A once ambitious plan to renovate and expand the Miami Beach Convention Center has recently fallen victim to regime change and a new, less extensive rebuilding plan. The original plan, which resulted in a price tag escalating to $1.1 billion, was discarded after the election of the new mayor, Philip Levine, who, since taking office this year, has asked for a new start to the project and issued an RfQ in that regard. As a result of this change in the City’s strategy, the winner of the original competition, led by South Beach ACE with Rem Koolhaas and OMA has threatened legal action against the City of Miami Beach for breach of contract.
Coming to a decision on the original competition, won by OMA early last summer over the Danish firm BIG, led by Bjarke Ingels, was hardly a clear-cut matter. Initially, the Miami Herald reported the Portman Team with BIG as the winner. Just a few days later, OMA was announced as the winner. Was this sort of confusion a portent of bad tidings for the future for this project? After the selection of OMA—and this was before the election of the new mayor—sticker shock apparently set in, and downsizing was now on the table. When the new mayor took over, the competition results were scuttled, which has led to the present situation: a new start for a much less ambitious project was announced with a new RfQ. The result: there is a looming court case between ACE/OMA and the City.
The Project
Developing the site of the present Miami Beach Convention Center into something it is not is a difficult challenge. This is mainly because it is three blocks from the beach. Lincoln Road, for example, derives its popularity as a shopping and restaurant destination, not only because it is a block from the beach, but is easily accessible from major hotels off Collins Avenue. This set of circumstances is what designers from OMA and BIG were faced with in their redo of the present Convention Center and its environs.
When BIG suggested the demolition of the Gleason Theater to make room for a hotel, this elicited a public outcry. To retain the Gleason, BIG’s solution was to relocate the hotel on top of the Convention Center, an idea already in the ACE/OMA proposal. BIG also proposed locating the large ballroom as a separate structure across a planned plaza from the main convention building. This led some in Miami to wonder if a plaza would work in the Miami Beach environment when conventions were not in session, some pointing out that plazas traditionally have never worked as pedestrian attractions in Miami Beach.
By locating the ballroom in the main convention center structure, OMA did manage to generate more park space. But here, some critics maintained that their scheme lacked the high-density character demanded by such an urban site. In essence, both proposals endeavored to provide the project with an ensemble, which, aside from convention center business, would act as an urban generator for activity. Given the location and peculiar set of circumstances, this would have seemed to be an almost insurmountable task, even at $1.1 billion. A giant farmer’s market might have been what the site needs.
Entry by OMA:
Entry by BIG:
Book Review
Young Architects in Competitions
When Competitions and a New Generation of Ideas Elevate Architectural Quality
by Jean-Pierre Chupin and G. Stanley Collyer published by Potential Architecture Books, Montreal, Canada 2020 271 illustrations in color and black & white Available in PDF and eBook formats ISBN 9781988962047
What do the Vietnam Memorial, the St. Louis Arch, and the Sydney Opera House have in common? These world renowned landmarks were all designed by architects under the age of 40, and in each case they were selected through open competitions. At their best, design competitions can provide a singular opportunity for young and unknown architects to make their mark on the built environment and launch productive, fruitful careers. But what happens when design competitions are engineered to favor the established and experienced practitioners from the very outset?
This comprehensive new book written by Jean-Pierre Chupin (Canadian Competitions Catalogue) and Stanley Collyer (COMPETITIONS) highlights for the crucial role competitions have played in fostering the careers of young architects, and makes an argument against the trend of invited competitions and RFQs. The authors take an in-depth look at past competitions won by young architects and planners, and survey the state of competitions through the world on a region by region basis. The end result is a compelling argument for an inclusive approach to conducting international design competitions.
Download Young Architects in Competitions for free at the following link:
In early 2020, a group advocating a new approach to the design of the Los Angeles Museum of Art (LACMA)—The Citizens’ Brigade to Save LACMA—organized a competition to counter an existing design by the Swiss Architect Peter Zumthor. Already commissioned by the LACMA administration, the project is slated to begin almost immediately with the demolition of four LACMA buildings—three existing and one new. Moreover, the existing plan to incorporate all of the existing collections under one roof isn’t covered by the Zumthor plan. This obvious lack of exhibit space was the focus of a query by the Ahmanson Foundation, a major donor of artworks to LACMA in the past. Upon not receiving assurances from LACMA that those donated works would be exhibited, but possibly held in storage and hidden from public view, the Foundation cut all ties with LACMA. Finally, the plan by Zumthor foresees the new structure not only occupying much of the new space created by demolition, but extends part of the new building over Wiltshire Boulevard. As one might anticipate from Zumthor, the construction of the structure is also primarily of concrete, thereby raising the cost per SF. So no matter how highly finished this material turns out to be, it does in essence represent a brutalist structure replacing an eclectic ensemble.
If one were to search for a railway museum in the U.K., London would seem to be an obvious choice. But, as it happens, its location is in the northeastern city of York, far from the major cultural and economic centers of the country. But despite its distance from the major metropolitan areas to the south and west, York has managed to become the focal point of research into the history of rail in the U.K., supplemented by a major museum. Here we are not just talking about some posters, but sheds replete with a large collection of vintage trains.
Foundation non-profits are no strangers to good architecture. Ford Foundation’s forward-looking headquarters in New York City by Roche Dinkeloo was an early example of a non-profit using architecture as a vehicle for serving to brand it as a progressive institution. In 2001 the California Endowment went one step further, staging an invited competition for their new headquarters in Los Angeles.
Master plans have been around for ages; but master plans for very large cities with all their support systems are relatively new. Milton Keynes (MK), located in Buckinghamshire in southern England, and begun in the late 1960s, is one of the most successful of the new cities, now having a population of almost 250,000. Its success lies mainly on the lessons learned from the establishment of the planning which generated the new towns in the U.K. during the 1940s and 50s, many of which have not fared well in the test of time. MK’s success was based primarily on the careful separation of high density from residential where the influence of the “garden city” could be seen. Here the idea of a live/work environment was even incorporated.
The updating and modernization of Chicago’s O’Hare Airport has been well overdue. Aside from occasional problems caused by Chicago’s winter storms, congestion at the airport has led air travelers to avoid the airport when catching a connecting flight is on the agenda. So Chicago, noted for its modern architecture and the home of several high-profile architecture firms, decided to turn to an invited competition for a solution to these issues.
Competitions in Chicago in the recent past have been anything but encouraging, especially when transparency is an issue. During the competition for the Obama Center on the South Side, the Obama Foundation, which was responsible for the administration of that “competition,” was anything but a model of transparency; and to this day, none of the finalist designs, other than that of the winner, have seen the light of day. In the case of the O’Hare project, videos submitted by the five finalists teams were on public display, and the public was even asked to vote for their favorite.
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