Miami Transformations: Creating A Home Out Of A City Full Of Art

Miami and Miami Beach have always had their own distinct sense of self. Each has its own mayor and police department. Miami Beach has leaned hard on tourism, which sometimes obscures just how fast the rest of Miami has grown up.

The beach is an easy sell, but for the curious, Miami runs deep. There’s Herzog & de Meuron’s impeccable museum, Perez Art Museum Miami, named after Cuban-American billionaire Jorge Perez, who also donated much of his own collection of 20th-century Latin American masterpieces. Art is on the street in the area of Wynwood, just south of The Miami Design District. Wall after wall is covered in commissioned graffiti, no matter whether it’s a parking lot, shop or one of the ubiquitous galleries.

It’s Brooklyn a dozen  years ago: for every block that reeks of neglect, the next offers stunning surprises such as the organic loaves at Zak The Baker and Sprout, a florist-cum-coffee shop. Some of the neighbouring factories that jut against the blue sky are now cooperatives such as The Bakehouse Art Complex. Other factories are, well, still factories.

There’s no doubt that today, Miami is a city in flux. One of the accusations often levelled against it is that it has no centre. That, too, is about to change: drive off the beach, past the port and the deep bellows of the departing cruise liners, and you’ll arrive at Brickell City Centre. This new neighbourhood is being built from the ground up and, like the Faena District, has its own soon-to-open hotel, EAST.

If possible, it outdoes the Faena project in both intention and price. The billion-dollar development is a mix of hotel, shops, offices and apartments. Such a combination might be familiar in Hong Kong, where EAST’S owners, Swire Hotels, developed Pacific Place around The Upper House, but it’s new to Miami. There will be hanging gardens, parks and swimming pools. The top floors stare up and down Biscayne Bay with views only previously experienced by passing pods of pelicans.

Running through the centre of it all is a stunning ‘climate ribbon’, a vast, undulating trellis that lets the floors stay cool by harnessing the winds off the sea. Not only are the occasional tropical rains kept out, the water is saved for reuse. Tens of thousands of Miamians live in the surrounding area in Brickell and Downtown. Could this be it: the moment when Miami learns to walk instead of drive?

Throughout this frenzy of openings, you can sense the city’s desire to be taken seriously rather than just as next year’s hottest holiday destination. This time, the boom has reached further than hotels. A town that always had its own culture now has the buildings to host it and distinctive new neighbourhoods that simply didn’t exist before. There’s so much going on that observers are caught between rosy optimism and the feeling that this is almost too good to be true. Let the long-time watchers worry, for everyone else, Miami’s moment is now.