Arquitectonica ─ 40 Years

A major new evaluation of the trailblazing Miami-based architecture firm upon the advent of its fortieth anniversary. Arquitectonica is the design firm that put Miami on the map for the cool, hip, very now architecture that was first celebrated on TV in Miami Vice. Since their founding four decades ago, the firm has grown exponentially in stature, and its energies have only increased.

Arquitectonica is a major presence on the world architectural stage, with offices in New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Manila, Dubai, Lima, and São Paulo. Founded in 1977, the firm received critical and popular attention and acclaim almost from its inception, thanks to a bold modernism that was immediately identified with a renaissance in Miami’s urban landscape. Principals Bernardo Fort-Brescia and Laurinda Spear continue to this day exploring and pushing the limits of materials and design with their innovative use of geometry, pattern, and color.

The first book on this major international architectural design firm since Rizzoli’s own Arquitectonica (2004), this volume is a retrospective of the firm’s forty-year history, considering its earliest projects—the archetypal and hugely influential Pink House and Babylon Apartments—to Regalia Condominium tower, its twenty-first-century masterwork of undulant glass and steel.

Alastair Gordon is contributing editor for architecture and design at WSJ Magazine.