Design: Jazzing Up The Functional

A brash young Miami firm offers more than modernity

Modern architecture—the uncluttered, functional kind—has come to be a synonym for boredom in many quarters. But not in Miami, where a brash young firm called Arquitectonica is creating unadorned, mechanical-looking buildings that startle the eye with their loud primary colors and jazzy architectural stunts. Consider, for example, the firm's Atlantis condominium, an apartment tower with a bright blue grid on one side. Twelve stories up, a huge hole has been cut into the slab. The open-air décor of this "sky court" features a swaying palm tree, a curved yellow wall, a red spiral staircase and a blue whirlpool.

Such exuberance is Arquitectonica's way of trying to make up for modern architecture's shortcomings in social purpose and aesthetic satisfaction. These faults have sent other architects to the attic for historic forms and ornaments. Arquitectonica is building on the spirit of daring and experiment that characterized the avant-garde earlier in this century. "We are not trying to create a new style," says Laurinda Spear, 33, one of the founding partners. "We are just trying to make modern architecture more lively and up to date."

Arquitectonica's other principals are Spear's husband Bernardo Fort-Brescia, 32, and Hervin A.R. Romney, 43. The firm's Spanish name is apt, and not only because the buildings show a frisky Latin bravado. Fort-Brescia was born in Peru, and Romney is from Cuba. All three partners, however, are the products of Ivy League schools. Founded only seven years ago, Arquitectonica already has a staff of 29 in its Miami headquarters and has opened offices in Houston and New York City.

One of the firm's best-known buildings is the controversial Palace in Miami. It consists of a plain 41-story slab with a three-story glass-cube penthouse on top. Rammed right through the side of the slab is what seems like another, smaller building of glass and red stucco. For added drama (and terrace patios), the red interloper steps down like giant stairs.

Currently on the firm's drawing boards or under construction are a courthouse for Bade County, in suburban Miami; a $150 million office-hotel-retail center in downtown Miami; a bank in Peru; a shopping center near Dallas; high-rise buildings for San Antonio and Manhattan; and several town-house clusters in Houston. One completed ten-unit group of the Houston town houses looks, characteristically, like something put together by a gifted child with an oversize Lego toy set: white triangular roofs, extruding yellow strips and even more extruding blue boxes. The houses are designed to provide young urban professional tenants with a sense of efficiency and space on minimal, close-to-downtown lots, and at a reasonable cost. The typical unit contains a garage, a foyer and a ½-story living room on the first level, a dining balcony and kitchen on the second, and on the third a den, master bedroom and "Hollywood" bathroom—a tripartite affair in which two powder rooms adjoin a common bath. Price of the only unsold unit: $157,500.