The group exhibit Meetinghouse #6 opened December 1, 2015 in downtown Miami. Shulman + Associates created two site-specific installations for the show, In situ: points of departure and Delirium, 2015. The show is up until January 9, 2016. More at www.meetinghousemiami.org.
Architects must consider a variety of conditions to arrive at the point of departure for any design. Starting with urban and architectural strategies, extending to practical economic, programming and environmental concerns. These conditions engender opportunities to be declaratory, synthetic, representational, or analytical. There is no formula. Whether quickly apparent or determined after many iterations, these points of departure become the essence of a given project. In themselves, they pose challenges of detailing, construction and function. Extrapolated, unmoored from context and constraint, they can make compelling abstractions.
Working in the urban districts of Miami and Miami Beach over the past 20 years, the architecture firm S+A has had the opportunity to explore the development of site-specific strategies through the lens of urban design, building typology, regionalism, and historic preservation. Miami’s highly compressed cycles of build and bust have created a rich source for this investigation, each cycle leaving intelligible layers, frequently in juxtaposition. Such a city feels incipient: an excellent laboratory for the firm’s work. Our place, the level we most love to engage, is the small-to-midsize project, where urban infill and adaptive use projects merge into the fabric of the city itself. In this context, our work aspires to ideas like succession, prolongation, layering, sequencing, and assemblage.
