Keep Buildings

Who’s afraid of the big bad building? No one, if it shows off sleek Streamline Moderne-style lines. Because for the unschooled, architecture in Miami stopped in the early Forties when houses, hotels, and public buildings looked vaguely cruise-ship-like, as if inhabitants would be suddenly cast adrift in the middle of the ocean. Not so, but in recent years what certainly went adrift was people’s knowledge about what is and isn’t Art Deco. To some every building of every era, whether adorned with Mediterranean arches or sporting Gothic spires, was dubbed Deco.

Now there’s another stylistic designation in the mix. MIMo, or Miami Modern, applies to buildings mainly from the Fifties and the Sixties boasting boomerangs, corrugated walls, and Swiss cheese-looking windblock, among many details. Or sometimes none at all, just stark elegant lines. All wit, whimsy, and wonder, the structures are at last receiving their due, sort of. Not old enough for formal protection, as in National Register of Historic Places status, but precious enough for a group of concerned citizens known as the Urban Arts Committee to take them under its wing, the masterpieces will be showcased in “Miami Modern Architecture, 1945-1972 — A Photography Exhibition.” Three photographers — Robin Hill, Thomas Delbeck, and Arthur Marcus — capture MIMo buildings in all their glory. Among the 84 images: common sites such as the Fontainebleau, and Carillon hotels, plus apartments, single-family homes, and houses of worship.

Kicking off a month of events under the umbrella Design + Architecture 2001, the show opens ironically at the Seymour, a beautifully renovated Streamline Moderne building and new home of the Miami Beach Community Development Corporation. An expanded MIMo exhibition travels to New York City’s Municipal Art Society in March. Then it will return south bigger and better. Sooner than later, it seems, everything will be coming up MIMo.