Debate Over Arquitectonica’s Babylon Apartments Preservation Goes National

June 23, 2016

The Babylon Apartments. Photos courtesy Phillip Pessar.

The aesthetically pioneering Babylon Apartments has a date with the City of Miami Historic Preservation Board on July 5th, potentially resulting in historic designation status. Architecture firm Arquitectonica’s “first building that wasn’t a house,” as described by one of its heads and cofounders Bernardo Fort-Brescia, is also one of its most important, and a seminal piece of Miami’s architectural history. The debate over the Babylon’s fate has also become national news. Miami Condo Investments Editor Sean McCaughan’s report on uncertain future of the Babylon is over at the Architect’s Newspaper:

With its bright red, ziggurat form, one of Miami-based architecture firm Arquitectonica’s first buildings, the Babylon Apartments in Miami’s Brickell neighborhood, is at risk of demolition if its longtime owner, a former “spaghetti western” movie star, gets his way. The six story building is an icon of subtropical postmodernist architecture in Miami; it’s also one of the signatures of the city’s ‘Miami Vice’-era 1980s comeback. The Babylon also earned Arquitectonica its first international award, a Progressive Architecture Citation Award, only a few years after the firm’s founding in 1977. More…