Leong Leong's West façade of the City View Garage

Craig Robins is the canny developer behind Miami's Design District; Caroline Roux charts its history and forecasts an exciting future

There is surely only one underground car park in the world entered from street level via a Fly’s Eye Dome – one of the several domes developed by Richard Buckminster Fuller from the 1940s onwards as sustainable shelters. And it’s in Miami.

This optimistic structure, a webbed sphere with bulging transparent panes – like a vast golf ball just waiting for a strident putt – sits in the Palm Court, the latest part of the city’s Design District to open to the public. It’s in good company, bathed in the watery blue light created by a dramatic blue glass retail arcade, completed this December and designed by the Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto – his first building in the US. To the other side rises a restrained new event space by hip New York firm Aranda Lasch, the overhang of its cantilevered concrete extensions throwing shade and decorated with geometric relief patterns. A Bulgari store opened at the end November on the corner, with a façade of silver and gold plate, and soon Hublot and Jaeger le-Coutre will be among the other jewellers and watchmakers ready for business around the plaza......Continue Reading

> via The Telegraph/luxury