Miami 2019 – We have collected 15 architecture and design-related must-sees at Miami Art Week 2019, starting from ArtBasel Miami and DesignMiami/ main fair. Among the highlights also the opening of the much awaited El Espacio 23, the new Rubell Museum campus and the largest museum dedicated to graffiti. At Miami Beach discover a traffic jam of 66 life-size cars made of sand, a lush garden by the late Les Lalanne duo with Peter Marino, and join The Last Supper by Faena Festival. At Miami Design District visit Yayoi Kusama’s spotted pumpkin infinity room at ICA Museum, play with fluffy pink beasts and discover Cerith Wyn Evans’ neon wonders.
- RELATED STORIES: read more about Miami 2019 on Archipanic…
FAIRS
ArtBasel Miami
1901 Miami Beach Convention Center, Miami Beach.
At Art Basel Miami, leading galleries from the Americas, Europe, and Asia show significant work from the masters of modern and contemporary art, as well as the new generation of emerging stars. Paintings, sculptures, installations, photographs, films, and editioned works of the highest quality are on display in the main exhibition hall. The new sector Meridians is dedicated to large scale works. Here, Isaac Julien‘s nine-screen film installation Lina Bo Bardi – A Marvellous Entanglement traverses a collection of Lina Bo Bardi’s most iconic buildings, offering a meditation on the work and legacy of the visionary modernist architect and designer (1914–1992) – Watch the trailer.
Laure Prouvost has created a pseudo-functional Miami travel agency complete with water coolers, plants, posters, office desks, waiting area and corporate infomercials. The Dance of Malaga video by activisti, artist and architect Theaster Gates addresses the complex and intertwining issues of race, territory, inequality, and sexuality in the recent history of the United States.
DesignMiami/
Convention Center Drive between 18th and 19th Streets, Miami Beach.

MOLECULE collection by Porky Hefer @ DesignMiami/ 2019. – Photo by Hayden Phipps, courtesy of Southern Guild gallery.
Curated by Aric Chen, the 15th edition of DesignMiami/ brings together the most influential collectors, gallerists, designers, curators and critics from around the world in celebration of design culture and commerce. The fair takes place for the first time in the recently completed Pride Park, with its entrance now directly facing the entrance to Art Basel Miami Beach. On show, 33 galleries and 14 Curio presentations from 13 countries and major collaborations with trend setting brands such as Louis Vuitton, champagne Perrier Jouët, Lexus, Swarovski and Fendi.
Instagram and Studio Swine @ DesignMiami/
Convention Center Drive between 18th and 19th Streets, Miami Beach.
Instagram’s @design extends beyond its social platform to engage with the public in real life for the first time. With a leave no trace approach, Studio Swine has designed an inflatable bubble-shaped booth, made out of 100% recyclable PVC that is easily transportable, lightweight and compactable for efficient shipping, and versatile for multiple displays.
CASACOR Miami
December @ Brickell City Centre. 700 Brickell Ave.
The third edition of CASACOR Miami, the architecture, design and landscaping fair, features installations by 20 established and emerging interior designers, all inspired by sustainability and the urban infrastructure of Miami. In partnership with Swire Properties and presented by COSENTINO, the fair showcases Ukraine’s rising design firm YODEZEEN, plus Michelle Haim from award-winning design firm Fanny Haim & Associates, Cristiana Mascarenhas and Mr. Alex Tate Design, among others. Landscape architecture firm L&ND and curatorial collective Ground Control will curate art and create spaces inspired in nature and urban living.
INAUGURAL MUSEUMS & VENUES
Museum of Graffiti
299 NW 25th Street -Miami.
Museum of Graffiti, the world’s largest one, inaugurates in the Wynwood district. On show the history of the urban art from the late 1960s and early 1970s first clandestine teenagers’ writings to masterpieces by contemporary leading artists and a celebration of graffiti’s emergence in design, fashion, advertising and galleries.
El Espacio 23
2270 NW 23rd St, Miami.
The much attended El Espacio 23 inaugurates in a 2.600 sqm hangar in the Allapattah district. Wanted and financed by real estate tycoon Jorge M. Pérez, the venue is set to become one of the world’s largest private museums. The inaugural exhibition, Time for change: art and social unrest in the Jorge M. Pérez collection, features works by Alfredo Jaar, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Doris Salcedo and Ai Weiwei.
Rubell Museum
1100 Northwest 23rd Street.
Selldoff Architects has reconverted a 100.ooo sqf industrial building in the Allapattah neighbourhood into the ready to open Rubell Museum‘s new campus. The new art epicenters will showcase major artworks by the enviable Rubell family collection which features over 7.000 pieces by more than 1.000 artists.
MIAMI BEACH
Beach jam
Until December 15 on Miami Beach at Lincoln Road.
Buenos Aires-based artist Leandro Erlich has created a massive sculpture featuring 66 life-size cars made of sand. The vehicles will be left to slowly degrade throughout the duration of the 15-day exhibition to symbolize a harsh and rigid modernity that is at odds with natural and porous material from which they are made.
Lara Favaretto @ The Bass Museum
2100 Collins Ave, Miami Beach.
The Bass Museum presents a new body of work of Italian artist Lara Favaretto. The Blind Spot exhibition unveils the contents of the artist’s previously locked collection of suitcases, revisiting and restocking her interactive installation momentary monument—the library (2012-2019), and installing a suite of site-specific car wash brushes to emblematize the change her longstanding creative motifs have fixated upon.
Raleigh Garden
@ The Raleigh Hotel, 1775 Collins Ave, Miami Beach.
Real estate developer Michael Shvo and his partners have just inaugurated the brand-new Raleigh Garden featuring an outdoor public exhibition of the work of the late Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne, the artistic duo known together as Les Lalanne. The exhibition is framed by an immersive, lush, beach-side tropical garden designed by architect Peter Marino, and Miami landscape architect Raymond Jungles.
Faena Festival
December 2-8 @ the Faena Art District, Collins Avenue from 32nd to 36th streets; hotel at 3201 Collins.
Themed The Last Supper, the second edition of the Faena Festival explores spirituality and food, abundance and sacrifice, indulgence and abstinence, and archetypal symbolism and contemporary aesthetics. Until December 8, the festival takes over the whole Faena Art District with a program of commissions, video installations, performances, sculptures and interactive culinary experiences. An LED billboard boat on the waterways of Miami, which will serve as a platform for mobile video installations.
MIAMI DESIGN DISTRICT
Pink Beasts by Fernando Laposse
@ Miami Design District, FL 33137.
Miami Design District, the city’s creative neighbourhood and shopping destination, has chosen the London-based Mexican designer Fernando Laposse for its 2019 commission, where he will be debuting Pink Beasts. Explect long, pink sisal tassels, hammocks, and sloths suspended through the trees. Laposse explored materials and techniques native to Mexico and has collaborated with like minded textile designer Angela Damman as well as Mayan artisans in Sahcabá, Yucatán.
The Illuminated Gas
3802 NE First Avenue, Miami Design District.
Welsh artist Cerith Wyn Evans lights up Miami Design District with The Illuminating Gas… (after Oculist Witnesses), an off-site installation on show at the White Cube. Visitors can discover and walk by neon suspended wonders. The installation and sculpture reflect Evans’ interest in synesthetic experience, exploring aural, visual and spatial dimensions.
Yayoi Kusama @ ICA Miami
Ica Miami – 112 NE 41st Street, Suite 106.
In the Miami Design District, the new museum ICA Miami presents a special off-site solo exhibition of the iconic Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. Titled All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins, the exhibition features a mesmerizing array of Kusama’s signature spotted pumpkins within a mirror-lined room illuminated with LED lighting.
Versace furniture by Sasha Bikoff
@ Miami Design District – Palm court event space, 140 NE 39th street, 3rd floor.
NYC-based interior designer Sasha Bikoff drew inspiration from the Versace rich heritage to create a furniture pieces on show at the Italian Maison’s flagship boutique in Miami Design District. All the new pieces are on display together with some of the fashion house arcive looks they reference.