I'm back from another week working at Art Basel Miami Beach. It's the tenth fair and the years have gradually bestowed a cultural and architectural legacy on the city. At one end of the pedestrianised shopping street Lincoln Road is Herzog & de Meuron's carpark at number 1111 (right). I drew it last year, and didn't think it was finished. I drew it again last week, and still wasn't sure if it was. (It is.) Apart from the shops and the distinctive, irregular carpark, there is, apparently, a residential element, a floor for installations and a restaurant. But is there a way in?Just off the other end of Lincoln Road, towards the beach, is Frank Gehry's New World Center for the New World Symphony Orchestra (below). Again, I haven't been in (Art Basel Miami Beach's video programme was screened on the hall's exterior during the warm evenings during fair) but it's unmistakeably finished.
Over its entrance and on its roof there are rolling forms that recall Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, but otherwise its exterior has clinical straight lines. The paved footpaths across the palm tree-lined park before it are straight too - in time, the public will carve more direct and natural lines across its lawns.