The 1111 Lincoln
road parking garage located at the intersection between Alton road and Lincoln
road, serves as a successful connection between the pedestrian traffic on Lincoln
road and the vehicular traffic accessing Lincoln Road Mall. The 1111 is a
multipurpose building that seeks to fit into the Miami Beach urban fabric, by
serving as an entrance to Lincoln Road Mall and also by becoming an icon to
Miami Beach. This writing seeks to critique and analyze the connection between
the 1111 parking garage with the existing building next to it.
One of the
purposes of the 1111 parking garage was to serve as an addition to the existing
building. At the human scale, right along Lincoln road, a canopy above the
retail spaces continues across the new building to the existing building,
marrying the two together. Also, the top floor of the existing building is articulated
in the same manner as the concrete slabs of the parking garage, with the same slanted
ends. This way, the garage is wrapping the existing building, successfully merging
them together.
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| Last floor of adjacent building treated in the same manner as the parking garage concrete slabs |
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| Overhang continuing through the existing building, creating a unified experience for the pedestrian |
On another
note, while it was clever to accentuate the continuation of the canopy at the
first level, another way the garage was connected to the existing building was
through bridges and stairways on each level of the parking garage. Said
connections although they might be functional to the users, I think they are
architecturally unsuccessful and out of scale. The grandness of the parking
garage is overwhelming in contrast to those tiny stairways and bridges, creating
a sensation of improvisation or temporary pathways. Also, the feeling one gets
while standing over those bridges is a feeling of uncertainty and vertigo, and
when looking at the gap between the two buildings, one sees that there is
nothing else that relates one building to the other.
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| Bridges and Stairways connecting both buildings |
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| Gap between both buildings, notice small stairway above. |
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| Bridge to existing building |
As an
object, the parking Garage is a successful piece of architecture, being a
landmark to the urban fabric of Miami Beach, and also connecting to the
existing building at a larger scale, wrapping it on the first floor and last
floor with the same concrete slab treatment, but the connections at a human
scale, such as the bridges and stairways are somehow random and improvised. An
example of a better attempt to connect both buildings can be seen on the roof
garden which is part of the residential area of the parking garage, one can see
the wide stairway going to the top of the existing building, with a better
sense of scale in contrast to the parking garage.
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| Stairway to roof garden, better sense of scale. |
3 comments:
Incredibly thoughtful and clear. Great use of images as arguments and well articulated. Your analysis of the building was pretty insightful as it points out the potential formal cues that Herzog and De Meuron picked up on to design the building. In particular, I appreciated the specificity of your thesis for this assignment.
" Also, the feeling one gets while standing over those bridges is a feeling of uncertainty and vertigo, and when looking at the gap between the two buildings, one sees that there is nothing else that relates one building to the other."
Those feelings you're describing don't always have to be considered as random or as improvisational. Those kinds of psychological reactions can be thought of as powerful architectural byproducts that could be used in very thoughtful and meaningful ways. In the case of this building however, the uncertainty you described might have come from a deeper design intention, one that was in service of keeping the building as an Icon while still servicing the needs of eager tenants in the existing building who are willing to pay the monthly parking fees for its employees. In other words, uncertainty here can be another word for compromise.
Again, great analysis!
I appreciate the focus of your exploration, although I think a closer reading would bring out more subtle details....
1111 will never / can never / should never acquiesce to the tectonic articulations of the existing office building; they are just 2 different creatures. However, there are gestures embedded with HdM's garage that, I would argue, engage in a dialogue with the existing building.
From your first image, it becomes clear that the two share an extremely similar volumetric envelop ... yet 1111 feels grander. (What architectural gestures are are responsible for inciting this?)
From the vantage point of your third image, the irregular spacing of the slabs share a similar rhythm to the regular banding of the office building. Likewise, in your 4th image. And in your 5th image, notice how the spacing of the cable railings matches the spacing of the vertical articulations on the office facade...
As a final note, these two build seem like one continuous building from the perspective of a person walking along Lincoln Road.
I think the diminutive catwalks between the two buildings are purposeful and appropriate. Yes, they are the physical connections between the two, but there are more important (and cohesive) visual and experiential connections throughout.
Write more about the relationships to Lincoln and Alton – how does the building interpret the relationship between pedestrian and vehicular thoroughfares? Write more about the slabs, too – they’re clearly evocative of more than just the adjacent building. How might they relate to Lapidus’s design of Lincoln Road itself?
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