Following over two years of planning and construction, the Miami Design District has welcomed the Museum Garage to its city fabric. Terence Riley, of K/R Architect, led the concept of the ambitious project, which drew from Exquisite Corpse, a surrealist parlor game that entails the collaging of images by different authors independent of each other’s designs. In the spirit of the game, five architecture and design firms designed an individual and radically different facade as disparate and unconnected pieces, creating a multifaceted tapestry for the building skin.
The Museum Garage is located in the Miami Design District, a neighborhood dedicatedto innovative art, design and architecture. Featuring the work of five designers, the seven-story mixed-use structure will feature ground-floor retail spaces and capacity for 800 vehicles.

For the project, In 2015, Design District developer Craig Robins, commissioned architect and curator Terence Riley to develop the concept for Museum Garage. WORKac, J. Mayer. H, Clavel Arquitectos, Nicolas Buffe were selected to create the garage’s facades, along with Riley’s own architectural firm K/R (Keenen/Riley).

Exquisite Corpse
 
Bringing together these designers from around the world, Riley drew inspiration from the surrealist parlor game, Exquisite Corpse. Cadavre Exquis, as the game is known in French, involved a collection of images assembled by various artists with no regard or knowledge of what the other artists have drawn, producing one image whose components don’t necessarily match but flow together as one playful composition. Under Riley’s direction, each participating architect was eventually assigned an area and depth to build out and given free reign to create fully individual designs. The result is a unique modern, architectural version of the Exquisite Corpse.

Ant Farm by WORKac

At the corner of NE 1st Avenue and NE 41st Street in the Design District, the work of the New York firm WORKac meets that of Berlin-based J.MAYER.H. WORKac’s façade - titled Ant Farm – faces 1st Avenue and celebrates social interaction, sustainability, art, music, and the landscape. In an ant colony-inspired display of human activity, miniaturized public spaces - a garden, a lending library, art space, and playground - and their connecting circulation spaces appear and disappear behind a perforated metal screen that provides visual contrast, shade, and protection.

Hugs and Kisses by J.MAYER.H.
 
J.MAYER.H’S façade – titled XOX (Hugs and Kisses) – appears as gigantic interlocking puzzle pieces that nestle at the cornerwith the forms of Workac’s façade. XOX then extends westward from the corner along 41st Street. XOX’s enigmatic forms, emblazoned with striping and bright colors, recall the aerodynamic forms of automotive design and appear to float above the sidewalk below. Smaller volumes, covered in metal screens project outward and are activated with embedded light at night.

Serious Play by Nicolas Buffe
 
The next façade along 41st Street serves as the entrance and exit of the garage. It is the work of Nicolas Buffe - a Frenchborn artist living in Japan - and is constructed with a dark perforated metal backdrop. The façade features a variety of diverse 2D and 3D elements crafted from laser- cut metals and fiber resin plastic. At street level, the façade’s features four 23-foot tall, full 3D caryatids standing astride the garage’s arched entrance and exits. Like the caryatids below, the composition above reflects Buffe’s childhood passion for video games and Japanese animation. The result is the unexpected juxtaposition of anime, tokusatsu, and manga with Buffe’s other passion – Rococo and Baroque architecture.

Urban Jam by Clavel Arquitectos
 
In the space between Nicolas Buffe’sfacade and that of K/R, Spanish firm Clavel Arquitectos’s Urban Jam draws from the rebirth of urban life in the Miami Design District - where old structures and discarded spaces have been revived by architectural and urban designs. Urban Jam suggestsa similar “repurposing” of very familiar elements, using 45 gravity-defying car bodies rendered in metallic giold and silver. In effect, the styles of years past gain a second life as lux sculptural objects, caught in a surreal vertical traffic jam.

Barricades by K/R
 
Furthest west on 41st Street, just opposite the Institute of Contemporary Art, is Barricades, designed by New York- and Miami-based K/R. The design is inspired by Miami’s automotive landscape; particularly it’s ubiquitous orange- and white-striped traffic barriers. In this case, the faux-barriers are turned right side up and form a brightly colored screen. The façade has fifteen “windows” framed in mirror stainless steel, through which concrete planters pop out above the sidewalk.

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J Mayer H. Team
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Jürgen Mayer H.; Wilko Hoffmann; Marcus Blum; Fabrizio Silvano; Ojive De Lungeta

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Clavel Arquitectos. Team
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Manuel Clavel Rojo, Luis Clavel Sainz
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K/R Team
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Terence Riley; Gustavo Mur; Ethan Royal; Kevin McAlarnen
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Project leader (Clavel Arquitectos)
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Rafael de Giles González
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Collaborators (Clavel Arquitectos)
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Ricardo Carcelén González Ramón Gómez Ruiz Adrián Riquelme Martínez Mariano Tomás Fuster Diego Victoria García David Hernández Conesa
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Collaborators Colaboradores
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Facade lighting design.- Speirs + Major, TK Project Manager. Facade design and engineering.- mTim Haahs, Project Manager Javier Fernandez. Facade metal components / engineered, fabricated and installed by.- Zahner of Kansas City, MO., TK. Project Manager. Facade fibre resin components (Buffe’s and Clavel’s facades). Entech Innovative of Rockledge, FL. TK Project Manager. Cast-concrete structure.- KVC Constructors of Miami, FL. TK Project Manager.

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Dates
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2018
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Location
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At the corner of NE 1st Avenue and NE 41st Street in Miami Design District, Miami, FL, United States
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Client
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Dacra and LVMH
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WORKac is a New York–based architecture and urban design practice founded in 2003 by Amale Andraos and Dan Wood. The practice operates at the intersection of the urban, the rural, and the natural, advancing architecture as a tool to address environmental and social challenges through inventive and collaborative forms of design. Their work spans public, cultural, civic, and educational projects across the United States and internationally, with a strong emphasis on integrating architecture, landscape, ecology, and community-centred design. WORKac has received international recognition for projects including the Edible Schoolyards in New York, the Miami Museum Garage, the Rhode Island School of Design Student Success Centre, and a series of innovative public libraries in Queens, Brooklyn, and Boulder. The office was recognised as the AIA New York State Firm of the Year.

Dan Wood (Rhode Island, USA), FAIA, LEED AP, co-leads WORKac’s international projects, ranging from urban master plans to institutional and cultural buildings throughout North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. He has taught widely and held the 2013–14 Louis I. Kahn Chair at the Yale School of Architecture. His academic appointments have included Princeton University School of Architecture, Cooper Union, Columbia GSAPP, Ohio State University’s Knowlton School of Architecture, and the University of California, Berkeley, where he served as the Friedman Distinguished Chair. Before founding WORKac, Wood worked in Paris and the Netherlands, experiences that continue to inform his global and interdisciplinary approach to architecture and urbanism. He is a licensed architect in the State of New York and a LEED Accredited Professional.

Amale Andraos (Beirut, Lebanon, 1973) is an architect, educator, and writer. She served as Dean of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation from 2014 to 2021 and is currently Dean Emerita and Professor at Columbia GSAPP, where she also advised the university’s Climate School initiatives. Andraos has taught at Princeton University, Harvard Graduate School of Design, the University of Pennsylvania, and the American University of Beirut. Her research and publications explore architecture’s relationship to ecology, representation, and contemporary urbanism, particularly in relation to the Arab city. Her books include Buildings for People and Plants, The Arab City: Architecture and Representation, We’ll Get There When We Cross That Bridge, and Above the Pavement, the Farm!. She serves on several cultural and architectural advisory boards and has lectured internationally on architecture, climate, and the future of cities.

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Jürgen Mayer H. Founded in 1996 in Berlin, Germany, J. MAYER H Architects’ studio, focuses on works at the intersection of architecture, communication and new technology. From urban planning schemes and buildings to installation work and objects with new materials, the relationship between the human body, technology and nature form the background for a new production of space.

Jürgen Mayer H. is the founder and principal of this crossdisciplinairy studio. He studied at Stuttgart University, The Cooper Union and Princeton Universtiy. His work has been published and exhibited worldwide and is part of numerous collections including MoMA New York and SF MoMA. National and international awards include the Mies-van-der-Rohe-Award-Emerging-Architect-Special-Mention-2003 ,Winner Holcim Award Bronze 2005 and Winner Audi Urban Future Award 2010. Jürgen Mayer H. has taught at Princeton University, University of the Arts Berlin, Harvard University, Kunsthochschule Berlin, the Architectural Association in London, the Columbia University, New York and at the University of Toronto, Canada.

Photograph.- Jens Passoth

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Clavel Arquitectos is an international studio based in Murcia, Spain. Formed by the architects Manuel Clavel Rojo and Luis Clavel Sainz. They have offices in Spain and Miami and carry out projects from China to the United States.

Its architecture stimulates the imagination and is linked to successful projects throughout the planet. They select their projects for the potential they have to create a better city and happier citizens.

It has more than 80 awards at the international level, among the most important and recent awards it has received the Miami Building of the Year award, the Architecture Award 2019, in the category of Airport and Transportation Centers and the "Continental Title 2019" ( Africa and Western Asia) of the prestigious Prix Versailles in association with UNESCO and the International Union of Architects UIA, recognized as the Olympic Games of Architecture and Design.
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Published on: July 8, 2018
Cite:
metalocus, ANTONIO G DE JUAN
""Exquisite Corpse." Miami Museum Garage by WORKac, Nicolas Buffe, Clavel Arquitectos, K/R and J. MAYER. H. " METALOCUS. Accessed
<https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/exquisite-corpse-miami-museum-garage-workac-nicolas-buffe-clavel-arquitectos-kr-and-j-mayer-h> ISSN 1139-6415
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