Urban planner and activist Donald Shockey's car was firebombed early Saturday morning, in front of his home just outside of the Design District. Mr. Shockey claims the blaze was in retaliation for some activism he's been doing lately to improve his neighborhood. Shockey posted the following on Facebook:
A temporary sign tacked above the front door of the former L'Epoca Department Store, an historic streamline moderne art deco building that originally held a Walgreens Drug Store, reads in big bold letters 'CITY OF MIAMI POLICE DEPARTMENT.'
FENDI Casa, the furniture and interiors branch of the iconic Fendi Italian fashion house, is presenting their 2017 campaign in a sun-filled modernist living room with a Miami backdrop of palm trees, pools, and skyscrapers. The press release gushes about how fabulous everything is. But does the furniture live up to its setting, or is it just a little too minimal?
Last night I had the honor of moderating a panel on social media and marketing for real estate brokers at the model unit and sales center for the Residences by Armani Casa in Sunny Isles Beach. It was a fun talk and I'll share the video over social media later, but meanwhile posted some of interior shots at the ultra luxury project on social media the other day, and many of my friends had mixed reactions to the design.
Nightlife legend Susanne Bartsch has a monthly super gay cabaret extravaganza at Brickell's El Tucà n called Susanne Bartsch Presents the Bareback Follies, and having already come in December and January, it's back for its February incarnation on the 28th. Last month's show was an absolute ball (I got on the stage twice!), but each month is a little different.
A group of architects and preservationists interested in preserving modernist architecture is fighting to save the Office in the Grove, an office building designed by seminal Miami architect Kenneth Treister in 1970, from demolition. Treister artfully tempered the building's precast concrete brutalist facade with creative architectural details of local flora and fauna, highlighting the surrounding Coconut Grove neighborhood.
The traveling exhibit 'Letters to Andy Warhol' will be in the Design District's Palm Court all this week. The exhibit is a collaboration between the Andy Warhol Museum and, for some reason, Cadillac.
The continuing saga of Icon Brickell's huge leaky pools and structurally questionable amenity deck, both of which are now having an emergency gut job to make just as huge repairs, is getting kind of morbid. Up until just recently, dozens and dozens of flourishing shade trees originally flanked the two pools and a very oversized hot tub, creating a park-sized forest about fifteen stories in the sky.
