1.5 generation” who left
Cuba as children or teenagers but reached adulthood in the United States.5 According to
Cuban sociologist Ruben Rumbaut, this group is distinguished from the first generation, whose members leave their country as adults and therefore belong to it more fully, and the second generation – those who are born in the United States to immigrant parents and thus identify as more American.6 Pérez Firmat posits that the 1.5 or “one-and-a-half”
2 generation – those who thoroughly inhabit the hyphenated state between Cuban and
American – are the ones who define Cuban-American culture: “Although it is true enough that the 1.5 generation is ‘marginal’ to both its native and its adopted cultures, the inverse may be equally accurate: only the 1.5 generation is marginal to neither culture.
The 1.5 individual is unique in that, unlike younger and older compatriots, he or she may actually find it possible to circulate within and through both the old and the new cultures.”7
This ability to embrace – or necessity to adapt to – a tilting landscape makes one- and-a-halfers uniquely equipped to find “opportunities for distinctive achievement created by this fractional existence,”8 according to Pérez Firmat. Similarly, in her essay on Cuban artists in the collection entitled Identity, Memory, and Diaspora: Voices of
Cuban-American Artists, Writers and Philosophers, Lynette M. F. Bosch observes:
Because one-and-a-halfers were partially formed in Cuba, but forced to acculturate to American culture before their Cuban identities were fully formed, their lives are truncated, cut in “half.” But the halves are not neatly divided, as exile did not break their lives in even parts. Instead, the hyphen becomes a figure of fracture that creates a movable territory of negotiation that is ongoing and fluid. One-and-a-halfers are also exiles, whose sense of identity, both Cuban and Cuban-American is defined by a landscape of slippage. The hyphen is a geography of change, where one-and-a-halfers navigate back and forth between their Cuban and American cultural references on a daily and hourly basis, as events and incidents call forth reactions from their Cuban and their American parts.9
The Cuban-American identity is indeed in flux: the first generation of 1960s
Cuban exiles is passing away, and the 1.5 generation is watching its American-born children and grandchildren grow without ever having set foot in Cuba.
Miami has not been static, either, in the last 50 years. Today 1.2 million people of
Cuban birth or descent live in Florida,10 and arguably, defining Bacardi’s identity no
3 longer has to focus so heavily on the triumph of the company and of Cuban-Americans despite the Revolution. The fact that Bacardi outgrew its campus and moved its headquarters three years ago to offices that are more typical of the Mediterranean-style buildings found in its new Coral Gables neighborhood is evidence of that, as is the fact that every mayor of Miami since 1996 has been Cuban-American [Fig. 1].
Figure 1. New Bacardi headquarters in Coral Gables are more typical of their surroundings.
The hyphenated state is a continuum that can at times represent an opposition and at other times a connection, or addition. Upheaval of the sort resulting from the influx of
Cubans into Miami after the Cuban Revolution, or from the evolution of a city as its exile community becomes its native population, sprinkles the landscape with dichotomies.
This study explores these hyphenated states: traditional-modern, local-international,
4 public-private, preservation-innovation, past-present, art-architecture. The study then offers an argument for design to address the spaces in between and discover both the connections and ruptures. Pérez Firmat’s “fractional” state and Bosch’s “fractured” existence can be viewed as one where things slip through the gaps and are lost, or released, or as one where the interstices are exploited to create moments of transcendence and revelation – what Pérez Firmat calls “a jubilant border or festive fringe where the spectacular and the everyday embrace.”11 The ways in which Cuban-Americans have managed the hyphen since 1959 should be reflected in the Bacardi buildings they raised on Miami’s skyline. Redefining the Bacardi campus for the continually redefined Cuban-
Americans will make it a dynamic force that responds to as well as provokes the Miami of yesterday, today and tomorrow.
5
PART 2: SITE AND PROGRAM
Miami’s art scene has exploded over the last decade. –Dennis Scholl
It’s incredible what Miami can be. –Francis Suarez
Site: The Bacardi Campus
General Information (adapted from the City of Miami Historic and Environmental Preservation Board’s “Bacardi Buildings Designation Report” and the National Young Arts Foundation Project Fact Sheet)
Historic Name: Bacardi Imports USA, Inc.
Dates of Construction: Tower 1963 Annex 1973
Architect – Tower Building, 1963 Enrique Gutierrez, SACMAG International (Puerto Rico)
Tile Design (Tower) Francisco Brennand (Recife, Brazil)
Builder (Tower) Frank J. Rooney, Inc. (Miami, FL)
Size (Tower) Eight stories 81’ x 32’ 22,041 square feet
Architect – Annex Building, 1973 Ignacio Carrera-Justiz (Coral Gables, FL)
Stained Glass (Annex) Manufactured by Gabriel and Jacques Loire (Chartres, France) after a painting by German artist Johannes Dietz
6
Builder (Annex) Unknown
Size (Annex) Two stories 14,305 square feet
Location: 2100 Biscayne Boulevard, Miami, Florida 33137 Use: Office
General Boundary All of the lots comprising Block 1 of the Bayonne Subdivision generally described as NE 21st Street on the south; Alley separating Edgewater subdivision from the Bayonne subdivision (essentially mid block) on the north; Biscayne Boulevard on the east, and NE 2nd Avenue on the west.
Plaza size 47,294 square feet
Lot size 184’ x 100’
The Bacardi complex in Miami, Florida, embodies the hyphen. Two buildings are both connected and separated by a broad plaza, and save for the image of a bat painted onto the permeable concrete pavers – Bacardi’s logo – the plaza is vacant [Figs. 2 and 3].
Today the buildings also stand empty after the spirits company moved its headquarters from this location and other sites around the city to a larger space in Coral Gables in
2009. The shift in occupancy seemed to have made preservationists nervous, and so, despite not having reached the usual 50-year threshold for consideration, in that year the site also achieved landmark status from the City of Miami. The buildings and plaza were protected from demolition or major exterior changes. Recognizing this designation, and that this thesis focuses on interior design, this project will attempt to maintain the exterior largely intact while freely reimagining the interior.
7
Figure 2. Bacardi buildings at 2100 Biscayne Boulevard.
Figure 3. Aerial view of Bacardi campus with bat logo painted onto plaza.
8
Bacardi executives had high expectations for the company when they built the first structure on the site, in 1963. Located on a 184-by-100-foot lot at 2100 Biscayne
Boulevard, on a busy thoroughfare two blocks from Biscayne Bay that was once considered a grand “gateway to the city” from the suburbs to its north, the Bacardi campus sits on an elevated platform [Figs. 4 and 5].12
Figure 4. Bacardi campus site.
9
Figure 5. Bacardi campus site plan.
Raised to the eye level of pedestrians so as to minimize the appearance of receding parallel lines and create the illusion of a floating tower, the site impresses [Fig.
6].13 From the beginning, Pepin Bosch, the Bacardi executive who guided his family’s business from its roots in Santiago de Cuba to international success, took steps to protect and distinguish the brand. Amidst corruption and political upheaval in 1950s Cuba under president Fulgencio Batista, Bosch incorporated the thriving Bacardi and Co. Limited in the Bahamas.14 The company soon also opened distilleries in Mexico and Puerto Rico.
10
Figure 6. Elevated plaza of the Bacardi campus.
With Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution, and the subsequent takeover of private businesses, Bosch fled to the United States with the company’s trademark certificates and proprietary information.15 His plan for the construction of the corporation’s new Miami headquarters, in the heart of the exile community, held a particular significance: “When
Bacardi left Cuba in 1960, the company had several audiences to address. In the international corporate world, Bacardi had to exude enough confidence to outweigh recent losses. In Cuba, Bosch had to show Castro that neither he nor the company were weakened. And in Miami, Bosch needed to reassure the Cuban community that he was on their side.”16
Bosch turned to modernism, and to architect Enrique Gutierrez, a fellow Cuban exile who had served as the liaison with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s firm when the
11 latter was commissioned to design new Bacardi headquarters in Cuba in the 1950s, and who was now working with SACMAG, a firm in Puerto Rico. Gutierrez’s 1963 reinforced-concrete tower stands at eight stories, with approximately 26,000 square feet of office space built to hold up to 50 employees.17 Four 30-inch by 14-inch columns stretch 118 feet from the ground to support 81-foot-long by 31-foot-wide trusses at the top [Figs. 7 and 8].18 The trusses suspend the floor plates on cables encased in the columns, allowing the interior to be devoid of columns.19 This allows for the placement of a glass box at the base of the building, a feature that Bosch requested to house a gallery for the public.20 A glass curtain wall facing Biscayne Boulevard, with anodized- aluminum mullions, “is a direct tribute to Mies’s design” of New York’s Seagram
Building.21 While the choice of the International Style certainly served Bosch’s purposes well, it was the use of glazed tiles on the north and south façades that made people slow their cars and notice.
12
Figure 7. South view of Bacardi tower, with tiles by Francisco Brennand.
13
Figure 8. East elevation rendering.
Brazilian painter Francisco Brennand designed and painted the mural of 28,000
blue and white “azulejo” tiles (painted and glazed ceramic tiles popular in Spain and
Portugal) [Fig. 7]. Fired and hand-numbered in Brazil to ensure correct installation, the
6” x 6” tiles depict a symphony of abstracted, tropical flora and fauna .22 Both Bosch and
Brennand believed in the Bauhaus concept of a “synthesis of the arts,” in which there is
no hierarchy among art, architecture and interior design, which instead work together to
produce a unified design ideal.23 Hence the tiles are not merely decorative, but are an
integral part of the design.
The stained-glass annex to the west of the tower more fully fuses art and
architecture [Fig. 9]. Its four walls are constructed of one-inch-thick hammered glass
14 mosaics that tell the story of how rum is made, based on an abstract painting by German artist Johannes Dietz.24 Manufactured in France by Gabriel and Jacques Loire, the walls cantilever out 24 feet over a concrete pedestal covered in red, glazed brick. Unlike the tower, the core of the annex supports the weight of its two stories, rising 47 feet above the plaza [Fig. 10]. The floors are suspended from the roof by 28-foot tensor rods connected to beams that transfer the weight to the core and the foundation.25 The fact that one enters through the 40-car garage situated partially below grade, underneath the plaza, reinforces a sense that this building is more decorative than functional.26 In the evening it glows (Fig. 26), and although it is sited behind the tower, and therefore does not directly sit on the main street, the annex asserts its own vital presence. It is known as the “jewel box.”
Figure 9. South view of Bacardi annex, showing stained glass walls.
15
Figure 10. West elevation.
Another Cuban-American architect, Ignacio Carrera-Justiz, was tapped to design
this glittering 14,305-square-foot cube when the Bacardi company’s expansion
necessitated additional administrative and accounting office space. Like Gutierrez,
Carrera-Justiz molded the modernist approach to the tropical backdrop of South Florida.
His adoption of stained glass, similar to Gutierrez’s use of azulejos, is also a nod to a
traditional, old-world craft. This tension between the traditional and the modern bridges
Bacardi’s Cuban roots with its international aspirations, and points to the company’s
willingness to innovate while still respecting time-tested methods. Nonetheless, this 1973
structure looks out and looks forward, and projects an optimism onto the streets of Miami
and beyond.
16
Program
Biscayne Boulevard connects a series of artistic centers in Miami, Florida. From
the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, to the Wynwood Arts District and the
Miami Design District, as well as the still-under-construction Pérez Art Museum Miami
(PAMM) to the south, the street is the site of an emerging and evolving arts scene [Fig.
11]. It is striking how art pushes the boundaries of physical structures – buildings are not merely vessels for creativity but rather is painted onto walls, integrated into flooring or built into the very fiber of a building. (Is this perhaps a result of a climate that allows for year-round outdoor activity, or because the city is young and open-minded, or because
there are few art museums?) Whether purpose-built or adapted to house a gallery or
performance space, these buildings around Biscayne Boulevard exude a sense of artistry.
The Bacardi campus at 2100 Biscayne Boulevard, empty since the spirits company
moved out three years ago, has stood for almost 50 years as changes have swirled around
it. Although the buildings themselves have long been regarded as works of art, they have
served as offices while the neighboring areas have begun shifting their focus towards
more cultural pursuits.
17
Figure 11. Artistic institutions and districts around the Bacardi campus.
The two Bacardi buildings and the plaza between them were never average office
buildings. The 1963 tower, overlaid with azulejos, and the 1973 annex, wrapped in
stained glass, are iconic structures that inspire. This study proposes making them another
link in the string of arts districts along the boulevard. Taking into consideration the
requirements of various scenarios, several programs were considered, each a combination
of gallery, studio or residences [Figs. 12 and 13]. It was determined that converting the
18
Bacardi campus into an arts center with indoor and outdoor studio and gallery spaces for
Cuban and Cuban-American art, along with accommodations for Cuban artists-in- residence, will best contribute to coalescing the burgeoning creative environment, bringing activity to the relatively barren landscape the buildings now occupy, and bridging the “hyphen” [Figs. 14 and 15]. The program may include developing the plaza as an “outdoor room” that will connect the two buildings both physically and conceptually, as well as engage the community and urban context [Fig. 16].
Figure 12. Earlier program scenarios.
19
Figure 13. Earlier program scenarios.
Figure 14. Proposed program for arts center.
20
Figure 15. Programming requirements for arts center.
Figure 16. Outdoor room programming concept.
Artist-in-residence Programming
Artist-in-residence programs take many different forms [Fig. 17]. Some, like the
Bakehouse Arts Complex in the nearby Wynwood neighborhood, offer only individual
and shared studio spaces,27 so that the center is a workplace, while others, like the Henry
Luce III Center for the Arts and Religion (LCAR) Artist-in-Residence program at Wesley
21
Theological Seminary in Washington, provide housing for artists who do not live in the
area.28 These models depend upon space, funding and the goals of the organization. The
proposed residence program at the Bacardi campus includes housing for artists visiting
from Cuba, as the intention is to facilitate interactions between Cuban artists and their
American counterparts, as well as with the culture at large.
Figure 17. Artist-in-residence program types.
22
Studios, like those at the Torpedo Factory Art Center in Alexandria, VA, may be
open to the public, encouraging visitors to engage with artists as they work and to have
the opportunity to purchase work on site.29 Other programs promote a quieter
environment in which artists enjoy private and sometimes secluded spaces. With the
aforementioned focus on connecting artists and the public, the program for the Bacardi
site envisions open artist studios where interactions can occur organically.
Residency programs might specialize in a single discipline, like the visual arts –
and within that, specific media like painting or photography – or might encompass a variety of offerings, such as the performing arts, music and design. Again, this depends upon the mission of the organization, and space and funding restrictions. While the residency program for the Bacardi campus currently focuses on the visual arts, the campus may be used to exhibit other art forms, with the possibility of other disciplines such as dance, music and the performing arts making use of the plaza and auditorium and further enlivening the site.
Expectations and opportunities also vary among artist-in-residence programs. The
Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts Artists-in-Residence Program offers occasions for solo and group exhibitions, open studio days, and teaching classes,30 while Wesley
Theological Seminary requires artists to teach classes, lead community projects and
contribute one of their works to the seminary.31 As the proposal for the Bacardi campus
includes copious exhibition space, both indoor and outdoor, the expectation is that at a
minimum, artists will show their work.
Residency programs may be short term, long term, or may be tied to a specific event. The unique “Living Gallery Program” at the Annmarie Sculpture Garden and Arts
23
Center in Solomon’s Island, MD, opens its doors to working artists for a few months each
year.32 Studios fill the main exhibition gallery, effectively putting the artists on display.
The public is invited to observe the artists at work, interact and learn from them, and
purchase their pieces.
Until recently, Cuban migration laws, which tightly control travel by Cuban
citizens, allow those few who obtained visas to stay outside the country for up to 11 months.33 Since January 2013, Cubans are now allowed to travel for up to two years. The
program for the Bacardi campus therefore suggests a longer residency term of at least a
year, which would take full advantage of the limited time afforded to Cuban citizens to
travel abroad, and which would also make it a worthwhile endeavor for applicants. A
longer term would also enable artists to be more productive. Since the US embargo limits
moving cargo between the United States and Cuba, artists are unable to directly ship their
work from one country to the other.34 Mounting exhibitions outside of Cuba are difficult,
and thus a longer residency would also benefit the galleries showing the work.
Gallery Programming
Gallery programming requirements vary greatly – a gallery can exist on a single
wall, or can extend for rooms and floors. There are ideal criteria, however, as gallery
owner Edward Winkleman outlines in his book, How to Start and Run a Commercial Art
Gallery [Fig. 18]. In order to place the emphasis on the artwork, Winkleman suggests
providing a neutral backdrop for it, known as the “white cube.” This entails expanses of
white walls, few windows, high ceilings of at least 10 to 12 feet, plain wood or concrete
floors and flexible lighting systems.35 While natural daylight may seem desirable, it gives
24 the exhibit designer less control over lighting. Even when artificial light is used, there is debate over whether dramatic, focused light is preferable over even, diffused light. For this reason Winkleman stresses the importance of installing a variety of lighting for greater flexibility.36
Figure 18. Gallery programming criteria.
25
In situations where the space itself is showy – so-called “cathedral galleries” –
Winkleman warns that while it can project a certain confidence on the part of the gallery
owner, it can also overwhelm both artists and collectors.37 The Bacardi campus presents
opportunities for both types of exhibition space. Certainly the buildings and the view
through the curtain wall to the west towards the bay are themselves striking. And while
the annex offers a more contained space, the stained glass walls might prove distracting.
Engagement with Neighboring Arts Centers
The program calls for designing a place that dovetails with the neighboring arts
communities while introducing something unique to the scene. Since its opening in 2006,
the Arsht Center, approximately seven blocks south, at 13th Street and Biscayne
Boulevard, has provided audiences with a venue for the performing arts [Fig. 19]. Built specifically for this purpose, and incorporating an existing 1929 Sears, Roebuck and
Company store tower into the design, the complex offers opera, ballet, and symphony performances, as well as Broadway productions and educational programming. In
September 2011 the Center won a $300,000 grant from ArtPlace, a public-private coalition of 11 foundations working with the National Endowment for the Arts and seven federal agencies to stimulate economic growth via an arts-centered approach.38 In
awarding the grant, Dennis Scholl, vice president/arts for Knight Foundation and chair of
ArtPlace’s operating committee, said, “Miami’s art scene has exploded over the last
decade. This grant will help solidify a physical place for arts in the city, and weave the
arts into South Floridians’ everyday lives.”39
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Figure 19. Arsht Center plaza.
Further north, between 20th and 36th Streets, the Wynwood Arts District fosters an
edgier cultural interaction. The warehouse-lined streets of Wynwood have been treated as
a canvas for street art since 2009, when the Wynwood Walls project began encouraging artists worldwide to leave their mark on the blank walls and open spaces [Fig. 20]. Even earlier, in the late 1980s, artists began claiming the inexpensive warehouses for studio space with the arrival of the aforementioned Bakehouse Art Complex, a non-profit organization supplying affordable studios, galleries and professional and educational opportunities in an empty 1930s bakery.40 Private contemporary art collections followed,
with the Rubell Family Collection/Contemporary Arts Foundation occupying a
repurposed “Drug Enforcement Agency confiscated goods facility” since 1993, and the
Margulies Collection moving into a nearby warehouse in 1999.41 Abandoned warehouses
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and factories now house cafes and boutiques, as well as more than 50 galleries and four
museums.42
Figure 20. Wynwood Arts District. Mural by JR.
The Miami Design District abuts Wynwood to the north, and has similarly taken
advantage of neglected warehouses and factories to reinvigorate a blighted neighborhood
[Fig. 21]. Noting that he is “keenly aware of the power of architecture to create a spirit of
community,” developer Craig Robins began purchasing properties in the area 15 years
ago, and has since worked to cultivate a walkable destination for furniture and
accessories, art, restaurants and fashion.43 The Miami Commission recently offered
28
preliminary approval of Robins’s new proposal to further develop the area with boutique department stores, housing and hotels, plazas, green roofs and a pedestrian promenade.
Commission Chairman Francis Suarez remarked, “It’s incredible what Miami can be.”44
Figure 21. The Moore Building, a former furniture showroom in the Design District, is now a venue for parties and events.
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Another glimpse of Miami’s future is rising along the shore of Biscayne Bay, at
Bicentennial Park, just south of the Arsht Center. The Miami Art Museum, currently located in downtown Miami, will reopen on the waterfront site in November 2013 as the
Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) [Fig. 22]. Designed by Herzog & de Meuron, the museum will complement the landscape, with hanging gardens at the entrance and
“tropical plants engulfing the museum… integrated into the structural system of columns and platform.”45 Together with the Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum of Science – opening the following year – PAMM will form part of Museum Park, a 29-acre lot being developed with a baywalk, promenade, green, open spaces, and a plaza between the two museums.46 A Miami Herald article calls the site “a stunning but sorely underused corner of downtown Miami.”47
Figure 22. Rendering of the still-under-construction Pérez Art Museum Miami.
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The same can be said of the Bacardi campus. Vacant for three years, and standing on a platform above the street, the striking buildings demand not only to be seen but also to be utilized in a manner befitting their location. In addition to adding a thematic connection with the nearby arts centers, the program dictates that the Bacardi campus engage with its immediate neighborhood.
Engagement with Neighborhood
Biscayne Boulevard is a wide, busy thoroughfare, and one of the main north/south routes through the city.48 Miami’s climate and car culture, as well as until recently, the decline of the neighborhoods surrounding the Bacardi complex, have meant little foot traffic in this vicinity. And as office buildings with employee parking, the Bacardi site would not seem to be taking the lead in encouraging interaction with the public. While the architecture and design of the complex were intentionally eye-catching, the private company built its campus first and foremost to house its headquarters: “Despite its resemblance to a public open space, the Bacardi Building plaza, atop a partially underground parking garage, was strictly off-limits to pedestrians. Here the office building and pedestrian plaza, made famous by the Manhattan headquarters of another purveyor of high-octane refreshments, the Seagram Liquor Company, was recalibrated by
Gutierrez to suit Miami’s suburban, motorized lifestyle.”49
Like many of the areas through which it passes, Biscayne Boulevard enjoyed a grander past and is now being remade for a brighter future. A 2011 “Bicycle/Pedestrian
Mobility Plan” for Miami recommends improvements to the thoroughfare in order to encourage safer, shaded and more pleasant access for both pedestrians and bicyclists.50
31
The Bacardi campus should also be more welcoming and better integrated with its surroundings [Fig. 23].
Figure 23. Sketch of plaza in urban context.
Engagement Between Bacardi Buildings
Having considered the need for engaging the broader context of the nearby vicinities as well as the narrower one of the immediate surroundings, the program criteria also defines the need for interaction between the two Bacardi buildings across the plaza that both separates and connects them. United by their tropical modernist designs, the
1963 tower and 1973 annex otherwise lack any real dialogue. The tiled façades face traffic on Biscayne Boulevard: “roadside semaphores that projected Bacardi’s intoxicating Latin image to Biscayne Boulevard’s automotive speedreaders.”51 Designed
32 to promote a particular image of the company, the tower and its murals “addressed the city,” and were expected to “further strengthen the building’s presence.”52 Moreover, the annex is practically self-contained, as the entrance through the parking garage below it eliminates the need to even set foot on the plaza. There should be a greater connection among the tower, the annex and the plaza.
This study will evaluate modes of addressing the programmatic criteria in the form of a redefined Bacardi campus that takes advantage of the surge of artistic expression in the area, the desire to invite the community into the space, and the need to create a more interactive site. The tower and annex, as well as the plaza – an outdoor room, an in-between space – will encourage contemporary Cuban, Cuban-American and
American artists, as well as the public, to address the ever-shifting “hyphen.”
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PART 3: MATERIALS
Abstract modern architecture helped to dissociate the company from its past and to construct a new identity that spoke only of a clean, bright future. –Gray Read
Concrete, glass and steel – these are the materials of the International Style. Their
efficiency, economy and rationality, as well as the technological advances that produced
them, appealed to designers after World War I, who looked towards a future of
simplified, transparent and rectilinear structures. With his hiring of Mies van der Rohe to
redesign the Bacardi headquarters in Santiago de Cuba in the late 1950s – which was
never built due to the nationalization of Bacardi properties following the 1959 Cuban
Revolution – Pepin Bosch signaled his understanding of the progressive image the
International Style offered.53 And although “this uneasy marriage of Mies and samba
may have raised eyebrows” when the Miami headquarters were built, the architect’s
designs for Bacardi’s Mexico (1960), Bermuda (1972) and Spain (1974) headquarters
proved Bacardi’s commitment to the modernist vision.54
The Miami tower’s eight stories built of reinforced concrete are suspended by steel trusses at the top of the building. These trusses are in turn held up by four marble piers on the exterior of the structure. A curtain wall faces the bay, while concrete and tile sheathe the other surfaces [Fig. 24].55 This study intends to use similar criteria for its
materials: transparent, honest, forward-looking and efficient. In its design of the Bacardi
campus, it anticipates employing glass, concrete, steel and natural stone, as well as
availing itself of more innovative and sustainable materials developed in the years since
the complex was built [Fig. 25]. The site’s location in a tropical climate suggests the need for materials that provide solar protection in the plaza – this furthers the goal of making it
34 a more hospitable space – as well as the use of tropical plantings to provide shade, texture
and circulation.
Figure 24. Marble piers on the tower’s exterior support steel trusses at the top of the tower, which in turn hold the concrete floors. The main façade is a glass curtain wall.
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Figure 25. Current and proposed materials for the project.
The buildings’ stained glass and painted tiles yank the modernist ethos in another direction [Fig. 26]. Understanding that in the early 1960s “in Miami… passions were heated and the cool hauteur of the International Style may have seemed too abstract,”
Bosch astutely adapted the International Style to the city’s physical and political climate.56 The resulting “tropical” or “subtropical” modernism, with its lush and florid imagery, reveals a Latin American vernacular: “Each Modernist element is interpreted in a Latin American idiom. The plinth is not composed of Mies’s preferred material of verd antique marble, with its connotations of a Classical Greek past, but instead is clad in
36
Spanish blue-glazed tile.”57 Accordingly, the criteria for the materials in this study also
recognize the need for color, vibrancy, organic forms and bold, exaggerated expressions.
So-called “Cuban” cement tiles typically used as flooring in buildings in Cuba
architecture might provide some of the color and mix of geometric and organic designs
that already exists on the site. The new design for the campus will echo the original
designers’ exuberant and thoughtful use of materials. After all, “These buildings have a
lot to offer contemporary architects: the way inexpensive materials can have a certain
glamour, how to accommodate the automobile and how to respond to the subtropical
climate.”58
Figure 26. The stained-glass façade of the annex offers a counterpoint to the modernist architecture.
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PART 4: DESIGN, RESEARCH AND METHODOLOGY
This study will evaluate a number of methods for activating the Bacardi campus, in particular palimpsests, scale, circulation and the synthesis of the arts. It will examine precedents and consider how their lessons might be applied to this project.
Palimpsests
Approaching a culturally and historically significant structure such as the former
Bacardi headquarters as a palimpsest – something that has been repurposed or transformed, yet still shows traces of its earlier manifestations – may reveal not only the influence of the past, but also the significance of societal shifts through time and the relevance of the buildings today. A palimpsest originally referred to an ancient piece of parchment on which text was written and then scraped off so that the parchment could be reused. Ghosts of older writings were sometimes visible underneath the new text. The
Archimedes Palimpsest, which recently underwent study and conservation at the Walters
Museum in Baltimore, MD, is one of the more famous examples. A Byzantine prayer book written in the 13th century overlays 10th-century treatises by the mathematician
Archimedes, and underneath those, texts from the second and third centuries, and “only occasionally can one just discern, at right angles to the prayer book text, the erased writings that the current project is attempting to recover.”59
While the significance of a palimpsest as a record of the past is undeniable, it is also a model of sustainability in which resources are used and reused – in this case, over centuries. More contemporary examples of palimpsests surround us, in the paintings of
Richard Diebenkorn, which show his earlier pencil marks and layers of applications of
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paint, or in the work of Cuban artist Carlos Garaicoa, who pins strings of thread across
old photographs to recreate structures that have collapsed in Havana after years of neglect
[Fig. 27]. In his review of Andreas Huyssen’s book, “Urban Palimpsests and the Politics
of Memory,” Rolf J. Goebel notes that in Huyssen’s chapter on “Berlin as Palimpsest,”
“the literary trope of the palimpsest denotes a material site where new inscriptions and half-erased traces of previous historical signs intermingle in a multi-layered cultural
‘text’ that implies voids and illegibilities but also enables readings of rich memories, restorations, and new constructions.”60 Palimpsests are characterized by a recognition of
the past, of the effects of time, of the importance of the process.
Figure 27. Carlos Garaicoa, “Sin Título Arcos Madera (Untitled, Wood Arches).” Black and white photographs, threads, pins, (diptych). Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania.
The Bacardi campus was built in stages, or layers. The tower came first, and 10
years later, the annex was added. Today although Bacardi no longer occupies it, clues
that the company was there, like the bat logo on the plaza floor or the Bacardi name
painted on blue and white tiles on the façade, remain. The next proposed phase for the
campus will seek to update the site for use as an arts center while still maintaining
39
physical vestiges of the company’s original hyphenated state – its Cuban history and
American future. Rather than a wholesale renovation, one in which the structure is but a shell for the new program, the redesign will seek to emphasize certain aspects of the campus and downplay others. For instance, while historically the tiled and stained-glass façades distinguish these buildings, other surfaces, such as the plaza floor, or the concrete walls or the curtain wall of the tower, may be accentuated to communicate the new agenda.
Scale
Changes in scale can heighten or decrease a sense of place or of dislocation, and can influence how people relate to space. The design of Brasilia, the capital of Brazil, is a good case study of the manipulation of scale, both successful – on the level of buildings – and less successful – on the level of urban planning. Architecture critic Sarah Williams
Goldhagen writes that while the capital buildings exude power and complexity, the city plan by architects Oscar Niemeyer and Lucio Costa, “offers no viable neighborhoods, few pedestrian-scaled streets…Consistent with Niemeyer’s aesthetic that the dialogue was between his building and a single, lonely, delirious viewer, Brasilia’s public spaces are vast, overscaled, usually empty, and difficult to access on foot [Fig. 28].”61
40
Figure 28. Brasilia’s scale makes it unfriendly to pedestrians.
Another visitor writes, “The distances are immense, boundless, and absurd. It’s hard to understand how so cultured and cosmopolitan an architect as Lucio Costa managed to so completely ignore human scale in designing his Piano Piloto (the original blueprint which laid out the inner city’s Federal District)… The scale adjusts itself in
[the] tidy residential areas, which appear to the visitor to have both order and a serene vitality. It’s a vitality which is diluted in the monumental areas by the huge spaces and the imposing aspect of the buildings.”62 Thus while the introduction of massively scaled
buildings may suitably convey the grandeur of the capital, the similarly scaled landscape
is off-putting for people.
The Bacardi campus currently juxtaposes the height of the eight-story tower with the low two-story annex. From the street level, the scale is further adjusted when the viewer sees the buildings up on their plinth. Employees who worked at the complex
41
entered from the parking garage underneath, ascending from underground to the plaza,
never having to interact with the street level.
While scale seems to be currently used in a manner that impedes interaction –
similar to the plan for Brasilia – it can be designed as part of the proposed program in a
way that facilitates it instead. Digging into the plaza, and rising above it, building structures on the plaza that serve to bridge the hyphen rather than stretch it further, forcing circulation through constricted spaces that then open into wide views of the bay from the upper floors, can generate interest and movement.
The redesign of Lincoln Center in New York also tackles the problem of scale,
partly by employing new technology. Quoted in The New York Times, architect Elizabeth
Diller of Diller, Scofidio and Renfro, the firm that handled the project, says, “The
monumentality of the scale of the buildings really needed to be softened up by a different,
pedestrian scale. The media is really part of the architectural expression of that.”63 The
article further notes: “The media elements are not just finishing touches: they are an
extension, and in many ways the ultimate expression, of a wholesale reimagining of the
complex as more porous, inviting and immediate…The grand main staircase on
Columbus Avenue, for example, with its informational text, is ‘an electronic welcome
mat,’ Ms. Diller said, ‘or a marquee that you step on [Fig. 29].’”64 Could this alleviate
some of the issues with Brasilia? Perhaps not, as the scale of the problems with scale
appear to be much larger. Yet this might be part of the solution to the isolation of the
Bacardi campus.
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Figure 29. Lincoln Center informational stairs address scale.
Circulation
Scale and circulation work in concert to direct how visitors experience a space. In
her study on museum circulation, Linda Hsu notes the importance of circulation: “In
essence, how we experience the three dimensionality of a building (perceptual function)
is basically through movement of our bodies through time, sequence and space. To meet
this circulatory function, the architectural design should include appropriate space to
accommodate, direct and enhance movement from area to area. This encompasses at least
five aspects: approach, entrance, configuration of the path, path/space relationship and
form of the circulation space.”65
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Architect David Adjaye’s design for the National Museum of African American
History and Culture, now being built on the National Mall in Washington, illustrates an emphasis on circulation. A New York Times review by Nicolai Ouroussoff describes the entrance: “The lobby floor, which slopes down from the Mall toward Constitution
Avenue, is a reversal of the conventional grand stair. Instead of lifting art up onto a pedestal, it allows the public to flow right through the building.”66 This ease of flow is missing from the Bacardi campus, where art – the buildings themselves – is lifted up onto a pedestal, and the site is cut off from the sidewalk and from the public. Creating new circulation paths that promote movement into and across the campus would further the program’s goals of engaging the public [Fig. 30].
Figure 30. Sketches of potential circulation paths through Bacardi campus.
Ouroussoff also speaks to the “path/space relationship” mentioned by Hsu in the way “the columns dip down at the center of the lobby, gently pushing the crowds toward the edges of the room [Fig. 31]. From there, visitors will climb a broad staircase to the main galleries, which are on the second, third and fourth floors. In a cheeky inversion of
Frank Lloyd Wright’s famous Guggenheim rotunda, Mr. Adjaye clusters all of the galleries at the center of these floors.”67 Circulation here is moved to the perimeter of the
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building, which Ouroussoff points out will not only allow the galleries to be imbued with
a sense of “stillness that is so vital to the experience of viewing displays,” but will also create a dialogue between what is occurring inside the museum as visitors move through it and the world outside.68
Figure 31. The National Museum of African American History and Culture moves circulation to the periphery.
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In its current design, the Bacardi campus encourages occupants to move from their cars parked in the underground garage into the buildings via stair or elevator, and from one building to the other through underground passages. While one could argue that approaching the site from the sidewalk or across the plaza provides an enriching experience of taking in the stained glass and painted tiles, the cantilevered floors, the marble-clad columns and painted pavers, as well as the South Florida sunshine, this path is unnecessary, and perhaps even inefficient and uncomfortable when the ever-present heat and humidity are taken into consideration. In addition the stained glass walls of the annex encase occupants in a kaleidoscope and prevent views either into or out of the building, while the tower looks outward, towards the city and bay, but largely turns away from the plaza behind it. Unlike Adjaye’s with museum, there is little conversation here between the Bacardi campus and the outside world.
Another precedent, the previously cited Diller, Scofidio and Renfro redesign of the vaunted Lincoln Center in New York, addresses similar issues to those of the Bacardi campus and the National Museum of African American History and Culture. According to Robin Pogrebin, writing in The New York Times, “In addressing the entrance and plaza
— Lincoln Center’s so-called south campus — the architects had a mandate to lighten the aesthetic of Lincoln Center, making it feel less like a hulking bastion of classical music and dance and more like an accessible contemporary arts center where people will come to relax and enjoy the scene even when they are not attending performances. ‘One of the urbanistic problems of Lincoln Center is the campus is really divorced from the city, kind of an Acropolian structure — white — that sets itself off from the street,’ Ms. Diller said.
‘We wanted to make it transparent, make it float, open up as many surfaces as
46
possible.’”69 Transparency, and use of existing available surfaces as well as the creation
of new surfaces, can serve to push circulation across a site like Lincoln Center — or
Bacardi.
Ouroussoff argues that Diller and company did not go far enough, however:
“While the new spaces do a lot to connect the famously aloof complex to its
surroundings, their architecture is too subdued in some places, pointlessly gimmicky at
others. Worse, the spaces don’t flow together in a way that might have given the center
the internal coherence that it sorely needs… [There] is a surprising insensitivity to the way bodies flow through space, something that is as fundamental to architecture and urban planning as to ballet and theater. A subway entrance at the corner of Columbus
Avenue and 65th Street, designed by the architects, is set at a slight angle to the site,
partly blocking the flow of movement up toward the plaza from the north. At the back of
the plaza, the two low walls that frame the entry to the Metropolitan Opera House have
been beefed up, which makes the passage into Damrosch Plaza, on the left, and the north
plaza, on the right, feel pinched.”70
Concerned as it is with the way space is experienced, circulation is undeniably a
key element of design. The intent behind the redesign of the Bacardi campus, that of
activating the space with artist residences and studio and exhibition space and relating it
to the urban context and to those who would visit the site, benefits most directly from
addressing circulation. In its most literal sense, circulation patterns describe ways in
which people might move across the hyphen – from an artist studio to a gallery wall,
across the plaza from the annex to the tower, down Biscayne Boulevard to a new art
venue, from Cuban and American to Cuban-American.
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Synthesis of the Arts
“Leaders of the company understood the concept of ‘synthesis of the arts’ whereby architecture would be designed with visual art and interior design components in mind, creating a unified design ideal. The Bacardi building in Miami is an outstanding example of this concept, popular in Latin American modernism, put into practice,” according to the designation report for the Bacardi campus.71 Tower architect Gutierrez himself actively espoused this philosophy while still in Cuba: “This concept of the synthesis of the arts is an important aspect of Gutierrez’s work. Before his exile,
Gutierrez worked with the Department of Public Works in Cuba. Gutierrez established the Visual Arts Division of this department and implemented guidelines stipulating that 2
– 3% of the total budget allocated for new construction was to be allocated for providing a public art component integrated into works of architecture.”72 It is not surprising, then, that art and architecture appear to blend so seamlessly on the Bacardi campus, and that the use of stained glass and painted tiles in the modernist design was intended to promote not only beauty but also to exemplify the hyphenated identity of the Bacardi company as
Cuban-born but internationally bred.
This ideal of a unity of the arts was promoted earlier by the Bauhaus School, founded by Walter Gropius in Germany in 1919: “Its core objective was a radical concept: to reimagine the material world to reflect the unity of all the arts. Gropius explained this vision for a union of art and design in the Proclamation of the Bauhaus
(1919), which described a utopian craft guild combining architecture, sculpture, and painting into a single creative expression. ”73 Continuing with this relationship among the
48
arts seems apt for the Bacardi campus, especially as it would enhance the relevance of the
arts center being proposed for the space.
The Brazilian designer Roberto Burle Marx, who collaborated with Costa and
Niemeyer on the landscape architecture of Brasilia, also championed the notion of
erasing hierarchies among the arts. Architecture critic Goldhagen says that, “Marx, who
is best known for his later Copacabana Beach in downtown Rio, was as much
horticulturalist and painter as landscape designer. He refused to make garden design
subservient to architecture, and developed a unique aesthetic synthesizing modernist
abstraction with biomorphic forms grounded in the distinctive shapes of Brazil’s
luxuriously tropical native plants [Fig. 32].”74 Interestingly, like Brennand, the Brazilian designer of the tower’s tiled mural, Burle Marx also maintains a very visible presence on
Biscayne Boulevard [Fig. 33]. Orange and gray concrete pavers arranged with plantings in Burle Marx’s design cover the sidewalks and median for approximately 15 blocks along the street. Planned by Burle Marx in the late 1980s, and finished in 2008, the addition of the last pavers revealed a sinuous “rhythmic geometry, [which] in truth, can best be appreciated only from high up [Fig. 34].”75
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Figure 32. Tracings of Burle Marx’s landscapes in Brazil show influence of abstract art.
50
Figure 33. Roberto Burle Marx’s design for Biscayne Boulevard.
51
Figure 34. Biscayne Boulevard as designed by Roberto Burle Marx.
In his book, Roberto Burle Marx: The Unusual Art of the Garden, curator
William Howard Adams links Burle Marx with the artists and architects of his day, pointing out that, “Burle Marx has remained true to the modern movement in art and architecture and acknowledges the influence of the rigorous polemics of Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius.”76 He reiterates this in a New York Times article: “The thing about him that really stands out is that he regarded landscape design as an equal partner with architecture, not as a backdrop or decoration, and elevated it to that level.”77
In terms of the Bacardi campus, a synthesis of the arts can be attempted by adding thoughtful landscaping as another element of the composition, keeping an eye to the form of functional objects like walls and floors, and making the purpose of the building apparent in its design – art is made on site, housed on site, but is also built into the site.
“[Bacardi executive Pepin] Bosch wanted the Bacardi buildings, especially the Miami
52
building, to be architectural and artistic jewels,”78 according to architect Gutierrez, and
his vision should continue. A synthesis of the arts blurs the line (hyphen) between art and
architecture.
Canal Park, a new public park with dining and ice skating in Southeast
Washington that was built on the site of an old bus parking lot, similarly relies on a
unified approach. Its website boasts that it was developed by “a multidisciplinary team of
consultants led by OLIN, the landscape architecture, urban design and planning firm.”79
Artist David Hess was brought on as part of this group to design sculptural elements for
the park as well as a 20’ x 20’ cube that rests on the roof of the main pavilion and allows
for light and images to be projected on its translucent walls [Fig. 35].80 In this instance,
art and architecture meet in a light cube whose walls will become or will contain works of art. This precedent works well not only as a contemporary instance of unity of the arts, but also as an example of how to use scale and layers of structures to enliven a site.
Figure 35. Canal Park’s light cube.
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PART 5: DESIGN STUDY
Opening Up the Jewel Box:
An exploration into internal tensions and external projections
The jewel box, as the 1973 annex designed by Ignacio Carrera-Justiz is known, from the exterior appears as a vivid and lively sculpture, a riot of color that looks as though it has landed on the plaza from a foreign land or other planet. Its unusual design, lacking any fenestration that might hint at what is inside, or that might allow those within it to glimpse at the scene outside, presents a challenge. Imagine standing inside a cathedral whose masonry walls were removed, and whose stained-glass windows expanded to completely envelop the space. The result might be disorienting, as colored light filters through the glass and casts painterly shapes across the walls and floors.
Imagine attempting to appreciate art within such a space, as it jostles with the shadows for attention. An exploration of the jewel box’s interior will attempt to attune the architect’s original design with the needs of a gallery. The intention is that by designing the sources of light, as well as the size, shape and materiality of the walls, and the movement of light and people through the space, the jewel box and the art contained within it will not compete, but will instead complement each other. In this way visitors can fully navigate the hyphen – literally brushing against the past and the present at once.
Light and Walls
With his design for the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, architect
Louis Kahn said he sought to give “a touch of silver to the room without touching the
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objects directly, yet [with] the comforting feeling of knowing the time of day.”81 The
museum, completed in 1972, brings natural light into the galleries via a slit in the vaulted ceiling that allows it to bounce off a suspended convex fixture and onto the floors and walls, where it blends with incandescent light [Fig. 36].82 According to
conservation/environmental consultant Steven Weintraub, the resulting combination of
natural, diffused light and artificial light offers the optimal environment for viewing art.83
Light in the jewel box should be considered from sources both direct and indirect and
both natural and artificial.
Figure 36. Louis Kahn’s light-filled Kimbell Art Museum deftly makes use of natural and artificial light.
A study of how light will be managed in the jewel box also benefits from looking
at light in churches, as the space in some ways currently resembles an exaggerated
cathedral. Le Corbusier’s 1954 Notre Dame du Ronchamp employs walls that are 4 to 12-
feet thick, punctured by windows of clear and stained glass that introduce light at various
angles, colors and intensities [Fig. 37].84 A clerestory along the roof line provides an
55 outline to the otherwise asymmetrical arrangement. The walls’ varying thicknesses and angles allow for interesting plays of light. While this may not be ideal for viewing art in a gallery, it may provide an opportunity for engaging with the stained glass walls in a new way.
Figure 37. Le Corbusier’s Notre Dame du Ronchamp offers peeks at the stained glass through walls of varying thicknesses and angles.
A model of the jewel box, built for the purposes of this study, uses printed transparencies to approximate the effects of sunlight through the walls and into the interior [Figs. 38 and 39]. The eastern light filtering through the glass creates both glowing and shadow-filled spots. This design study intends to preserve those transcendent moments while still making the jewel box a functional gallery.
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Figures 38 and 39. Model of jewel box walls and interior.
Wall thickness, as illustrated by Ronchamp, is just one tactic for varying the ways light enters a space and how people perceive that space. Other variables – among them
57
interior wall height, length, functionality and materiality – should also be considered,
especially in a gallery, where much of the art may be hanging on the walls and where the
flexibility to mold the space to best represent the featured artists is key. This study is
looking at moveable walls to accommodate different exhibits, glass walls, floors and
ceilings to bring in light and shadows, and to connect visitors with each other and the
space they inhabit, and walls made of permeable materials such as metal scrim, or mesh
that give intimations of what lies on the other side [Figs. 40 and 41].
Figure 40. Translucent glass floors at the Acropolis Museum in Athens, Greece, filter light and create connections.
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Figure 41. Metal scrim at Tulane University offers a hint of a wall, while allowing in light and expanded views.
Detaching walls from the ceiling allows light to stream into a room from an adjoining space, and creates additional views that can foster more connections. In the jewel box these types of walls can offer the visitor peeks of both the past and the present, and can also move the visitor along as new views reveal themselves [Figs. 42 and 43].
Figure 42. Sketch of partial interior partitions that allow different views of stained-glass walls.
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Figure 43. Rendering of proposed jewel box interior showing partial walls and reveals.
Design Vocabulary
The development of a vocabulary specific to this project was deemed necessary to
guide design decisions, to ensure that the concept of the hyphen is consistently addressed,
that the designs express a unity of aesthetics and of purpose, and to imbue the process
with a little “poetry.” The paintings of Guido Llinás, a Cuban artist who immigrated to
Paris in 1953, have provided a starting point. In his article, “A Legacy for the Latin
American Left: Abstract Expressionism as Anti-Imperialist Art,” David Craven refers to the “brute calligraphic faceting of pictorial elements in his paintings,” evocative of
“gestural ‘writing.’”85 He further describes Llinás’s work in terms of writing or textual
60 terms: “The cryptic sign language of pictographs converged in his paintings with the deployment of bald graffiti-like fragments as if his paintings aspired to the status of hybrid visual text.”86 The hyphen is a piece of a text, and Llinás’s paintings offer an approach to spatially representing the hyphen [Fig. 44].
Figure 44. Guido Llinás’s paintings can be read as a visual text.
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The last painting, in particular, evokes a tension between objects and between partitions that are close and far, solid and pierced. It suggests spaces that are kinetic [Fig. 45]. An initial list of key terms that have been informing the design process also includes:
Abstract Sinuous Connections
Colorful Graphic Solid
Bold Juxtaposed Pierced
Tension Layers Hints
Aggressive Vibrant Variability
Movement Lack of borders Shadows
Spaces within spaces Surprise
Figure 45. Guido Llinás, Formas. Oil on canvas. 22” x 18”. 1955.
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The project’s design vocabulary has been further developed with a closer look at ways of
realizing the hyphenated state in a more concrete form. The floor plans follow the arc of
identity that results from living on the hyphen [Fig. 46]. The plans become looser and
less defined as one moves from the ground up.
Figure 46. Floor plans reflect fluidity of identity.
The first floor, at the plaza level, is functional, containing the elevator, restrooms
and lobby. Yet the second, third and roof levels reflect the shifts in identity. The second
floor echoes Cuban identity, which is more easily defined. The spaces are
compartmentalized with small galleries and a more proscribed placement of skylights.
The third floor suggests Cuban-American identity, which is less definitive. There is more of a tug across the hyphen, and more movement. On the third floor the space opens up a bit more. There is a tension between tighter and looser spaces, and skylights are more scattered. On the roof, the space completely opens to the plaza and tower, and the city of
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Miami. There is less pull among multiple identities, and an ease of engaging with the past and the present [Figs. 47, 48 and 49].
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Figures 47, 48 and 49. Section and floor plan sketches. The plans become looser and less defined as one moves from the ground up.
First Iterations
Preliminary floor plans and sections attempt to realize the design vocabulary. A primary design element proposes a double-height corridor around the interior perimeter of the building that encourages visitors to get up close to the stained glass walls and immerse themselves in the kaleidoscopic effect they produce. This in-between space is the hyphen, where negotiations take place between the art of the original walls and the art on the other side of the new walls; stairs jut into the perimeter, moving people into and out of it; walls moves in close to the perimeter, sometimes blocking the way and forcing another path across it; and perforations in the new partitions provide glimpses of what lies on either side [Fig. 50].
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Figure 50. Perspective view of proposed corridor around interior perimeter.
How light and people circulate throughout the space, both laterally and vertically,
affect the visitor’s experience [Figs. 51, 52, 53]. The lack of natural light in the annex – with the exception of that filtering through the glass mosaic – presents an opportunity to create openings that will allow sunlight to enter the space. Initial drawings add a series of
66 skylights to the roof, both around the perimeter and scattered across the surface [Figs. 54,
55]. This will bring light to both the third and second floors and will reiterate the themes of constricted and open spaces. A glass elevator will provide another source of light and circulation, as will the corridor and the stair that moves between the corridor and the galleries.
The third floor also features a theatre whose floor slopes into the second floor, creating a more intimate space in the corridor below it [Figs. 53, 55]. Whereas the majority of the perimeter corridor is double height, here the floor of the third floor creates a ceiling over the second-floor corridor.
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Figures 51, 52 and 53. Preliminary section views indicate proposed circulation of people and light. (NTS)
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Figure 54. Preliminary plan view indicates skylights piercing the roof. (NTS)
Figure 55. Preliminary plan view indicates light and circulation paths. (NTS)
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The second floor of the annex focuses on the corridor, and allows visitors to move more freely between the corridor and the galleries, ultimately leading to the double- height gallery. Here the stained-glass walls and the gallery spaces no longer hint at what lay on the other side – white walls displaying art or a cacophony of colored glass that is art; instead they engage with each other fully [Fig. 56].
Figure 56. Preliminary plan views shows circulation through space and interaction between stained-glass corridor and inner galleries. (NTS)
The first floor of the annex is located in the base of the building, and houses the reception and restrooms, as well as north and south entrances to the building, now located at the plaza level rather than the garage level [Fig. 57]. The entrances are placed to promote engagement with the plaza and the street level. A stair has also been added to the exterior of the structure at the plaza level, similar to two stairs on the exterior of the
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tower. This stair leads to the second-floor galleries, and further encourages movement throughout the site.
Figure 57. Preliminary plan features reception and restrooms on plaza level. (NTS)
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Negotiating the Hyphen: Scaling interventions into the plaza
As noted earlier, in plan the Bacardi campus looks like a hyphen – two buildings
separated (or joined) by a plaza [Fig 5]. In its current state the plaza appears empty and
unwelcoming, with little but painted pavers and a few plant boxes to adorn it [Fig. 58].
This project seeks to add energy to the plaza and make it a spot where visitors will linger.
It endeavors to make the plaza not only a connector between the two buildings, but a
destination unto itself. A number of schemes considered address the issues of shade, circulation, unifying the space and promoting a synthesis of the arts.
Figure 58: The plaza is an empty, uninviting space.
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Recalling the design vocabulary previously defined, and looking to artist Llinás’s work for clues as to how to lay out the plaza, initial sketches use materiality and circulation paths as a means of traversing the site [Fig. 59]. Alternating open and compressed spaces guide the visitor through the experience.
Figure 59: Initial sketches recall the design vocabulary of open and compressed spaces.
Additional early efforts at designing the plaza involve more superficial treatments, covering the plaza with grass, trees, concrete, pavers, mosaics or lights [Figs.
60, 61, 62, 63]. They are attempts at tackling the plaza with a light touch, taking into consideration the aforementioned issues while largely leaving the plaza intact.
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Figure 60: A scheme for the plaza includes paved or concrete paths connecting the two buildings and with areas for sculpture display. Most of the plaza is covered with grass and plantings to provide cool and shade.
Figure 61: A scheme for the plaza shows a landscaped park with steps or benches inset to provide places of rest among the tress and sculptures.
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Figure 62: A scheme for the plaza integrates a mosaic that draws from the glass and tile of the buildings that bookend it. The mosaic is concentrated at the base of the tower and scatters into lights as it nears the jewel box.
Figure 63: A scheme for the plaza includes a mosaic inspired by the glass of the jewel box and the painted tiles of the tower. The pattern begins at the base of both buildings and becomes looser in the center.
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Further experiments take a more aggressive approach, manipulating the plane and
digging into the plaza or soaring above it. Designs include stairs, a ramp and a reflecting
pool [Figs 64, 65, 66]. These engagements with scale create new ways for occupants to
move across the plaza and into the buildings, and offer previously unseen vistas.
Figure 64: A model helps in the process of conceiving new schemes for the plaza, among them steps, slopes, ramps and viewing platforms.
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Figure 65: A scheme for the plaza imagines a stepped approach from the jewel box to the tower.
Figure 66: A curved ramp that gives access to the jewel box’s roof traverses the plaza and a reflecting pool below.
One new vista under consideration is from the roof of the jewel box. Placing a seating area on the roof would encourage more movement throughout the space and
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would create a dialogue between the two buildings by creating a comfortable spot from
which to view films and art installations projected onto the west façade of the tower [Fig.
67]. The plaza, the city and Biscayne Bay beyond become more connected and also become part of the view.
Figure 67: A rooftop patio on the annex offers another view of the tower, the plaza and the city beyond, and creates a perch from which to view films projected onto the west wall of the tower.
Miami’s sun and climate call for a respite from the heat, necessitating a cover or
canopy to make the roof truly accessible. A model allowed for explorations into how this
canopy might look, made of concrete and curving over the roof [Fig. 68]. However,
further computer modeling reveals that the canopy intrudes upon the site rather
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complements it. Its mass and shape disturbs the rectilinear rhythm of the campus and
while it may offer new modes of bridging the hyphen, it does not do so in a way that
makes sense for the overall design [Fig. 69]. The line between a light touch and
aggressive intervention is another hyphen to be negotiated.
Figure 68: A paper model shows how a concrete canopy on the annex roof provides shade for a lounging and seating area. The organic design manipulates the plane of the roof just as the plane of the plaza is manipulated.
Figure 69: The annex’s rooftop canopy proves to be an excessive gesture on the plaza.
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The Tiled Tower: Vistas within and beyond
This project focuses primarily on the jewel box and the plaza. The jewel box
presents a challenging and unusual paradigm, with its mosaic walls cantilevering over its
tiled base. Despite its dazzling appearance, it gazes inward and envelops the occupant
within its walls. The plaza is also a problematic place, one that provokes discussion about
how assertively a designer should intervene in an existing site, especially one so laden
with historical and cultural connotations and so tied to other structures that are
undergoing their own reconceptualizations.
Despite its florid appearance, the tower is more conventional in its design. Its
curtain walls, fenestration and circulation core more readily recall an office or residential space and therefore the building provokes a less-forceful design response. However, the
tower is the other side of the hyphen that makes up the Bacardi campus, and addressing it
is essential to this study.
The design examines the possibilities for a typical residential and studio floor.
Each of the top four floors will feature a discipline, such as sculpture or painting, and will
house a shared studio dedicated to that practice. In addition there will be exhibition space
where the artists currently in residence can show their work before it makes it to the
gallery in the jewel box. Two apartments per floor will be available to individual artists-
in-residence, who will live adjacent to their studio and exhibition space [Fig. 70].
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Figure 70: A typical residential/studio floor in the tower will include two apartments, a shared studio, and a gallery at the entrance. (NTS)
Light streams through the curtain walls facing the bay to the east, providing a naturally lit environment – as well as a source of inspiration – for inhabitants of both the apartments and the studios. The elevators and stairs open into the common galleries on each floor, giving visitors an opportunity to view what artists are working on, as well as the artists at work in the studio beyond, and the city and water beyond that. Unlike the
81 jewel box, the tower faces the city and provides an easy way for its occupants to engage with it. An image of the top-floor boardroom in the Bacardi offices shows the horizon in the distance, a reminder of the Cuba left behind as well as the possibilities still to come in the United States [Fig. 71].
Figure 71: Bacardi’s boardroom on the top floor of the tower illustrates the power of the view.
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PART 6: FINDINGS AND MOVES TOWARDS RESOLUTION
The Jewel Box
Critiques and further study led to some major and minor changes in the initial
plans for the annex, plaza and tower.
In the annex, notably a single, large skylight replaced several smaller ones [Fig.
72]. In accordance with the need to address scale, palimpsests and synthesis of the arts, the final skylight design makes a dramatic gesture as it dips into the double-height space, cutting through layers of the roof and ceiling and revealing the sky beyond. The skylight is itself a sculptural element that both gives a clue to the contents of the jewel box and provides a link to the exterior context. The focus on one skylight allows light to enter the galleries without distracting from the glass walls. The skylights around the periphery of the building were removed so that the corridors are flooded only with light streaming through the colored-glass walls and not also from above, thus intensifying the experience in the corridors around the perimeter, and creating a greater sense of release upon entering into the interior galleries [Fig. 73].
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Figure 72. Final west-facing section view shows a large skylight dipping into the building at the northwest corner and bringing light into the space. The use of a single, large skylight reinforces the sense of scale, as well as the concepts of synthesis of the arts and palimpsests. (NTS)
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Figure 73. The only source of natural light in the corridor around the perimeter of the interior of the annex comes filtered through the colored glass.
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The third floor is thus opened up to light-filled galleries reached via a glass elevator or a stair that moves between the corridor and the galleries [Fig. 74]. The final
design also includes the required fire stair. A final rendering of the space illuminates how light fills the gallery and how people circulate through it [Fig. 75]. Partial-height partitions invite light into the galleries and the double-height space accommodates larger works – among them the sculptural skylight.
Figure 74. Final third-floor plan features open galleries that receive light from the large skylight in the northwest corner. (NTS)
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Figure 75. A final perspective drawing of the third floor illustrates how light enters the gallery through the skylight and through the mosaic walls. Interior walls do not meet the ceiling, allowing light to enter the galleries and the plan to feel open.
The theatre has been moved from the third floor to the second, as a room
requiring no natural light makes more sense on the darker level of the building [Figs. 76,
77]. Thicker interior walls have been added on the north and east sides to encourage an
alternative means of engaging with the stained-glass walls. Cutouts in these second and
third-floor walls hark back to Ronchamp and the experience of being in a cathedral [Fig.
37]. In this new gallery space, the cutouts serve multiple purposes – they bring in light,
redefine the visitor’s engagement with the glass walls, and become niches that display
sculpture [Fig. 78, 79]. The walls separating the gallery from the double-height space let
views of the full stained-glass exterior wall peek through.
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Figure 76. Final second-floor plan features a theater. (NTS)
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Figure 77. Final north-facing section shows the theatre moved to the second floor, which receives less natural light. (NTS)
Figure 78. A perspective view of one of the galleries on the second floor reveals niches in the thick inner walls that bring in light, redefine the visitor’s engagement with the glass walls, and become niches that display sculpture. The walls separating the gallery from the double-height space let views of the full stained-glass exterior wall peek through.
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Figure 79. The east-facing section shows cutouts in the thick inner wall (here, on the northeast corner) that bring in light, redefine the visitor’s engagement with the glass walls, and become niches that display sculpture. (NTS)
Beyond the walls of the cutout gallery, one enters the double-height gallery, with its translucent wall panel describing the current exhibition [Fig. 80]. This panel is informational as well as another means of altering how the stained-glass walls are perceived.
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Figure 80. A perspective view of the second floor of the annex reveals solid and translucent, full-height and partial-height partitions. The exterior walls are experienced via corridors, niches and from a balcony and double-height gallery.
The final design for the annex places a secondary entrance at the plaza level – on
the north side – and adds another floor to the building below the plaza at what is currently
the garage level. The primary entrance is located here, and is accessed via a sloped grove
91 of trees that begins on the plaza. Both levels house reception and restrooms [Figs. 81,
82]. The new lower level developed as part of the intervention into the plaza.
Figure 81. The plaza level plan of the annex shows a secondary entrance to the building, on the north side. The primary entrance is located at the garage level and is accessed via a sloped grove of trees that begins on the plaza. This level includes a reception area and restrooms. (NTS)
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Figure 82. The underground level where the garage currently exists becomes the primary entrance, accessed via a sloped grove of trees that begins at the plaza level. This level includes a reception and bathrooms. (NTS)
The Plaza
The final design for the plaza attempts to change the ways in which visitors and
occupants of the site interact with it, and the ways in which the annex and the tower
relate with each other. Attempts were made to maintain a balance between piercing and
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poking into the surface – manipulating the plane – and maintaining the primacy of the two buildings on the site. The final design dips into the site. Like the skylight on the annex roof, the plaza pushes down into the space, bringing in light and exposing layers
[Fig. 83]. The buildings are still the stars, but the plaza’s role has been augmented.
Figure 83. A section of the site shows how the annex’s skylight and the plaza cut into space, bringing in light and exposing layers.
The main entrance has been oriented to the center of the plaza on the south side.
A concrete path connects the main areas, as the design calls for the rest of the plaza to be
covered with grass [Fig. 84]. Taking a cue from painter Llinás’s work, as well as the
landscape plans of Burle Marx, and the tropical modernism of the buildings on the
campus, the design for the plaza offers covered and airy spaces, tighter spots and open
areas. The plan is rectilinear, but the elements that compose it hint at sinuous, tropical
influences.
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Figure 84. The site plan is rectilinear, but the elements that compose it hint at sinuous, tropical influences.
To the west, a grove of trees signals the entrance to the annex. The grassy slope
provides shade, a place to relax and recline, and a counterpoint to the sharp edges of the
jewel box [Fig. 85]. At the plaza level visitors can lean against the railing and look down
at the grove. The retaining walls are covered in a mosaic of tile and glass, bringing
together elements from both buildings and evolving from earlier schemes that placed
mosaics on the plaza floor.
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Figure 85. A lush entrance with trees and mosaics provides a counterpoint to the sharp edges of the
jewel box.
The tower’s entrance, to the east, features a version of the previously explored stepped entrance [Fig. 86]. Deep steps provide another perch for lounging, as well as for watching films projected onto the blank back wall of the tower. As in the annex entrance, the walls here are lined with colorful mosaics that connect the plaza with the buildings.
These mosaics, like those at the entrance to the annex, are not on the plaza plane. They are on another layer, below the surface, giving the buildings and their own tiles and colored glass room to breathe. With the horizon and the bay in the distance and the tower in between, an informational screen with images scrolling across it greets visitors at the foot of the stairs and announces the artists working in the tower and how to find them.
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Figure 86. A mosaic-lined stepped entrance greets visitors to the tower and informs them of what they will find inside. The deep steps also provide a place to sit and watch films projected onto the white back wall of the tower.
The Tower
The development of the tower concentrates on the artist studios and residences on
the top four floors, with each floor designated for a different medium, ie: painting,
photography, sculpture, pottery. Each floor has its own color, reflected in the glass doors
and tile work, giving artists-in-residence a small taste of what awaits them once their
work lands within the stained-glass walls of the jewel box [Fig. 87].
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Figure 87. A section of the tower indicates the colored studio spaces meant to give artists-in- residence a taste of what it will be like to have their work in the jewel box.
Having seen a preview of who is working within, the public is invited to visit the studios. Once people step off the elevator they encounter the common gallery displaying pieces by the artists working there [Figs 88, 89]. Private apartments to the left and right
98 mean that artists live and work in the same place, and are able to immerse themselves in the experience. The shared studio is accessible through a colored-glass NanaWall that can be closed when artists wish to work undisturbed – yet still allow visitors to observe the process – or open when visitors may enter the space and engage more directly with the process.
Figure 88. A typical floor plan in the tower shows artist residences and shared studios, as well as a common gallery.
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Figure 89. Visitors to the tower can view works on display as well as artists at work in their studios. The closed NanaWall indicates the studio is not currently open to the public, although they may peer in.
The NanaWalls allow the artists’ work to spill into the hallway, blurring
boundaries between public and private. The curtain wall is fitted with shelves for display
and storage, also blurring the boundaries between the art within and the view of the city
and the bay outside [Figs. 89 and 90]. One wall is covered in Cuban tiles that match the
color of the NanaWall, tying the studios to the mosaics filling the plaza below.
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Figure 90. Colored doors and tiled walls link the tower with the jewel box and the plaza, while the open NanaWalls link the artists with visitors to the site. Shelves in the windows connect the art being created to the view outside.
Although very little of what was conceived of in the early sketches of this study survived intact in the final drawings, the broad strokes and the concept carried through.
Repeated attempts and iterations only reinforced the need to refer back to the concept and ultimately strengthened the justifications for the design that emerged – the design of the hyphen.
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PART 7: CONTRIBUTIONS
“Designing the Hyphen: Linking Identity and Architecture in Bacardi’s Former
Miami Headquarters” sought to identify a number of hyphenated states inherent in the
subject matter and site and then find ways to address them. The hyphen was stretched,
poked and pinched; it was traversed, skirted around, floated over and excavated under;
the hyphen was defined and redefined and continually designed until answers began to
seem apparent. One of the things that held true throughout the process: The hyphen is a
kinetic space.
Beginning with the premise that neither identity nor buildings are static, this thesis endeavored to find ways to reflect and connect the mutability of the two. Cuban-
Americans living in Miami have changed both as individuals and as a group over the last
50 years, the city of Miami has changed with them, and now the Bacardi campus, a
Cuban-American creation, should likewise adapt to the shifting landscape.
It is the author’s hope that what has resulted from the last several months’ work is an experience that offers knowledge of the hyphenated state.
The process involved countless versions of the site, and confronted the stained- glass walls of the annex, the long stretch of the elevated plaza and the curtain walls of the tower. The fact that the existing structures on the site are works of art further complicated the effort – and made it more fun. The process carried on the spirit of Pepin Bosch’s dedication to a synthesis of the arts. Attempts were made to infuse art into every corner of the site and to lift up and reveal new corners of the site so that the Cuban-American arts center proposed for it was not an applied, superficial program but one that seemed inevitable. The hyphen is a profound space.
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The city of Miami also informed design decisions. A challenge to categorize the
quality of light in the city – bright, cool, glittering on the surface of the water and of the
concrete built environment – yielded insights into what particular shade of white – bright,
cool, glittering – the walls should be. Additionally the buoyant colors and cultures of the
city suggested that the annex and tower should not be the only vibrant spots on the
campus. The hyphen is a bold space.
The variety of scale existing on the site prompted an exploration of how
proportions might be manipulated to affect the user experience. A study of paintings by the Cuban artist Guido Llinás lent a purposeful and artful approach to the exploration and
culminated in enclosed galleries that open into large, airy spaces; shady pockets on the
plaza that yield to sunlit expanses and the placement of shelves inside the tower’s curtain
walls to juxtapose the pieces of art created there with the horizon on the other side. The
hyphen is an unpredictable space.
All of these considerations play into the efforts to move people throughout the site, as good design activates people – and vice versa. Moving artists from the tower to the jewel box and moving visitors onto the site, back and forth across the plaza and into the many spaces within the buildings imbued every decision about the design.
The design process frequently revolved about reflections and discussions about the aggressiveness of the intervention. How dramatic should the changes be? How much should be deconstructed and rebuilt with the concept and new program in mind? A light but thoughtful approach prevailed, recognizing that what makes this hyphen powerful is the delicate tension between the old and the new, and that layers make for a compelling experience.
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The presentation of this study to a jury of architects and interior designers elicited
further discussion about the parameters of the redesign. Why stop at bringing the city and
its people onto the site? If the goal is pushing engagement on a number of levels, why not
think larger – expand the site into the city and let it spill over the walls surrounding it, out
onto the adjacent lots, onto Biscayne Boulevard and to the bay?
For the purposes of this study in the time allotted for it, the Bacardi campus
provided enough of a challenge and more than sufficient avenues for exploration. The
long list of hyphenated states under examination, in addition to the principal Cuban-
American state, were rich in possibilities. However, moving forward may also mean
moving outward. The urban landscape seems to be a natural extension of the scope.
The redesigned campus is arguably still self-contained; more inviting, yes, but still a stop for the drivers who speed past it from the Design District down to the Arsht
Center. Miami’s car culture may not be apt to change, but making the Cuban-American arts center more expansive and more intrusive upon Biscayne Boulevard may cause drivers to slow down and maybe stop in. The Arsht Center to its south occupies both sides of Biscayne Boulevard, but one needs a ticket to take in the show. Extending the park aspect of the Bacardi campus, as well as the programming aspect, could be the impetus for greater engagement.
One suggested way of continuing to turning the gaze outwards is by giving more
attention to the view outside of the site and how inhabitants of the site experience it.
Surely the backdrop of Biscayne Bay two blocks away heartened the Bacardi executives
who held their meetings in the penthouse boardroom of the tower [Fig. 71]. Artists and
gallery-goers alike might also wish to get wrapped up in the view. Future plans could
104 include a café or restaurant, a classroom or performance space – a room without
NanaWalls that alter the view or colored tiles that recall the site behind it. Ironically, future plans that aim to be more aggressive in their interactions with the city might result from being less forceful with the interior design and allowing the view to dominate [Fig.
91].
Figure 91. Stripping the tower to the barest interior interventions may succeed in creating a greater connection with the city.
This thesis project strove to create a greater curiosity and appreciation for the hyphenated state and to transmit an experience that would take readers, peers and jurors – and maybe, someday, visitors to the Cuban-American arts center at the former Bacardi headquarters – across that hyphen. After all, as Gustavo Pérez Firmat proclaimed, the
105 hyphen is “a jubilant border or festive fringe where the spectacular and the everyday embrace,” and that makes it a space worth bounding across.87
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Notes
1 Gray Read, “The Bacardi Building: Rum, Revolution and the Crafting of Identity,” Miami Modern Metropolis: Paradise and Paradox in Midcentury Architecture and Planning, Allan T. Shulman, editor (The Bass Museum of Art, 2009), 181. 2 Read, 179. 3 Eric P. Nash and Randall C. Robinson Jr, MiMo: Miami Modern Revealed (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2004), 114. 4 Read, 179. 5 Gustavo Perez Firmat, Life on the Hyphen: The Cuban-American Way (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994), 4. 6 Perez Firmat, 4. 7 Perez Firmat, 4. 8 Perez Firmat, 5. 9 Lynette M.F. Bosch, Identity, Memory, and Diaspora: Voices of Cuban-American Artists, Writers and Philosophers, Jorge J.E. Gracia, Lynette M.F. Bosch, and Isabel Alvarez Borland, eds. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008). Part 1: The Artists, 3-4. 10 US Census Bureau, “2010 Census Shows Nation's Hispanic Population Grew Four Times Faster Than Total U.S. Population,” (May 26, 2011), http://2010.census.gov/news/releases/operations/cb11-cn146.html. 11 Perez Firmat, 34. 12 City of Miami Designation Report: Designation of Biscayne Boulevard as a Scenic Transportation Corridor, City of Miami Official Website (September 1, 2009), http://egov.ci.miami.fl.us/Legistarweb/Attachments/53070.pdf, 7. 13 Read, 179. 14 City of Miami Historic and Environmental Preservation Board, “The Bacardi Buildings Designation Report,” City of Miami official website (October 6, 2009), http://egov.ci.miami.fl.us/Legistarweb/ Attachments/60081.pdf, 9. 15 City of Miami Historic and Environmental Preservation Board, 10. 16 Read, 182. 17 City of Miami Historic and Environmental Preservation Board, 13. 18 Nash, 115. 19 Nash, 116. 20 Lydia Martin, “Artistic office building promotes art with gallery,” The Miami Herald (August 23, 1997), Neighbors section, 4. 21 Nash, 115. 22 City of Miami Historic and Environmental Preservation Board, 15. 23 City of Miami Historic and Environmental Preservation Board, 18. 24 City of Miami Historic and Environmental Preservation Board, 15. 25 Nash, 116. 26 City of Miami Historic and Environmental Preservation Board, 12. 27 Bakehouse Art Complex website: http://www.bacfl.org/ 28 Wesley Theological Seminary website: http://www.wesleyseminary.edu/LCAR/Opportunities/Residencies.aspx 29 Torpedo Factory Art Center website: http://www.torpedofactory.org/open_artist_studios.htm 30 Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts website: http://www.mdhallarts.org/generalinfo/artistresources/artistsinresidence.html 31 Wesley Theological Seminary website. 32 Annmarie Sculpture Garden and Arts Center website: http://www.annmariegarden.org/annmarie2/the_living_gallery 33 Damien Cave, “Easing Path Out of Country, Cuba Is Dropping Exit Visas,” The New York Times (October 16, 2012). 34 AIA Staff, “US Welcomes Cuban Artists,” Art in America (October 25, 2010), http://www .artinamericamagazine.com/news-opinion/news/2010-10-25/us-welcomes-cuban-artists/print/ 35 Edward Winkleman, How to Start and Run a Commercial Gallery (New York: Allworth Press, 2009), 86.
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36 Winkleman, 86. 37 Winkleman, 86. 38 Knight Center press release, “Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County Earns $300,000 Grant Through New ArtPlace Initiative to Revitalize America’s Cities,” (September 15, 2011), http://www.knightfoundation.org/press-room/press-release/adrienne-arsht-center-performing-arts- miami-dade-c 39 Knight Center press release, “Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts.” 40 Bonnie Tsui, “Surfacing – Miami; Art? In this Neighborhood?” The New York Times (November 26, 2006), http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F04E3D6153EF935A15752C1A9609C8B63 41 Rubell Family Collection website, http://rfc.museum/ 42 Wynwood Arts District website, http://www.wynwoodartdistrict.com/ 43 Brook S. Mason, “Ten Question for Craig Robins,” Artnet.com (December 14, 2011), http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/features/mason/craig-robins-12-14-11.asp 44 Kathleen McGrory, “Miami Commission Approves Design District Makeover,” The Miami Herald (June 28, 2012), http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/06/28/2871526/miami-commission-defers-jungle.html 45 Arcspace.com, Herzog & de Meuron, Miami Art Museum (September 15, 2008). http://www.arcspace.com/architects/herzog_meuron/mam/mam.html 46 Andres Viglucci, “Museum Park’s vaunted plan shrinks as Miami deals with fiscal crunch,” The Miami Herald (September 16, 2012), http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/09/15/3004878/museum-parks-vaunted- plan-shrinks.html 47 Viglucci, “Museum Park’s vaunted plan shrinks.” 48 City of Miami Designation Report, 7. 49 Greg Castillo, “Speedreading Biscayne Boulevard,” Miami Modern Metropolis: Paradise and Paradox in Midcentury Architecture and Planning, Allan T. Shulman, editor (The Bass Museum of Art, 2009), 217. 50 Bicycle/Pedestrian Mobility Plan for the Miami Downtown Development Authority Area, prepared by the Miami Dade Metropolitan Planning Organization and the Miami Downtown Development Authority, (2011), https://skydrive.live.com/?cid=cb30042f1b5faf4f&id=CB30042F1B5FAF4F%211988 51 Castillo, 217. 52 Read, 182. 53 City of Miami Historic and Environmental Preservation Board, 12. 54 Read, 179. 55 Nash, 114. 56 Read, 182. 57 Nash, 115. 58 Laurinda Hope Spear, Preface to MiMo: Miami Modern Revealed, by Eric P. and Randall C. Robinson Jr (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2004), 6. 59 The Walters Museum website, http://archimedespalimpsest.org/about/. 60 Rolf Goebel, “Review: Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory, By Andreas Huyssen,” The German Quarterly, Vol. 77, No. 1 (Winter, 2004): 119. 61 Sarah Williams Goldhagen, “The Beauty and Inhumanity of Oscar Niemeyer’s Architecture,” The New Republic (December 12, 2012), http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/111002/oscar-niemeyers-beautifully- inhuman-architecture# 62 Duccio Malagamba, “Exploring Eye,” Architectural Review Vol. 228, Issue 1365 (November 2010), http://www.architectural-review.com/essays/exploring-eye/duccio-malagamba-navigates-the-vast-lengths- and-breadths-of-brasilia/8607287.article 63 Robin Pogrebin, “At Lincoln Center, Information is Architecture,” The New York Times (September 1, 2010), http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/02/arts/design/02lincoln.html 64 Pogrebin, “At Lincoln Center.” 65 Linda Hsu, “Circulation in Museums,” (Master’s thesis, Seton Hall University, 2004), 1. 66 Nicolai Ouroussoff, “Tracing the Threads that Join America and Africa,” The New York Times (May 3, 2009), http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/04/arts/design/04muse.html?_r=0 67 Ouroussoff, “Tracing the Threads.” 68 Ouroussoff, “Tracing the Threads.”
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69 Robin Pogrebin, “In Lincoln Center’s Upgrade, the Main Plaza Gets a Gracious Entrance,” The New York Times (June 12, 2006), http://www.nytimes.com /2006/06/12/arts/design/12linc.html?pagewanted =all&_r=2& 70 Nicolai Ouroussoff, “The Greening of Lincoln Center,” The New York Times (May 20, 2010), http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/21/arts/design/21lincoln.html?_r=0 71 City of Miami Historic and Environmental Preservation Board, 6. 72 City of Miami Historic and Environmental Preservation Board, 6. 73 Alexandra Griffith Winton, “The Bauhaus: 1919-1933,” Thematic Essay, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/bauh/hd_bauh.htm. 74 Goldhagen, “The Beauty and Inhumanity.” 75 Andres Viglucci, “From the Ground Up,” The Miami Herald (October 3, 2009), 1B. 76 William Howard Adams, Roberto Burle Marx: The Unusual Art of the Garden (The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1991), 14. 77 Larry Rohter, “A New Look at the Multitalented Man Who Made Tropical Landscaping an Art,” The New York Times (January 20, 2009), http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/21/arts/design/21burl.html? pagewanted=all. 78 Martin, 4. 79 Canal Park website, http://www.canalparkdc.org/about/design-team. 80 Canal Park website, http://www.canalparkdc.org/about/park-features. 81 Steven Weintraub, “Louis Kahn and the Art of Light,” Kimbell Art Museum – Fort Worth, Calendar Thirty-Year Anniversary Issue (August 2002 through January 2003), Art Preservation Services website, http://www.apsnyc.com/uploads/Louis%20Kahn%20and%20the%20Art%20of%20Light.pdf, 15. 82 Weintraub, 14. 83 Weintraub, 14. 84 Andrew Kroll, “AD Classics: Ronchamp / Le Corbusier” (Nov. 3, 2010), ArchDaily, http://www.archdaily.com/84988, http://www.archdaily.com/84988 85 David Craven, “A Legacy for the Latin American Left: Abstract Expressionism as Anti-Imperialist Art,” Abstract Expressionism: The International Context. Joan Marter, Ed. (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2007), 73. 86 Craven, 73. 87 Perez Firmat, 34.
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5
Appendix
Final Presentation Boards, May 6, 2013
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