Last August, Miami voters gave a developer permission to lease land on the city's sparkling downtown waterfront to build a 1,000-foot, hairpin-shaped tourist tower [...]. There was one key promise: No public money would be spent on the $430 million project.

Now, the city and county are being sued by Raquel Regalado [...] Why? Because developer Jeffrey Berkowitz is seeking $9 million from an existing county economic development fund to pay for infrastructure improvements [...]. — miamiherald.com

Our vision is to transform the underutilized land below Miami’s MetroRail, from the Miami River to Dadeland South Station, into an iconic linear park, world-class urban trail and living art destination. — The Underline

The Miami Center for Architecture and Design has two and a half years to find new digs. The landlord, Stambul, has declined to renew the lease on their current location, a grand two floor space in the Old U.S. Post Office which the Miami Chapter of the American Institute of Architects meticulously brought back to life. — miami.curbed.com

Proponents of the Underline bicycle route and linear park that would replace the threadbare M-Path under the Metrorail tracks from Dadeland to the Miami River have picked the co-designer of the wildly popular elevated High Line in Manhattan to draw up a master plan for their idea.
James Corner Field Operations was selected by a local jury from among 19 architectural teams that submitted entries in a competition. — Miami Herald

Florida is largely seen as the U.S. state that is most vulnerable to the effects of global warming. But even uttering the term global warming in official communications can get employees at the state’s Department of Environmental Protection in trouble...“We were told not to use the terms climate change, global warming, or sustainability,” said Christopher Byrd, who worked at the DEP from 2008 to 2013. — Slate

[Jeanne Gang] had just come back from a trip on which she’d been using binoculars with Swarovski lenses and had become intrigued by the optical aspect of the crystal company’s output. She had also become interested in James Balog’s Extreme Ice Survey, a long-term project that documents glacier shrinkage using time-lapse photography [...]

One challenge the studio faced was communicating the size of the glaciers photographed by Balog, and the extent of the devastation caused by global warming. — designmiami.com

In a young city predisposed to wrecking and rebuilding, impressive works of architecture can sometimes be discarded as effortlessly as last year’s runway accessories.

But Miami Marine Stadium, a bold structure on Biscayne Bay that sought to jolt the city into the future back in 1963, may prove a rare, stubborn exception. Abandoned and shuttered more than two decades ago, the Modernist stadium is in the midst of a turbulent, nearly seven-year effort by a nonprofit group [...]. — nytimes.com

Our friends at DawnTown continue to uphold innovative ideas in the Miami architecture scene with their Wynwood Gateway Park Competition. Just recently, the winners were announced for the international competition, which challenged participants to design a 14,000-sq.ft urban park and garden to be realized at the Wynwood Gateway Complex near Downtown Miami. The competition garnered over 238 submissions from interdisciplinary teams from over 20 countries. — bustler.net

The difficulties faced by Moca in North Miami in recent years highlight the changing cultural landscape of Miami. Moca was once one of a very few contemporary art institutions in the wider metropolis, but it has faced increasing competition for resources and support in recent years. [...] The suit cites Art Basel Miami Beach and Pamm as posing “new challenges to the relevancy and reputation of Moca’s permanent art collection.” — theartnewspaper.com

The trend of Italian fashion firms co-developing luxury condominiums continues, with Fendi on July 28 becoming the latest brand to announce its first foray into a branded real estate project — partnering with the Château Group to develop Fendi Château Residences, a new and exclusive 12-story waterfront condominium building located in Miami, Florida two blocks south of The Bal Harbour Shops. — blouinartinfo.com

Low-lying south Florida, at the front line of climate change in the US, will be swallowed as sea levels rise. Astonishingly, the population is growing, house prices are rising and building goes on. The problem is the city is run by climate change deniers. — theguardian.com