Miami Beach SoundScape is the final component of the ambitious Miami Beach’s City Center Redevelopment Project and fronts the New World Symphony (NWS) Campus designed by Frank Gehry. The NWS sought to provide an outdoor venue that would be an extension of its musical mission: to engage a broader public in orchestral music.
The design team was tasked with designing a “world-class” urban park that would support a host of programmatic demands and be accessible to a diverse audience. Usually, a three acre site with multiple programmatic demands calls for a durable, hard surface approach. However, the design team fought for a design that would be robust but green, planted, shaded, and feel like a park - a mantra that guided the design to completion.
The Park adds a gently undulating green retreat to the City of Miami Beach, replacing a deteriorating, surface-level parking lot, while providing a green nexus and welcoming crossroads between many of Miami Beach’s largest historic and civic institutions and cultural amenities. Inspired by Gehry’s shapes inside the NWS building, the Park’s mosaic pattern and pathway design links the Campus together with shape and movement, reflects desire lines and draws people into and through the Park connecting them with off-site destinations.
For comfortable year-round use of outdoor space, the Park features three custom designed pergolas, adorned with spectacular, climbing bougainvilleas. These stand as iconic gateways and enhance the Park’s sense of enclosure and intimacy. Additional shade is provided by 350 Veitchia palms. Planted ‘to conceal-and-reveal views and provide ‘dappled shade’—without blocking important view corridors to the NWS building.
The City and NWS actively use the Park multiple days a week and Civic events such as Art Basel, Film Festival and street performers also encourage Park use at all hours of the day by all members of the community. The incorporation of audio and video equipment posed a significant challenge for the project. A family of architectural elements had to be positioned in a way that was technically precise to meet desired sound quality objectives, but also integrated sensitively into the landscape. The design transforms what could have been an overwhelming number of park structures into an integrated park element.
After 14 months of planning and construction, the park opened on time and on budget in January 2011, since opening the Park has seen incredible attendance and success in the community. During the day it is filled with locals and visitors eating lunch, enjoying the shade, playing with children and admiring the building. After dark the Park is transformed into a spectacle of video, art, music, and film.
In the summer 2011, shortly after its completion, the Miami SoundScape was listed as one of the top ten “Best Outdoor Movie Theaters” by 'Travel+Leisure Magazine' in America. To date Miami Beach SoundScape has been awarded the 2012 AIA Institute Honor Award for Regional and Urban Design, the 2011 Frederic B. Stresau Award and the 2011 Florida ASLA's Award of Excellence.
Miami Beach SoundScape is a unified expression of passive recreation, pleasure and culture – a space that supports a multitude of day and night uses, either under the shade of the trees or a starlit sky. Howard Herring, President and Chief Executive Officer of the New World Symphony comments that “Adriaan Geuze and his team balanced our institutional program, Frank Gehry’s design, and City requirements, then found resolution for what could have been competing agendas. They delivered an elegant and practical park that is already a major attraction for citizens and visitors to Miami Beach.” Combined with New World Symphony Center’s expansive 7,000-square-foot projection wall, the park has established itself as a world-class destination; that celebrates Miami’s euphoric vitality and delivers a unified expression of music, landscape, and experience.
| Tipologia | Parcs urbans i metropolitans |
| Promotor | Valley Crest |
| Promoció | P?ca |
| Localització | Florida, Miami Beach, Estats Units d'Amèrica |
| Àrea | 305000 m² |
| Cost | 0,03 €/m² |
| Any inici | 2009 |
| Any finalització | 2011 |
