A trip back to Miami’s Design District is always welcome. This year was particularly fantastic as I got to explore The Moore Building with its Zaha Hadid installation Elastika! This was the second year in a row Michael Muraz and I led a workshop in our favorite Flordia city. This time we were lucky enough to get our group access to this Art Deco gem!
Originally built in 1921 as a furniture showroom for Moore and Sons, it’s now a venue for various events. And what a fantastic space! Hadid’s design manages to both contradict and complement the original Art Deco aesthetic. Her curvy irregular design against the orderly geometric design of the building offers a great contrast, while the tones and materials complement each other.

Our next stop was the Dash Fence, which is simply the fence at the entrance of the Design and Architecture High School (DASH). From a distance, it doesn’t look like much but once you get close and look at it from the side it has some really great curves. And for a fleeting moment, we had some great light illuminating the top!

Dashing between showers we were at least covered at the next location, the Nuage Promenade. A great canopy of blue and green translucent glass between curvy steel. The raindrops added a nice extra element of interest.


Now for the rugged facade of the Rick Owens store.

Love the intense light on the surface of the Institute of Contemporary Art. It has various shades of gray with a bit of textured surface that sometimes catches the blue sky reflecting on its surface. I exaggerated this a bit in post-processing but love that midnight blue effect.

This one makes me think of a Picasso painting and his cubist faces.

Across the street is the wacky Museum Parking Garage designed by four different architects. Drawing inspiration from the French game, Cadavre Exquis, which involves a collection of images assembled by various artists with no knowledge of what the other artists have drawn, producing one image whose components don’t necessarily match but flow together as one playful composition. Architects were given free reign to design what they wanted without consideration for what the others were doing. Here, I’m only sharing two sections of the garage, a portion of the front and the backside. However, there are 3 other designs next to this first section on the front. Do a quick google search to see the craziness of this one!

The next couple of locations are the facades of a couple more stores, Tom Ford and Louis Vuitton. Both designs draw inspiration from the Art Deco movement that so strongly shaped Miami’s aesthetic in the 1920’s and 1930’s.


The always intriguing Fly’s Eye Dome by Buckminster Fuller. This was his idea of the affordable, portable home of the future, with windows and openings in the dome to hold solar panels and systems for water collection, thus allowing the dome to be self-sufficient.
The sun was off and on while here and I do think this location photographs much better in the sunlight. On my last visit, I photographed this from a wider perspective. This time, I was back to the details.

Stealing this idea from Michael, with his signature shots focusing on the reflections right up against the reflective surface. In this area, there’s the vivid blue glass sort-of canopy thing around the stores and a few feet away from the dome. So when you get close to that blue glass you get the dome reflecting and partly seen through the blue surface, and part of it is just a straight view, creating a sort-of double exposure look. Wow, this is hard to explain not on location. Hopefully, you’re somewhat getting what I’m saying!

 
Here’s a sort-of, representative shot of the blue canopy thing. This just feels like Miami!

Okay, one final location, the City View Parking Garage. One side is blue, the other is a golden color. Given I’ve shot this a couple of times it’s hard to get something new, so this time I tried some intentional camera movement (ICM). Trippy and fun!

Stayed tuned for at least two more posts from the weekend, which includes two new locations!!! Or get right to all the shots here.