Jazzing Up The Functional

By Wolf Von Eckardt

A brash young Miami firm offers more than modernity

Modern architecture--the uncluttered, functional kind--has come to be a synonym for boredom in many quarters. But not in Miami, where a brash young firm called Arquitectonica is creating unadorned, mechanical-looking buildings that startle the eye with their loud primary colors and jazzy architectural stunts. Consider, for example, the firm's Atlantis condominium, an apartment tower with a bright blue grid on one side. Twelve stories up, a huge hole has been cut into the slab. The open-air decor of this "sky court" features a swaying palm tree, a curved yellow wall, a red spiral staircase and a blue whirlpool.

Such exuberance is Arquitectonica's way of trying to make up for modern architecture's shortcomings in social purpose and aesthetic satisfaction. These faults have sent other architects to the attic for historic forms and ornaments. Arquitectonica is building on the spirit of daring and experiment that characterized the avant-garde earlier in this century. "We are not trying to create a new style," says Laurinda Spear, 33, one of the founding partners. "We are just trying to make modern architecture more lively and up to date."

Arquitectonica's other principals are Spear's husband Bernardo Fort-Brescia, 32, and Hervin A.R. Romney, 43. The firm's Spanish name is apt, and not only because the buildings show a frisky Latin bravado. Fort-Brescia was born in Peru, and Romney is from Cuba. All three partners, however, are the products of Ivy League schools. Founded only seven years ago, Arquitectonica already has a staff of 29 in its Miami headquarters and has opened offices in Houston and New York City.

One of the firm's best-known buildings is the controversial Palace in Miami. It consists of a plain 41-story slab with a three-story glass-cube penthouse on top. Rammed right through the side of the slab is what seems like another, smaller building of glass and red stucco. For added drama (and terrace patios), the red interloper steps down like giant stairs.

Currently on the firm's drawing boards or under construction are a courthouse for Bade County, in suburban Miami; a $150 million office-hotel-retail center in downtown Miami; a bank in Peru; a shopping center near Dallas; high-rise buildings for San Antonio and Manhattan; and several town-house clusters in Houston. One completed ten-unit group of the Houston town houses looks, characteristically, like something put together by a gifted child with an oversize Lego toy set: white triangular roofs, extruding yellow strips and even more extruding blue boxes. The houses are designed to provide young urban professional tenants with a sense of efficiency and space on minimal, close-to-downtown lots, and at a reasonable cost. The typical unit contains a garage, a foyer and a 1/2-story living room on the first level, a dining balcony and kitchen on the second, and on the third a den, master bedroom and "Hollywood" bathroom--a tripartite affair in which two powder rooms adjoin a common bath. Price of the only unsold unit: $157,500.

In Manhattan, Arquitectonica faced the problem of considerably enlarging a seven-story brick apartment house without disturbing it. The solution: a slim, new, 35-story tower that straddles the old building. The new building is abruptly interrupted by a kind of roof garden with a domed swimming pool and a jogging track. Arquitectonica plans to deck out the building's fac,ade in a bold, Mari-mekko-like pattern of white glass, black marble and red-enameled metal.

If the team has done nothing more, it has shown developers that new ideas can pay and that people will buy modern if it has more to offer than modernity. That big hole in the Atlantis condominium, for instance, not only serves the residents as a delightfully dramatic patio, it also serves the developers. Under Miami's zoning regulations they were able to add the apartments that were cut out to the top of the building, where they command a better view and higher prices. The blue grid on the south side of the building adds not only color but also shade, in the manner of Le Corbusier's famous brise-soleil, or sun baffle. "If you try to be different," says Fort-Brescia, "be sure that it functions right. My father was a developer. We know better than to fool around with costs and construction schedules."

Fort-Brescia and Spear admit to being influenced by the Russian constructivists (like Vladimir Tallin and El Lissitzky) and their predilection for making architecture a kind of artistic engineering. The team's use of bold primary shades suggests the paintings of Mondrian's De Stijl. And some of its whimsy--such as the yellow, finlike balconies that stick out of the Atlantis' glass fac,ade to emphasize its entrance--recalls Miro.

The main drawback of Arquitectonica's visually noisy modernism is that it does not get along easily with older, more urbane neighbors. One also shudders at the thought of mediocre imitations of Arquitectonica's audacity. It is inimitable. Only the young team's unique combination of skills could bring such fresh appeal and energy to the architectural scene. --By Wolf Von Eckardt