Mall Chats
Project Gave Miami Architects Freedom to Dream; Too Bad They Stayed Grounded in Reality

Why make “make-believe” architecture so dependent on profitability?

 
Allan T. Shulman was one of six architects asked to “mall over” the idea of reinventing the Biscayne Plaza Shopping Center.

By AlfredoTriff

A couple of Saturdays ago, Miami Art Museum hosted a panel titled “Reimagining the City,” which explored a possible future for the Biscayne Plaza Shopping Center, at 79th Street and Biscayne Boulevard. The event featured six distinguished Miami architects: Allan T. Shulman, Chad Oppenheim, Touzet Studio’s Carlos Prío-Touzet and Jacqueline Gonzalez Touzet, Max Strang and Oscar Glottman. Home Miami magazine co-sponsored the panel and presented each of the architect’s plans in its July issue.

After a brief introduction by MAM Director Terence Riley, Randall Robinson, coauthor of MiMo: Miami Modern Revealed, framed the ensuing discussion as “make believe.” The first presenter was Oscar Glottman, who (as the projectionist scrambled his slides) aimlessly rambled on, mixing terms like “parking lot,” “immigrant,” “attorney,” “shopper” and “the Everglades.” On paper, except his suggestion to expand Little River into a sort of pleasure harbor, Glottman’s optimistic project looked unexciting, a modern development topped with a tower. His suggestion that we should “focus our dreams” needs a second — and closer — reading of the social criticism of Jean Baudrillard, Umberto Eco and Slavoj Žižek.

Shulman’s written account begins by challenging Victor Gruen’s idea of the mall (who doesn’t nowadays?) by introducing higher density, transforming the parking lot into a park, adding functionality along the river, so that “the existing mall can be restructured and re-layered in program and infrastructure.”

Not bad in principle. But for a project that enforced no restrictions, other than the architect’s imagination, Shulman’s late-Modern plan with à la Brickell residential towers, a less-than-standard office building and peppered decorative landscaping (with little walking shade), seemed out of Team 10 Primer: neat, manicured, aesthetically balanced and myopically functional.

For his presentation, Oppenheim used attractive images of Venice, Florence, Rome and New York’s Central Park. His goal was “a design that maximizes saleable area and subsequent profitability while enhancing the human condition.” Why make “make-believe” architecture so dependent on profitability? The architect limited his project’s open-endedness with a market function that changes in real time.

His green side aside — which is more cosmetic here — Oppenheim’s elegant grid-like design of interlocking slabs ignores that “layers of architectural achievement re-inhabited by functions,” such as Venice’s canals and Florence’s Ponte Vecchio, are collages of social selection. That is to say, the character of these enclaves has been established through centuries and not as a set of predetermined architectural conventions.

Oppenheim’s design generates long corridors of frontage, which undermine (in terms of wind and monotony) the very activity the architect is trying to foster. His underground parking for the mall is better (though much more expensive) than Shulman’s plan of building the parking on top of the mall.

Although Strang’s plan attracted a lot of attention (and audience applause) for its all-green roofs and ecological emphasis, there’s a catch. Strang focused too much on his elegant mid-size, self-sufficient structure (with solar panels, roof’s rainwater collector to supply water, and cross-ventilation with expansive views), but failed to justify how this sole element interacted with its surroundings. I found his double-loaded tree-lined streets the best pedestrian solution. (proper shade can reduce outside’s temperature by six degrees in the summer).

The evening closed with a persuasive presentation by Touzet Studio. The Touzets’ three Rs for “restore,” “recycle” and “reinvent” echoed Sim Van der Ryn’s idea of ecological design in the sense of a communitarian matrix of spaces that become as important as the nodes they connect. Touzet Studio’s refurbished mall (clad with smart skins that incorporate solar collection and green shading) includes a charter school. As in Oppenheim’s project, the mall’s parking is underground. In addition, the Touzets provide for modular affordable housing — with solar panels — that could become a case study in sustainability. Their presentation was the most comprehensive.

Reimagining Miami was a very productive first exchange. We learned that reinvention and renovation are not mutually exclusive: Parking lots could become parks. New constructions should incorporate their own sustainability (as solar, water and green technologies). As architects and urban planners provide more walking shade, our buildings can use more greenery — as terraces or on top of the edifice.

Future malls can be used as pedestals for more diverse constructions, and provide a wide range of activities for different times of the day. More importantly, all the architects agreed that “green” architecture is not divorced from the needs of the market.

Comments? E-mail letters@miamisunpost.com.