South Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center

South Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center

Arquitectonica as Architects

The South Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center juts out from the suburban sprawl like an exclamation point. From a distance the walls, canted outward and the roofs, pitched this way and that, let you know you’re in for something special, something by Arquitectonica.It relates to the low-scale sprawl that surrounds it like a country church relates to the Latin American village that surrounds it. It is much more than a design spectacle, it has been embraced by the community it was built to serve.


But what a wonderful spectacle it is. Starting with the Arts Center’s iconoclastic, child’s-drawing form and running through to its programming, there are stories to be told and lessons to be learned. It is in fact two buildings, two irresistible, trapezoidal jewel boxes, one big, one small, carefully placed on the unceremoniously-named Southwest 211th Street, between the vast parking lots of the Southland Mall and the Black Creek canal and it elevates its mundane surroundings by its bold presence.


The two buildings, a 966, tri-level theater and a 7,500 square foot activities building, face each other across a long paved plaza, which serves as both a setting for the enormous, 70 high foot glass façade of the Theater Building, and a connection to a lawnand the canal. While the Arts Center faces north, turning its back on the creek, per Arquitectonica partner Bernardo Fort-Brescia, that is purely out of necessity, as such an enormous glass façade could only face north. In spite of physics, Arquitectonica wanted to break the awful Florida custom of turnings its back on the State’s many drainage canals. So while the Center does face the street, it opens its arms to the Black Creek canal, in the form of a great lawn for outdoor events and a concrete esplanade for strolling along the canal. Unassuming as it might all seem, Arquitectonica challenge the order of urban planning by celebrating the canal.


In fact, classic late 20th century planning did dictate that there would be, at the intersection of US 1 and Florida’s Turnpike, a South Miami-Dade government center of sorts, adjacent to the commercial center of the mall and surrounded by miles and miles of single-family tract homes. To the north lay Richmond Heights, a suburban neighborhood like most others, although here, a high concentration of African Americans resided. As the 21st century started, South Miami-Dade had put the ravages of Hurricane Andrew in the past and its population had ballooned.


After 2000, planning began in earnest for Greater Miami’s grand, downtown performing art center. The Miami-Dade Department of Cultural Affairs was tasked with spreading the downtown wealth to satellite facilities throughout the county. Some 20 miles south of Downtown Miami, the finest of these would be the South Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center, serving the area’s diverse population.


Though one senses more than a trace a of regret in Fort-Brescia’s admission that this job did not come with a “downtown” budget, he’s quite convincing as to why performers and the public might prefer a smaller hall anyway. He feels, it “was the right move to keep the size reasonable” at 966 seats rather than a more customary 2600 seats. The smaller hall is within reach of a greater variety of artists, he points out. Its intimacy is “better for drama” and “you can see the people’s faces,” he notes.


The South Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center may not be a downtown-sized facility, but it’s big enough to make the audience feel that it’s part of the show. Arquitectonica partner Laurinda Spear arranged the parking lot, Activities Building and Theater Building so they would together create an arrival sequence like no other in the suburban landscape. Upon exiting the car, the visitor is greeted by a mural that spans the east façade of the Activities Building. The Activities Building itself serves to obscure the Theater Building from the parking lot and allows the visitor to feel the excitement that goes with an “evening at theshow” as he or she rounds the Activity Center and steps onto the broad plaza that separates the two. With the shimmering 70-foot glass curtain wall of the Theater Building and the full-height prefunction wall beyond, the visitor is an active participant in a physical as well as visual experience. Arquitectonica collaborated with Miami artist Robert Chambers in devising “Light Field” which illuminates the three-story tall inner lobby wall with changing light patterns created by programmed LED fixtures. Chambers also created “Orbital 1” and “Orbital 2,” two 10 and 12-ton marble discs in the east end of the prefunction lobby. Inspired by Kepler’s laws of planetary motion and the shape of prehistoric hand tools, the discs are in fact designed to serve as seating.


Fort-Brescia and Spear are equally proud of the connection the Cultural Arts Center has developed with the community it serves. The locals have proven to be voracious consumers of art and the facility is a popular location for graduations and school plays.

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