The Architecture Playbook: The PGM Guide to Miami's Built Environment

Miami is one of the most architecturally significant cities in the Western Hemisphere — and one of the most misread.

The popular image of the city's architecture begins and ends with the pastel Art Deco hotels of Ocean Drive, which is a bit like understanding New York architecture through the Chrysler Building alone.

The full picture is richer, stranger, and more contested than the postcard version suggests.

We've been reading this city's buildings since 2006.

This is the guide to what you're actually looking at.

The Art Deco Historic District of South Beach — roughly bounded by 5th Street to the south, Dade Boulevard to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and Lenox Avenue to the west — is the largest concentration of Art Deco architecture in the world.

Approximately 800 buildings constructed between 1923 and 1943 survive in the district, representing the full range of the style's development from its early Zigzag Moderne phase through its later Streamline Moderne expression.

The style arrived in Miami Beach through a specific set of circumstances: the land boom of the 1920s, the hurricane of 1926 that destroyed much of the earlier construction, and the subsequent rebuilding that coincided with the height of the Art Deco movement in American commercial architecture.

The architects who shaped the district — Henry Hohauser, L.

Murray Dixon, Albert Anis, Roy France — were not the most celebrated figures of the movement nationally, but they produced a body of work that is collectively extraordinary.

• Key Buildings and What to Look For

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  The Carlyle (1941, Richard Kiehnel):

  One of the finest examples of Streamline Moderne in the district. The curved corners, the horizontal banding, and the neon signage are all characteristic of the style's later phase. The building appeared in the film The Birdcage (1996) and has been a visual anchor of Ocean Drive for decades.

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  The Breakwater (1939, Anton Skislewicz):

  The vertical tower element rising from a horizontal base is a signature Art Deco compositional device. The Breakwater uses it with particular clarity. The neon sign on the tower is one of the best in the district.

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  The Colony Hotel (1935, Henry Hohauser):

  Hohauser was the most prolific architect in the district, and the Colony is one of his most refined works. The eyebrow windows — horizontal projections that shade the windows below — are a characteristic Art Deco device that also served a practical function in Miami's climate.

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  The Cardozo (1939, Henry Hohauser):

  Owned by Gloria Estefan and renovated in the 1990s, the Cardozo is one of the best-preserved buildings in the district. The curved facade and the horizontal banding are textbook Streamline Moderne.

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  The Wolfsonian-FIU (1927, Robertson & Patterson):

  Originally a storage facility, now a museum of design and propaganda. The building's Mediterranean Revival exterior conceals an Art Deco interior that is one of the most remarkable spaces in Miami Beach. The collection — focused on design and material culture from 1885 to 1945 — is extraordinary.

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  The Miami Design Preservation League

  The MDPL is the organization that saved the Art Deco district from demolition in the 1970s and 1980s, when the hotels were largely derelict and developers were proposing to replace them with high-rises.

  The League's walking tours are the best introduction to the district's architecture.

  The Art Deco Weekend festival, held every January, is the largest celebration of Art Deco architecture in the world.

Miami Modern — MiMo — is the architectural style that succeeded Art Deco in Miami, roughly spanning the period from 1945 to 1970.

Where Art Deco was horizontal and streamlined, MiMo is vertical and exuberant — characterized by butterfly rooflines, brise-soleil screens, cantilevered canopies, and a tropical modernism that drew on the International Style while adapting it to Miami's climate and culture.

The style's primary concentration is along Biscayne Boulevard between roughly 50th and 77th Streets — the MiMo Historic District, also known as the Biscayne Boulevard Historic District.

The hotels, motels, and commercial buildings along this stretch represent the full range of the style's expression.

• Key Buildings

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  The Vagabond Hotel (1953, Robert Swartburg):

  The anchor of the MiMo district and one of the finest examples of the style. The butterfly roofline, the neon signage, and the kidney-shaped pool are all characteristic. The hotel was restored in 2014 and is now one of the best places to stay in Miami if you want to understand the city's architectural history.

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  The Motel Blu (1955):

  A smaller-scale example of MiMo motel architecture, with the characteristic cantilevered canopy and the horizontal banding that distinguishes the style from its Art Deco predecessor.

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  The Fontainebleau Hotel (1954, Morris Lapidus):

  The most famous MiMo building in Miami and one of the most significant works of American architecture of the postwar period. Lapidus — who described his design philosophy as "too much is never enough" — created a building that was simultaneously celebrated and reviled by the architectural establishment. The curved facade, the bow-tie lobby, and the sweeping staircase are all extraordinary. The building has been expanded and renovated multiple times but the original Lapidus elements survive.

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  The Eden Roc (1955, Morris Lapidus):

  Lapidus's follow-up to the Fontainebleau, built next door. The two hotels were in direct competition and the rivalry between their owners shaped the development of Miami Beach's hotel culture for decades.

Miami's Brutalist buildings are among the most underappreciated in the city's architectural inventory.

The style — characterized by exposed concrete, massive geometric forms, and an emphasis on structural honesty — arrived in Miami in the 1960s and produced several significant civic buildings.

• Miami-Dade Cultural Center (1983, Philip Johnson):

  The complex that houses the Miami-Dade Public Library, the Historical Museum of Southern Florida, and the Miami Art Museum (now the Pérez Art Museum Miami's predecessor) is one of Johnson's most significant civic works. The Mediterranean Revival-influenced design — with its arcaded courtyard and its raised plaza — was controversial when it opened and remains so. The library interior is one of the finest public spaces in Miami.

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  Freedom Tower (1925, Schultze & Weaver; renovated 1998):

  Originally built as the home of the Miami Daily News, the Freedom Tower served as a processing center for Cuban refugees in the 1960s and has become one of the most symbolically significant buildings in Miami. The Mediterranean Revival tower — modeled on the Giralda in Seville — is now a museum of Cuban and Cuban-American history operated by Miami Dade College.

The Miami skyline has been transformed in the past two decades by a wave of residential and commercial construction that has produced some of the most architecturally significant contemporary buildings in the country.

• Brickell and Downtown

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  Pérez Art Museum Miami (2013, Herzog & de Meuron):

  The Swiss firm's first building in Florida is one of the finest contemporary museums in the country. The hanging gardens — tropical plants suspended from the canopy in custom planters — are the building's signature element and one of the most successful integrations of landscape and architecture in recent American building.

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  Frost Museum of Science (2017, Grimshaw Architects):

  The aquarium and science museum in Museum Park is one of the most technically ambitious buildings in Miami. The planetarium dome and the three-story aquarium tank are both extraordinary.

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  Brickell City Centre (2016, Arquitectonica):

  The mixed-use development in the heart of Brickell includes a climate ribbon — a continuous glass and steel canopy that shades the outdoor spaces and manages the tropical climate — that is one of the most innovative environmental design elements in recent American architecture.

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  Wynwood and the Design District

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  The Wynwood Walls (2009, various artists):

  Not a building but a built environment — the collection of murals commissioned by Tony Goldman that transformed a derelict warehouse district into one of the most visited outdoor art spaces in the world. The Walls are now a permanent institution with a rotating program of new commissions.

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  Miami Design District:

  The luxury retail district developed by Craig Robins has become one of the most architecturally ambitious commercial developments in the country. The buildings by Aranda/Lasch, Leong Leong, and others represent a serious engagement with contemporary architecture in a retail context.

• Miami Design Preservation League Art Deco Tour:

  The standard introduction to the South Beach district. Walking tours depart from the Art Deco Welcome Center on Ocean Drive. The self-guided audio tour is also excellent.

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  MiMo District Self-Guided Walk:

  The stretch of Biscayne Boulevard between 50th and 77th Streets can be walked in an afternoon. The Vagabond Hotel is the anchor; the surrounding blocks contain dozens of significant MiMo buildings.

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  Museum Park:

  The Pérez Art Museum Miami and the Frost Museum of Science sit adjacent to each other in Museum Park, with views of Biscayne Bay. The walk between them, along the waterfront, is one of the best urban walks in Miami.

The best way to understand Miami is to walk it slowly and look up.

The city's architectural history — the boom and bust cycles, the waves of migration, the tension between preservation and development, the tropical climate that shapes every building decision — is all visible in the buildings if you know what you're looking at.

This guide is a starting point.

The city is the education.