The Chameleon

Starting from a global approach, this work focuses on a reduced area of Miami and seeks to erase the gap between its urban condition and architectural complexity. It reflects the city paradox where the social reality is much more contrasted than its idyllic reputation. The aim is to represent a complex territory which balances between dream and reality.

The hotel culture and the edenic appeal of Miami, The Magic City, froze into the collective psyche the vision of a luxury tourist destination embodied by the iconic seaside resorts and motels. Its other name, The Northern Cuba, shows the social context of the eastern America first immigration hub. It finds its identity within an architecture represented by Latin references and standardise buildings such as the Work Force Housing, the only social housing typology of Miami. Allapattah Motor Housing reflects the paradox of a city where the social reality is much more contrasted than its idyllic reputation. The context of Florida emphasises this idea of hyper-reality, a notion developed by J. Baudrillard, that expresses the ambivalence in the American dailiness where the concept of reality is never clear. The cinematographic dimension of Miami makes common places and cliches work together. By liking these two universes, the project proposes a series of solved absurdities. It rethinks the industrial facade of social housing by toying with several layers of deepness, cuts and wide openings while keeping the repetitiveness of housing units. To contrast with the American residential prototype which only uses the urban grid as contextual approach, the project uses the Miami River to define its morphology. A central courtyard turns the circulation, commonly designed as residual spaces, into a gathering venue that links typologies to each other. The building is composed of several sequences which refer to both cliche and dailiness. The four typologies seek to combine the divers Miami’s paradoxes. Each of them stages a specific ingredient of the city. The urban situation of Allapattah District and its social housing condition but also the contrast between fashion’s temporality and architecture’s or its references in the cinema were the keys of this research. The main issue was to blend the postmodern irony from the Magic City together with the cynicism of the American standardised architecture. This project aims to represent a complex territory which constantly swings between dream and reality.