Signature · Architecture · Miami
Arquitectonica
The firm that invented the Miami skyline: bold colour, graphic form and the hole in the façade that became a postcard image — with an office in São Paulo since its Latin American expansion.
Who it is
Arquitectonica was born in 1977, in Miami, as an experimental studio founded by Peruvian architect Bernardo Fort-Brescia and Laurinda Hope Spear, alongside Andrés Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Hervin Romney. The latter three went their own ways; Fort-Brescia and Spear remain at the helm of the house, today an international firm of architecture, landscape architecture, interior design and urban planning, headquartered in Coconut Grove, Miami — where it moved in 2010 — with offices in New York, Los Angeles, Madrid, Paris, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Manila, Dubai, Lima and São Paulo.
The house’s reputation was built on a highly recognisable repertoire: bold volumes, colour applied as a material and sophisticated patterning and façade articulation. The Atlantis Condominium, in Brickell, with its square void cutting through the middle of the slab, is the piece that made the firm known worldwide and that defined the image of Miami for a generation. From there, Arquitectonica took this grammar — a dramatic, expressive, “high tech”-looking modernism — to arenas, hotels, malls, and corporate and residential towers on three continents.
In São Paulo, the signature appears in VN Millennium Faria Lima, in partnership with Athié Wohnrath.
Language
- Style: expressive, graphic modernism — cut-out volumes, structural voids, geometry legible from a distance. The building is designed to be read from the avenue, not from the lobby.
- Materials and signature: bold colour as an architectural element, surface patterning, glass skins combined with sculptural elements and cut-outs in the building’s mass.
- Awards: work published in leading international reference literature on contemporary architecture; the firm is recognised as the main force behind Miami’s built identity.
Landmark works
- Atlantis Condominium, Brickell, Miami.
- The Pink House, Miami Shores.
- Brickell City Centre, Miami.
- AmericanAirlines Arena (today Kaseya Center), Miami.
- Westin Hotel Times Square, New York.
- Headquarters of the Banco de Crédito del Perú, Lima — 1988.
- Festival Walk, Hong Kong, and SM Mall of Asia, Manila.
- The Cosmopolitan Resort & Casino, Las Vegas.
- VN Millennium Faria Lima, in Vila Olímpia, São Paulo — with Athié Wohnrath.
Signatures in the portfolio
No development in the collection carries this signature yet — it is here for the weight of the name in São Paulo's high end.
