Author: Alesh Houdek

MAM building fundraising update

Oh, speaking of Herzog and de Meuron, how far is the Miami Art Museum in their fund raising for the building? Not bad, reports Daniel Chang in Sunday’s Herald — the MAM has secured $45 million in pledges from private donors. This is out of targeted $120. The science museum is to raise $100 million, and various public funding for the two buildings comes to $280 billion. No word on what happens when if the project goes overbudget.

Architecture taking shape on Miami Beach

The economic downslump is taking the predictable bite out of real estate development here on South Beach and throughout Dade County. But the construction of a few notable buildings proceeds, and it’s encouraging.

herzog and de meuron

Herzog and de Meuron’s parking/retail structure at the west end of Lincoln Road Mall. There are a few more levels yet to be added to this, but the spaces between the columns you see are not going to be enclosed. The finished product will look like this. (Only white cars will ever park there.) These are the same folks who may one day yet create the new Miami Art Museum building.

Frank Gehry

And this is the Frank Gehry building for the New World Symphony, being constructed near the other end of the mall, behind the symphony’s current theater. This is the Western elevation, though you can see the blocky internal shapes that will be visible from the outside. The open space in the front of the image presumably will house another parking garage.

Frank Gehry

Northern elevation.

Frank Gehry

The Southeast facing corner, which roughly corresponds to this rendering (use the boatlike shape at the top to match them up. And yes, the road in the rendering is currently the alleyway running behind Lincoln shops).

Swiss post box


Swiss Post Box is powered by technology from Seattle-based Earth Class Mail. The service emails multi-sided color images of incoming envelopes and parcels to their recipients as soon as the mail reaches the first sorting center nearest where it was collected by the post office. While the mail and parcels are held in an automated temporary cache, recipients decide which mail pieces they want to have opened and scanned to PDF inside an ultra-secure scanning center at the Post Office (where confidential documents for Swiss banks are also scanned), and which are to be delivered physically to the address on the envelope, redirected to another address, shredded, recycled or archived for safekeeping. Three-quarters of the mail ends up leaving that first sorting center bound straight for recycling, either after being scanned to PDF or discarded unopened by customer’s choice.

Also, as you may have heard, the United States Postal Service is royally fucked.