Détournement of Allure

Miami Beach is among the ultimate tourist destinations in the US, remembered and fantasized for its seashores, bars, and tropical flair — all tokens of a vibrant social life that consumerist development has been gnawing away. Profit drives developers to erect privatized luxury hotels and condos, chopping the beachfront into fenced bubbles increasingly disengaged from the city.

The pertinent challenge is not simply to design good architecture with high-quality urban space, but to ensure such spaces are respected and maintained as intended. The project therefore designs a game in which publicness is anchored at the core of the development’s allure — an oceanfront where the public realm is the asset that private interests cannot afford to lose. Published as “Détournement of Allure” in Yale Constructs, Fall 2017.