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Florida's Colorful New Modernists
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20529 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
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11 / 1992 |
1,997 Words |
| Author
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Marcus Binney
Marcus Binney, is president of Save Britain's Heritage. |
Bernardo Fort-Brescia is riding a roller coaster of success. In just ten years he and his wife, Laurinda, have become two of the most popular and prolific young architects in Florida. Now they are working on a symphony hall and conference center for the city of Dijon in France, a new headquarters for the Bank of Luxembourg, a new American Embassy in Peru, a housing project in Holland, and a resort on Portugal's Algarve coast.
The couple has offices in San Francisco and Paris. "We like to work in different places," says Fort-Brescia. "It's intensely stimulating to have to respond to different people, topography, and cultural traditions." Their most recently completed buildings include a hall of fame of champion swimmers in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and a new shopping center nearby that attracts 100,000 visitors on the weekend.
His enthusiasm for Miami is infections. "You can be prolific here like nowhere else," he says. Driving around he points out a continuous series of eye-catching apartment blocks, offices, shopping malls, and low-cost housing designed by their firm, Arquitechtonica. "People come to us if they want something different, some new ingenuity," he explains.
He grew up on a farm in Peru. "My dream was always to be an architect. I sketched buildings wherever I went." He met Laurinda in Boston, while he was at Harvard and she at MIT. Many people said a husband-and-wife team would never work, but even with six children he says they can discuss projects "anytime they want."
When he points to their buildings on expression keeps recurring: "graphic strength." Miami, he says, "is a suburban city. You see many buildings from expressways and causeways. People need to be able to identify them from afar." He points to the bold black and white stripes of a shopping center we are approaching. "It's like a huge flag or banner. We compose our buildings like paintings. We study the color in two dimensions. And then explore the design in the round."
When Fort-Brescia began to study the architecture of Miami, what struck him was that each generation had done some-thing completely different. First there were the coral-rock houses, built of material hewn of great pits in the ground. Then came Cape Cod houses known locally as the Cracker Style. Next the Mediterranean look, followed by Art Deco. "Essentially then were all trying they were all trying to say this is the American Riviera, but with a strong overlay of fantasy. Our aim has been
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