Miami Beach Design Guide Courtesy of Miami Design Preservation League

 Mediterranean Revival 

Mediterranean Revival buildings evoke an Old World image, featuring decorative columns, arched windows, clay barrel tile roofs, rough stucco walls, wrought iron and spindle gates guarding picturesque courtyards. These buildings are a whimsical interpretation of the old world, combining elements from differing Mediterranean styles resulting in a “fantasy” architecture adopted by early 1920s Miami Beach developers, as well as elsewhere in Florida and California. The Spanish Village along Española Way is an excellent area to study the style.

What to look for: Bell towers, archways, awnings, porches, balconies, carved stonework, rough stucco walls, clay tiles roofs, wrought iron fixtures.

 Art Deco 

In the United States, Art Deco was a product of new ideas and movements and found its inspirations in many distinct early 20th Century European design styles such as Cubism, French Art Deco, German Bauhaus and Expressionism, Dutch de Stijl and Amsterdam School, Vienna Secession and others. The term Art Deco came into common usage in the 1980s as public interest in the style was renewed and is generally used to cover several distinct periods. Art Deco became known as the Skyscraper Style for the buildings that sprang up in every big city in the mid to late 1920s. This was classical Art Deco, as first popularized at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes held in Paris in 1925, featuring expensive materials, angular yet voluptuous with elaborate motifs of fountains, nudes and flora.

Miami Beach’s building boom came during the second phase of Art Deco known as Streamline Moderne, which began with the stock market crash and ended in most cases with the outbreak of World War II. It was less decorative—a more sober reflection of the Great Depression. It relied more on machine-inspired forms, and American ideas in industrial design. It was buttressed by the belief that times would get better and was infused with the optimistic futurism extolled at America’s World’s Fairs of the 1930s. Stripped Classic or Depression Moderne was a sub-style often used for governmental buildings, the U.S. Post Office being the best example in Miami Beach. Miami Beach architects used local imagery to create what we now call, Tropical Deco. These buildings feature relief ornamentation featuring whimsical flora, fauna and ocean-liner motifs to reinforce the image of Miami Beach as a seaside resort.

What to look for: Symmetry, ziggurat (stepped) rooflines, glass block, decorative sculptural panels, eyebrows, round porthole windows, terrazzo floors, curved edges and corners, elements in groups of three, neon lighting (used in both exteriors as well as interior spaces).

 MiMo 

The Post World War II or MiMo Style of design became popular the 1950s when architects were heavily influenced by the International Style taught in most architecture schools. Architects in Miami Beach carried on the whimsical tropical tradition using new materials and forms. Eyebrows gave way to metal louvers and sunshades, tiled mosaic walls became a popular feature as did open balconies and catwalks. A Miami Beach variant, the Garden Style, features apartments that are accessed through open-air walkways built around a central garden.

What to look for: Asymmetry and rakish angles; cheese hole cutouts; kidney andamoeba shapes; futuristic jet and space age forms; mosaic murals; anodized aluminum in gold and copper.