South Seas Hotel

The South Seas

Miami Beach, Florida | design 2019

The South Seas hotel demonstrates the potential of the Miami Beach hotel for qualitative and quantitative growth. The original three-story Art Deco hotel, designed by L. Murray Dixon in 1942, had already been expanded in 1952 with a seven-story addition on the oceanfront side. S+A’s new design mixed restoration of key elements of the building with subtractions and additions that produced higher-quality rooms and spaces. The adaptive use of the ground floor in particular created a new flow of public open space between the lobby and the beachfront pool; removal of ground floor rooms allowed the diversification and expansion of hotel services, including an improved restaurant and lounge, a business center and conference rooms, a fitness room and expanded back of house areas. One key strategy was the careful removal of several rooms in the center of the building, creating a landscaped interior patio at the heart of the old structure. Another key strategy was the development of a new seven-story room wing attaching to the existing oceanfront tower. The new wing, which required careful placement, reinterprets the playful architectural syntax of projecting planes found in the 1950s tower. A two-story cabana structure and new pool will be constructed behind the building,