A once gritty neighborhood, The Miami Design District which stretches from 38th to 42nd Streets in the heart Miami, is now a glamorous international luxury shopping destination. Luxury retailers, restaurants and art galleries have flocked here as this is no ordinary retail shopping destination.Photo credit: Ciro Coelho
If you’re headed to Miami this winter, be sure to check out the Miami Design District, which is not to be missed. A once gritty neighborhood, The Miami Design District which stretches from 38th to 42nd Streets in the heart Miami, is now a glamorous international luxury shopping destination. Luxury retailers, restaurants and art galleries have flocked here as this is no ordinary retail shopping destination.
Indeed, the Miami Design District is the brainchild of DACRA, a developer headed by art collector Craig Robins and L Catterton Real Estate, a subsidiary of LVMH (parent company of Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior). DACRA worked with architects from SB Architects, a global architecture firm with offices in Miami, San Francisco, and Shenzhen, China, to create a master plan that not only transformed and changed the landscape of this urban neighborhood, but one that is being hailed as the future of the retail landscape across the country.
While SB Architects, one of the country’s leading hospitality and mixed-use design firms, designed the skeleton of the structure and collaborated with six outside architects who designed the façade of each retail space per the specifications of each tenant.Photo credit: Ciro Coelho
Designed by the Country’s Leading Hospitality and Mixed-Use Design Firm
While SB Architects, one of the country’s leading hospitality and mixed-use design firms, designed the skeleton of the structure and collaborated with six outside architects who designed the façade of each retail space per the specifications of each tenant—each with a green roof that not only provides thermal cooling but a stunning rooftop landscape design. As a result, each retailer designs not only their store’s interior to reflect their own identity, but also the exterior of their space. Unlike other shopping districts where each retailer occupies a cookie-cutter space, the result here is a development that appears to be a sophisticated neighborhood consisting of individual buildings that might be found on the Avenue Montaigne in Paris or New York’s Fifth Avenue.
“The entire development was built at the same time, but you would never know that as it feels like this is the way it has evolved over a number of years,” says architect David Ser, a vice president at SB Architects who worked on the project.
[“source=forbes]
