Arbitrary Pixel
Inside The Glass Cube
Bacardi Building complex, Miami Florida
Ignacio Carrera-Justiz 1974.
www.flickr.com/photos/wideopen-project/6107507138/
www.flickr.com/photos/wideopen-project/6107506358/
"There will never be a more perfect Miami monument than the original Bacardi headquarters on Biscayne Boulevard, a modernism-can-be-fun masterpiece designed by Cuban architect Enrique Gutierrez in 1963. Gutierrez had worked with Mies van der Rohe on the Bacardi headquarters in Mexico City. When Bacardi’s planned 1959 van der Rohe offices in Cuba fell apart with the onset of Fidel Castro’s leadership, the Gutierrez complex in Miami was the building that brought the best part of Cuba— joyful, colorful and elegant—to this city.
Like many other things in Miami, the Bacardi building, created in a still-nondescript stretch of Biscayne Boulevard, is also entirely improbable. It’s a flash of beauty in banal surroundings— a circumstance that only adds to its allure. It’s set on a raised plaza, and the tower floats over a recessed lobby like an eerie obelisk. As a kid growing up here in the 1970s, the Bacardi headquarters—along with the Marine Stadium on Key Biscayne, the Fontainebleau hotel and Vizcaya—served as one of the architectural landmarks that symbolized the tropical exoticism and romance of sweet home Miami.
The design is both beautiful and smart. Two exterior walls are adorned with fantastic blue and white renderings of a tropical paradise, handpainted by Brazilian artist Francisco Brennand. To the rear of the plaza is a smaller 1974 annex, designed by Ignacio Carrera-Justiz, with mosaic walls based on the work of German artist Johannes Dietz. Together, the two structures serve as the totemic emblem of Miami’s possibilities for intelligent life—our very own design Mecca.
The building’s architectural features call to mind the Mexico City headquarters, and may be Gutierrez’s best work. Relatively small, it was once used by high-level executives and was for years a grand Mad Men-south rumba, equipped with tasting bars for Bacardi products, sleek midcentury furniture, a dining room and a firstrate art collection with gems such as Antonio Gattorno’s 1938 mural Waiting for the Coffee. It reflects an era when liquor companies used the power of modernism to escape the darker associations of Prohibition. This was an impulse that then-Bacardi president Jose “Pepin” Bosch understood perfectly; Mies van der Rohe had also designed the 1958 Seagram Building in New York with Philip Johnson, still one of the most exquisite corporate offices in Manhattan." By Tom Austin | August 31, 2011
Inside The Glass Cube
Bacardi Building complex, Miami Florida
Ignacio Carrera-Justiz 1974.
www.flickr.com/photos/wideopen-project/6107507138/
www.flickr.com/photos/wideopen-project/6107506358/
"There will never be a more perfect Miami monument than the original Bacardi headquarters on Biscayne Boulevard, a modernism-can-be-fun masterpiece designed by Cuban architect Enrique Gutierrez in 1963. Gutierrez had worked with Mies van der Rohe on the Bacardi headquarters in Mexico City. When Bacardi’s planned 1959 van der Rohe offices in Cuba fell apart with the onset of Fidel Castro’s leadership, the Gutierrez complex in Miami was the building that brought the best part of Cuba— joyful, colorful and elegant—to this city.
Like many other things in Miami, the Bacardi building, created in a still-nondescript stretch of Biscayne Boulevard, is also entirely improbable. It’s a flash of beauty in banal surroundings— a circumstance that only adds to its allure. It’s set on a raised plaza, and the tower floats over a recessed lobby like an eerie obelisk. As a kid growing up here in the 1970s, the Bacardi headquarters—along with the Marine Stadium on Key Biscayne, the Fontainebleau hotel and Vizcaya—served as one of the architectural landmarks that symbolized the tropical exoticism and romance of sweet home Miami.
The design is both beautiful and smart. Two exterior walls are adorned with fantastic blue and white renderings of a tropical paradise, handpainted by Brazilian artist Francisco Brennand. To the rear of the plaza is a smaller 1974 annex, designed by Ignacio Carrera-Justiz, with mosaic walls based on the work of German artist Johannes Dietz. Together, the two structures serve as the totemic emblem of Miami’s possibilities for intelligent life—our very own design Mecca.
The building’s architectural features call to mind the Mexico City headquarters, and may be Gutierrez’s best work. Relatively small, it was once used by high-level executives and was for years a grand Mad Men-south rumba, equipped with tasting bars for Bacardi products, sleek midcentury furniture, a dining room and a firstrate art collection with gems such as Antonio Gattorno’s 1938 mural Waiting for the Coffee. It reflects an era when liquor companies used the power of modernism to escape the darker associations of Prohibition. This was an impulse that then-Bacardi president Jose “Pepin” Bosch understood perfectly; Mies van der Rohe had also designed the 1958 Seagram Building in New York with Philip Johnson, still one of the most exquisite corporate offices in Manhattan." By Tom Austin | August 31, 2011