PAUL BALEV ARCHITECT

MIAMI BEACH APARTMENT

This apartment is in the best area in South Beach, Florida, in the Art Deco District, with small hurricane windows (which could not be changed) but the dropped 8 foot ceiling was raised to 11 feet and some walls were demolished to make it possible to create this space.

The view was spectacular and the apartment is designed around this view and the modular windows. The bed is raised to the window sill and allows for infinite adjustments to experience this view. From any place in the apartment you see the ocean, including from the three work desks. This small, conventional apartment was transformed into an exuberant, multidimensional space. The room is no longer a static box, but a serial open-ended space. The walls are transparent, with mirrors eliminating visual barriers, except when our eyes are drawn to the paintings or other artwork. There is a layered view of sequential space, modular grids, frames and windows - some illusionary.

Illusion was always the language of architecture. In baroque architecture, illusion was done with plaster and paintings and most of all - with light. Today, materials such as glass, steel, plastics, fiber optics, etc., allow us to expand the language of illusion.

 

Space is reinvented with reflection and indirect daylight. Scale, proportion, rhythm and modulation is the language of this architecture. The two rooms are linked to each other and to the outside in an articulated sculptural space.

The bed is placed against the windows and one can hear the waves, see the pelicans fly by, experience the ocean, the palms and the sky.

The floor and the horizontal surfaces are travertine - the color of sand - and the ceiling is the color of the Florida sky, the same colors one can see through the window and so reinforce the connection to the outside. Horizontal mirrors above the windows reflect the glitter of the ocean waves and the pools 16 floors below. This exuberant multidimensional space adds up to an intense sensory experience.