Miami Modern (MiMo) architecture: how to identify it

what it is

Miami Modern, or MiMo, is the resort modernism built in Miami and Miami Beach after the Second World War. Hotels, motels and apartment blocks use flat roofs, smooth rounded corners, decorative breeze blocks (perforated concrete blocks) and large areas of glass. Morris Lapidus's hotels added curved plans, amoeba-shaped forms he called woggles, perforations he called cheeseholes, and slender vertical supports he called beanpoles. Other buildings use boomerang shapes and large sign enclosures built into the roofline.

Lapidus designed the Fontainebleau (1954) and the Eden Roc (1955), both on Collins Avenue in Miami Beach. Norman Giller designed the North Beach Bandshell (1961) in Miami Beach. In Miami, the Bacardi Buildings (1963) on Biscayne Boulevard carry large tile and glass mosaic murals. Mid-Century Modern buildings are usually small post-and-beam houses open to a garden. MiMo buildings are mostly hotels, motels and apartment blocks, with large curved plans, signs and applied ornament.

how to spot one

Streamlined curves Rounded building corners, smooth wall surfaces and horizontal bands or grooves running along the walls. They are the main features of Streamline Moderne buildings of the 1930s and 1940s. Cantilever A beam, floor or part of a building that projects beyond its support and is anchored at only one end. It lets balconies, terraces and upper floors extend outward without columns below. Flat roof A roof that is level or nearly level, often edged by a low wall called a parapet. It is standard on modernist buildings and on Pueblo adobe buildings of the American Southwest.

Also look for

Piloti Porte cochère Geometric ornament Ribbon window

history

Morris Lapidus (1902-2001), born in Odessa, designed the Fontainebleau Hotel on Collins Avenue in Miami Beach for the hotelier Ben Novack. It opened in 1954, and his Eden Roc followed in 1955. By the late 1940s the new postwar style had replaced Art Deco as the dominant style of new construction in Miami Beach. Norman Giller designed the Carillon Hotel in Miami Beach and the original Diplomat Hotel in Hollywood, Florida.

A court case in 1959 let the Fontainebleau build an expansion that shaded the neighboring Eden Roc. Lapidus's Lincoln Road pedestrian mall opened in 1960. The name MiMo is recent: Miami Beach resident Randall C. Robinson and interior designer Teri D'Amico are credited with popularizing it. Lapidus's Americana was demolished in 2007 and the Deauville Beach Resort in 2022. The Fontainebleau joined the National Register of Historic Places in 2008, and in January 2018 Miami's commission protected more than 250 buildings in the MiMo Biscayne Boulevard Historic District.

where to find it

Collins Avenue in Miami Beach (the Fontainebleau, the Eden Roc, the North Beach Bandshell) and Biscayne Boulevard in Miami (the Bacardi Buildings, the MiMo Historic District).

easy to confuse with

Stahl House, an example of Mid-Century Modern

Mid-Century Modern Post-and-beam houses with walls of glass, flat or butterfly roofs, and easy flow between indoors and out.

Googie Space-age roadside optimism: upswept roofs, boomerang angles, starburst signs, and neon.

Coca-Cola Building, an example of Streamline Moderne

Streamline Moderne Aerodynamic buildings: smooth white curves, corner and porthole windows, and horizontal speed lines.

Golden Mile Complex, an example of Tropical Modernism

Tropical Modernism Concrete buildings with deep overhangs, sun-shading screens, perforated breeze blocks, open corridors and flat roofs.