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After a 3-year restoration work for a total cost of 620 million dollars, the Miami Beach Convention Center has redone its look and is ready to host fairs, meetings and exhibitions. Although the internal work is not yet completed, it probably will be as soon as at the end of October, but certainly by December 6, official opening date of the prestigious Art Basel, with which the city has renewed the partnership for another 5 years. The Convention Center will already host the American Health Information Management Association meeting in a new role from September 22 to 26.
The redesign, after a large selection among advanced proposals, was entrusted to the synergy between the studios Fentress Architects, Arquitectonica and the international landscape architecture firm West 8. Redesigned as LEED certified state-of-the-art structure the new Miami Convention Center is composed of 500 aluminum fins arranged in a wave. The architecture firms have redesigned 1.4 million square meters of which: an exhibition hall of 48,000 square meters (500,000 square feet), four ballrooms and 127,000 square meters (about 1,300,000 foot square) of meeting space and productions. The building was built with an eye to the future by opting for a steel construction with composite metal bridges for raised floors in case of sea level rise. The interiors finish with a smooth design instead emulate the elusive water, the foam of the sea and other motifs related to the various types of local coral reefs.
The Miami Convention Center administration has embraced the ideology behind selected studies. Fentress Architects is a studio specialized in the construction / renovation of public buildings. According to Fentress Architects’ ideology, buildings must capture and reflect the strengths of the local community, strengthening pride for residents and stimulating visitors’ curiosity. Renovation concepts are inspired by elegant modern designs incorporating natural elements of the ocean, the beach and the underwater life. The building’s exterior envelope has been designed with linear shapes that create a curvilinear wave-like ripple. Fentress Architects designed, among other things, the splendid Denver airport, completely reinvented.
Arquitettonica, is instead home to Miami in which he designed some of the most beautiful buildings in the city, including: the American Airlines Arena, the Brickell Residences + W Hotel, the Fendi Chateau Residences, the Hard Rock Stadium and the LSL Lux Brickell Hotel and Residences.
With projects in fifty-nine countries spread across five continents and winning over a hundred design awards, its pioneering work has been the subject of exhibitions in numerous museums and institutions. It is known as one of the pioneering studies of globalization in the architectural profession.
On the other hand West 8 is an internationally renowned Dutch studio awarded for urban design and landscape architecture. With the typically Dutch ideology that distinguishes it, to “create land and paint it in many ways”, the West 8 will adopt both the classical approach of civil engineering for the creation of landscapes with a logic based on utility and on the need, both the traditionalist approach that gives identity to the landscape production: will transform more than six hectares of parking in space for a public park and will perform landscape and infrastructural interventions, including a tropical garden, a playground with shaded areas, a square for veterans and a pavilion with water features.
While waiting to enjoy the beauties not only linked to Art Basel’s artworks, we are waiting to see the interior works of the Miami Convention Center completed, providing more color to the structure, with a vortex-shaped multimedia screen and the effects of the ceiling starry night in dance halls, currently only visible with rendering.
(Images courtesy of the Miami Convention Center Media Press)
