
New World Symphony
The pumped up Hip Hop that accompanies the Ferraris or SUVs cruising up and down Ocean Drive and Collins Avenue, has been joined by some more melodious sounds.
In a brand new building designed by Pritzker prize winning architect Frank Gehry - the New World Symphony is home to some of the top young classical musicians in the country. All of the members of the NWS’s symphony orchestra are non-professional students aged between 20-30 years old, who have been selected for their talent from a series of country-wide ’American Idol’ style auditions

The NWS’s mission is to break down the barriers between the traditionally stuffy world of classical music and the public. And it seems to be working to incredible effect. Since it began its Saturday evening ’wallcasts’, where the live performance in the auditorium is projected on the side of the building, the crowds that come to watch have been growing steadily. They now number an average of 2,000 people -- filling the adjacent West 8 designed park with picnic blankets and hampers.

1111 Lincoln Road
Miami’s best building, Herzog and de Meuron’s car parking garage provides an emphatic full stop at the west end of Lincoln Road mall. Developer Robert Wennett, the financial and conceptual force behind the project, moved to Miami from New York because he felt he sensed a ’cultural shift in the city, away from the suburban model’.
Cars have never been so magnificently accommodated with lofty, cathedral-like spaces soaring above them. In fact this building should be thought of less in terms of cars and more as a vertical continuation of Lincoln Road mall’s public space. The great lesson to be learnt here is that with Miami’s fantastic climate -- all you really need is some generous and well designed covered outdoor space and a multitude of activities can be accommodated all year round. 1111 has played host to numerous private parties and even weddings
Photo copyright Nelson Garrido

Alchemist
Adding to the claim that 1111 Lincoln Road is something way beyond a mere parking garage is Alchemist -- a top of the line clothes and shoes boutique, located on the 5th floor of the building. Designed by Miami architect Rene Gonzalez, Alchemist is an ethereal counterpoint to the garage’s exposed concrete, lined with mirrors, which catches the sky and the street below. The project was a 2011 Recipient of American Insitute of Architects Honor Awards for Interior Architecture
http://shopalchemist.com
Photography: Michael Staviridis

Lincoln Road mall
Recently added to by the 1111 garage to the west and the New World Center to the east, Lincoln Road mall is a fantastic example of a modern public space in its own right.
Conceived in the early 1960s by Miami’s original star-chitect Morris Lapidus (designer of the nearby Fontainbleau hotel, among many other local projects), the mall sought to regenerate Lincoln Road’s flagging commercial fortunes through closing it to traffic - as Lapidus said at the time ’a car never bought anything’.
The end result is a highly civilised, pedestrian shopping area, lined with trees and punctuated by Lapidus designed structures -- a dramatic cantilevering canopy used for performances, fountains, trellises for shading. Completed by its recent addition at its east and west ends, Lincoln Road mall is now firmly re-established as the heart of South Beach - hugely popular at all times of the day and night with people shopping eating and people watching

Raymond Jungles – Lincoln Road mall
The go-to landscape designer of choice in Miami at the moment, Raymond Jungles’ work is everywhere – from the roof garden and environs of the New World Center to Allan Shulman’s Soho Beach House. Here, simultaneous with the construction of the 1111 parking garage, Jungles has brought his magic to the end of Lincoln road – effectively extending and completing the mall begun by Morris Lapidus in the 1960s.
The result is a literal and thematic extension of Lincoln Road and a completely seamless join with the pre-existing mall. Jungles has extended the black and white striped motif, but changed the material from a painted tarmac found further up to a more durable stone mosaic. A mix of native Florida trees including some semi-deciduous offers seasonal variety and integrated naturalistic water features complete the impression of an ‘urban glade’.
Photography Steven Brooke