South Beach: From Deco-Modern To Gehry

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South Beach: From Deco-Modern To Gehry

Albion Hotel

In the first half of this tour, participants will explore the typology and architecture of the hotel rows and residential quarters of South Beach, interpreted as a Mediterranean Deco-Modern “alphabet city.” From the concert hall and rooftop garden of Frank Gehry’s New World Symphony, the second portion of the tour follows the pedestrian ribbon of Lincoln Road all the way to the tropical-brutalist finale of the 1111 parking garage by Herzog & deMeuron. Along the road, we will discuss the works of Morris Lapidus, Lawrence Murray Dixon, Igor Polevitzky’s Albion Hotel, West 8’s Soundscape park at Collins Avenue, etc.  
 
This tour will be co-led by Jean-François Lejeune, Ph.D., professor of architecture, urban design, and history at the University of Miami School of Architecture and Docomomo US/Florida President, and Sandra Scidmore, Board Member of the Miami Design Preservation League. Lejeune is the co-author, with Allan Shulman, of The Making of Miami Beach 1933-1942: The Architecture of Lawrence Murray Dixon (Rizzoli, 2000). 
 
Planning Notes: We recommend pairing this tour with the afternoon tour "North Beach: Beyond Art Deco, Miami Beach’s Exuberant Postwar Architecture" and planning to get lunch and stay in Miami Beach for the day, but it is not required to do so. Tour participants who are doing the North Beach afternoon tour have the option to stay in Miami Beach after the morning tour and meet up with the North Beach tour at the meeting location (TBA). 

Bus and Walking Tour
(Bus departs from and returns to the Mayfair House Hotel, but this is primarily a walking tour through South Beach.) 

Saturday 6/1, 9:30am–12:30pm 
$95

 

All tours will be submitted for AIA credits. 

Tour Leader

Jean-François Lejeune

Jean-François Lejeune, Ph.D. is a professor of architecture, urban design, and history at the University of Miami School of Architecture. His research ranges from Latin American architecture and urbanism to 20th-century vernacular modernism in Spain and Italy. His publications include The Making of Miami Beach 1933-1942: The Architecture of Lawrence Murray Dixon, with Allan Shulman (Rizzoli, 2001), Cruelty and Utopia: Cities and Landscapes of Latin America (Princeton Architectural Press, 2005), Sitte, Hegemann, and the Metropolis (Routledge, 2009), Modern Architecture and the Mediterranean: Vernacular Dialogues and Contested Identities, with Michelangelo Sabatino (Routledge, 2010), Cuban Modernism: Mid- Century Architecture 1940-1970, with Victor Deupi (Birkhäuser, 2021) and Rural Architecture and Water Urbanism: The Modern Village in Franco’s Spain (DOM-Publishers, 2021). He curated various exhibitions in Brussels and Miami, including with Victor Deupi, Cuban Architects at Home and in Exile: The Modernist Generation. He holds a diploma from the University of Liège in Belgium and the Ph.D. from the TU Delft. He was founder of Docomomo US/Florida and is the current treasurer. He was an Affiliated Fellow at the American Academy in Rome in 2007.

2024 National Symposium Miami: Streams of Modernity, Postwar to Postmodern

Join us in Miami and Coral Gables, Florida, from May 29 to June 1, 2024, and experience one of the country’s richest collections of mid-century and postmodern architecture. Entitled Streams of Modernity: Postwar to Postmodern, the 2024 National Symposium is a collaboration of Docomomo US and the Docomomo US/Florida chapter.