China Beach
Shanghai Is the Theme of This Year’s Art Deco Weekend. There Are Many Reasons Why — Not All of Them Have to Do With Old Buildings

“It’s sort of unreal. We’re a little historic preservation society.”

By Ryan Brown 

A VIP delegation of 21 dignitaries has made the long flight to Miami Beach from Shanghai, China. Their mission: To attend Miami Beach’s impending 30th Annual Art Deco Weekend.

Why are they coming? Why does the city of Shanghai care about an event that promotes the preservation of Art Deco architecture in Miami Beach?

“I think they realize they may have something to learn from us about historic preservation,” says Bill Farkas, executive director of the Miami Design Preservation League, which has hosted Art Deco Weekend annually since 1976.

The Shanghai connection all started with a trip to China, said Don Worth, a South Beach resident whose wife, Nina Weber Worth, sits on the board of directors of MDPL.

“An old college roommate of mine has been leading trips to China for like 20 years through the U.S.-China Friendship Association,” Don Worth says. “Me and my wife wanted to go.… From the list of destinations, we chose Shanghai.”

The U.S.-China Peoples Friendship Association reduces the cost of traveling to China through “cultural exchange” programs. This means the Worths had to come up with some kind of cultural exchange to share with the Chinese.

“We like Art Deco, so we thought we’d talk about that,” says Worth. “We were also required to bring a gift for the group we’d be meeting with in China. We brought an oven mitt with a map of Florida on it.”

So, in the summer of 2005, the Worths boarded a plane headed to China. After seeing the sights, they made their way to their scheduled cultural exchange meeting — but they didn’t know they were scheduled to make their presentation to Shanghai Xian Dai, one of the largest architecture firms in the world.

“We had no idea what we were going to say,” says Worth, “We wanted to float out of the room without anyone seeing us.”

At the reception at The Standard: Don Worth, Nina Weber Worth, Xing Tong He and Li Jia Ping.

But the Worths did have to speak, and managed to quickly put together an ad hoc speech about Miami and Shanghai’s Art Deco connection. It turns out that both Shanghai and Miami are home to a large number of Art Deco-style buildings, Worth says.

According to Worth, the firm, which included the chief architect of the company, Xing Tong He, loved it. “They loved the oven mitt too,” he adds.

“When Don and Nina came back, this was about a year and a half ago, they said, ‘We got a hell of an idea for Art Deco Weekend,’” says Bill Farkas, executive director of the Miami Design Preservation League.

Soon after, the theme for this year’s Art Deco Weekend was born: “East Meets West: Art Deco from Shanghai to Miami.”

Continued