Customer Reviews

MiMo: Miami Modern Revealed

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

America's mid-century modern architecture spans three decades of the post World War II period, from the Atomic Age through the Space Age. An architecture that mainly revolved around the seriousness of the International Style, its theories peaked in 1958 with the New York City Seagram Building, a glass-covered, steel skeleton-framed skyscraper. Mies van der Rohe's "less is more" principle became the guiding light for a large majority of American architects in the mid-twentieth century.

In response to the perceived dogma and humorlessness of the International Style, a Popular Modernism began to take hold in Southern Florida. An "Architecture of Joy" was born, which of course was decried as frivolous and crass by the architectural establishment. In Miami Beach, resort architecture was already well underway, and its vacation state of mind easily stepped into this style. It was uniquely American, futuristic, and fun, full of audacious angles and lines, pastel colors, synthetic materials, cheese-hole and accordion folded walls, stainless steel, boomerangs and stairways to nowhere.

Popular Modernism is known by various names, including Populuxe (popular and deluxe) and Googie. In Miami and Miami Beach, it is called "MiMo," an abbreviation of Miami Modern.

This is a wonderful book that covers its subject well. Its not so large that it becomes uncomfortable to read while sitting in an easy chair but still large enough to deserve it's place on the living room table. The layout is exceptional and reflects the playfulness of the subject without becoming a confusing mishmash. The font is a bit uncommon but lends itself to the spirit of the endeavor. The text by Eric Nash and Randall Robinson is crisp and informative. Oh, and the photos are a great!

Once in a while an architecture book comes along to show us how it's done and this book is one.

Excellent survey of MiMo architecture, past and present. Valuable resource for those with an interest and user-friendly enough for the coffee table.

Love this book, So much history, So beautiful buildings this was before the Ugly buildings were and are being made, the hideous mega skyscrapers and towers that now dot downtown miami that you cannot even see the sun. This was development without the crazy ideas.

I wish my dad were still alive he would be thrilled by this book. Like all rich Cuban kids my grandfather brought the family to Miami Beach a few times a year for shopping and business and loved the architecture of Miami of this time. ( They were at the Carillon Hotel on Miami Beach when the Batista regime collapsed New Years Eve (1958 -59 ) There has been such hoopla to preserve Miami Beach's Art Deco building while many of the mid century modern masterpieces are being torn down or in the case of the Carillon Hotel mutilated beyond recognition. This book is a must of any lover of Miami and it's history.

As an architecture student in Miami, I absolutely love this book. It's extremely useful to help understand some of the SoBe culture and architectural history. A great reference!

There's a school of thought, so to speak, about Miami that holds that no matter what it does it will be tacky in the end. Having grown up there, I sort of agree. This charming book, with smart illustrations, doesn't at all make one reconsider such a view, rather puts it in the mountains out of molehills category. Its pointless to think of the architectural spasms pictured therein as having artistic merit or not. I testify that I actually purchased this volume at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, where it was displayed showing the South Pacific Motel on page eighty-eight. Stopped dead in my tracks in by the sight of this book in the NGA bookstore in what is arguably not only Washington DC's greatest museum but perhaps the world's. Having grown up in the Morningside Neighborhood of Miami which is right off Biscayne Boulevard, I know a thing or two about not only the South Pacific Motel and but also the others. It's to this book's credit that it manages not to convey the character of these places, which from the priveleged world of Mornignside houses, so close yet so far away, always seemed nothing but completely sleazy. An Artforum online review of Art Basel referred
quite naively and stupidly to the idea of Miami in scare quotes.This makes no sense to anyone who knows Miami
because Miami has exquisitely beautiful houses, full of the best taste, which rely on the same stylistic tropes
as those buildings of the worst taste many of which are featured and cleverly described in the text. Miami in scare quotes --"Miami" -- would seem to fit this book if anything at all. The too-clever will see in all this an easy point about the erasure of standards, the triumph of kitsch and so on. Miami will always have poles between the classy places like the Rubell Collection and CasaLin , and the pseudo-classy like the the new concert hall they put up on Biscayne, a place that deserves scare quotes if there ever was one, This book makes clear that some of the architectural elements were borrowed from Las Vegas. Doesn't that lend credence
to the idea that these distinctions are fatuous when applied to such places. Washington DC is known for its John Russell Pope buildings, Miami for its Morris Lapidus creations. Doesn't that say it all? Lapidus' famous stairway to nowhere at the Fountainbleu is perhaps the best representation of all this. You can make distinctions, ascend or descend on the stairway of taste, but this stairway does not get you any higher than you've been before.

Less weighty than I had hoped, and because of its chatty style much more difficult to read than I had hoped (don't people employ editors any more?) But the ideas are interesting and engagingly presented.

This could have been a really good book.

Save your money! This is one of the worst books ever written! Trust me, this is one horrid book! Amazon doesn't normally allow you to get a refund simply because you don't like the way a book was written but I threatened never to buy another product from them if they didn't. Fortunately they capitulated. This book is an exercise in gross self-indulgence and unprofessionalism. It's not only that it's illegible, but it's loaded with postage stamp sized pictures (literally) that are tinted red, blue, green, yellow....etc. It's as if a child pasted a disparate bunch of pictures in a notebook and made an attempt at writing prose. Money is too tight to waste on this. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED!