Art at heart: Arquitectonica’s new Miami tower has its own curated art collection

We’re not ones to challenge the stature of South Beach being the preferred patch to live in Miami, but not far off, the lagoon known as Biscayne Bay is steadily making its presence known. Wedged between the Miami Beach island and the city’s mainland, the bay provides its inhabitants with waterfront views, along with all the comforts of urban living.

The area’s most recent addition is the exciting residential building, Iconbay. Designed by the locally based architecture firm Arquitectonica, the tower’s textured facade is inspired by ripples on the bay, which has given way to the bas-relief style balconies that poetically emerge from the building. Forty-three stories high, the luxury building does one better on just offering residents the usual amenities, such as a gym, pool, 24-hour concierge, games room and tennis courts – it boasts its own specially curated art collection that adorns its public spaces and walls. Collated by Patricia Hanna, art director of Iconbay developers Related Group, pieces by Latin American artists, such as Eugenio and Lautaro Cuttica, Fernando Reyna Escalona and Agustin Gonzalez fill the building and its grounds.

'From the start, our main goal was to blend architecture and art, so we took much of our inspiration from Iconbay’s design, like its jagged edges and the influence light has on the interiors,' Hanna says. 'Given its proximity to the water, there was a lot of emphasis on transparency, color and natural light. The artworks are placed in dialogue with their surroundings.'

Another one of Iconbay’s unique features is a waterfront sculpture garden and public park, both designed by ArquitectonicaGEO, the firm’s landscape design arm. Tracing the waterfront, Iconbay’s park opens up a 400-foot pedestrian link between the city and the bay, making it the first development of its kind to fuse both private and public access in order to make the Biscayne waterfront available to all. It’s also the first iteration of a larger commitment by Related Group to create a series of shoreside parks all along the bay. Visitors to the park are not only able to enjoy its views; they also have access to Iconbay’s sculpture garden, which is filled with specially commissioned sculptures, thanks to a partnership with the National Young Arts Foundation.

'Our goal is for residents of our buildings to have the pleasure of living with art and for the artwork to inspire them in some way,' Hanna concludes. 'We are also particularly proud of what we have done to incorporate art in public places so as to benefit the community.'