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# Looking at Miami as an Architectural Powerhouse
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/looking-at-miami-as-an-architectural-powerhouse/
- Published: 2014-03-13T14:55:29.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:17:17.000Z
- Description: The ninth issue of CLOG, the architecture publication that emphatically “slows things down,” focuses on the increasingly growing interest in the city of Miami and the transition from a major shipping port and vacation destination to an architectural powerhouse.
- Author: Ryan J. Simons
- Tags: Books, Architecture, Miami, Review, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 07:03 (2014, 2015, part 1)

![CLOG-09-MIAMI-640](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2014/03/clog-09-miami-640.jpg)

The ninth issue of [*CLOG*](http://www.clog-online.com/?ref=hyperallergic.com), the architecture publication that emphatically “slows things down,” focuses on the increasingly growing interest in the city of Miami and the transition from a major shipping port and vacation destination to an architectural powerhouse. This issue is the first time *CLOG*’s editors — Kyle May, Julia van den Hout, Jacob Reidel, Archie Lee Coates IV, and Jeff Franklin — have chosen to dissect a single city in their attempt to bring their extreme focus to discussions usually lost to the fleeting whims of architectural discourse’s use of Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, etc., as a forum for discourse.

![H2dZk-320](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2014/03/h2dzk-320.jpg)

With over 40 contributors, the topics discussed range from material experimentation, the influx of projects from world-renown architects like Rem Koolhaas/OMA, Frank O. Gehry, SOM, BIG, Herzog & de Meuron, and Zaha Hadid to name a few, the relatively verdant rebranding of Miami as an art city since Art Basel set down in Miami in 2002, the politicking involved with building a civic project, and the friction between the existing residents and the “selling of a lifestyle.” As is often the case with *CLOG*, the publication’s design, lead by Coates & Franklin who together form the office of PlayLab Inc., use the issue’s contents and context as a background for the overall design.

The thesis of this issue lies in Daniel Rojo’s “Prescribed Tropicalism and the Authenticity of the Self-Aware.” While expounding on the difficulty of designing such a culturally diverse and rapidly growing city, Rojo writes:

> How does one design in a place whose built identity is assigned by forces other than physical reality, while also drawing from a form and culture that already exist?

Despite the relatively small population within its 12 square mile border, the city’s airport and shipping ports create a gateway-like presence between the United States and Central and South America. From its incorporation in 1896 to the [recent smashing of a part of Ai Weiwei’s “Colored Vases](https://hyperallergic.com/artist-smashes-ai-weiwei-vase-to-protest-museums-snub-of-local-artists/)” at the Pérez Art Museum Miami, the city continues to create its own identity within a global context.

![Ewi4h-640](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2014/03/ewi4h-640.jpg)

The essays create a circuital cross section of the Miami’s timeline from a snow bird destination that created its own climate specific branch of Modernism, [Miami Modern](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miami%5FModern%5FArchitecture?ref=hyperallergic.com) (MiMo), to it’s current state of containing multiple cultural enclaves all battling to hold onto an autonomous identity in a city that is constantly projecting and overarching future as the next global city.

Within the essays, there is an urgency to equally preserve the aging relics of the city — Laura Raskin’s “Miami Marine Stadium” and Cathy Leff’s “Magic City: Past, Future, Present” — juxtaposed with the projection of Miami’s future, as an interview with Craig Robbins, David Martin, and Robert Wennet points out, as a place of capital ‘A’ architectural relevance battling with corporate architectural tropes (condominiums, museums, financial institution headquarters). This urgency may relate to the format: a majority of the pieces are short in length and have a relatively small breadth to tackle the massive dichotomy of the city’s vision. The lack of construction images creates a fissure in the thesis of those arguing for the forward movement of the city and it starts to objectify the discussion. Despite this, the editors present each piece as a series of intense investigations that show the whole is greater than the sum of its parts — every essay contributes to the discussion’s multi-faceted approach to place making.

![4HV0C-HOME](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2014/03/4hv0c-home.jpg)

The issue’s launch included three separate events; the first being a release party in Arquitectonica’s New York office followed by two panel discussions held at the Wolfsonian-FIU and the Miami Center for Architecture. This on the ground engagement with the subject matter has been a staple of *CLOG*’s approach to publishing, with other releases being held in contextually-relevant venues which furthers the discussion at hand. Good architecture does not happen in a vacuum and *CLOG* continues to create a space to challenge the ideas of we talk about the field en large.

CLOG: Miami *is available on the* [*CLOG website*](http://www.clog-online.com/shop/clog-miami/?ref=hyperallergic.com)*.*