In 1960, the Bacardi Company fled the communist aftermath of the Cuban Revolution they had initially supported as the ouster of a dictator. Having hedged their bets by ex-panding outside of Cuba through the previous decades’ tumultuous politics, Bacardi was able to continue and, three years later, joined ten of thousands of its compatriots in forg-ing a new identity in — and for — Miami. The Bacardi Buildings, designed by Enrique Gutierrez and Ignacio Cabrera-Justiz, were created for a company with a strong identity tied to the history of the island. An office tower displays two massive murals depicting surreal abstractions of flowers. Behind the office tower, an annex built several years later is wrapped in another mural illustrating the rum making process. In a city with a tradition of prescribed identity, the particular circumstances of history and the architect’s nuanced understanding and utilization of what actually is rather than what is prescribed to be, created buildings that reflect what Miami is, and all of its layers.

Miami has always been a canvas for the projections of outsiders, who often ignore the marks and blemishes made before. Since it’s beginnings as a “blank slate” of tropical shore, money flowed from the north and invented a built identity, purposefully synthe-sized in a manufactured context flavored by the residual identities brought by those fresh from other places that came to inhabit the constructions. Future waves of new ideas — new builders from new movements (city beautiful, modernism, post-modernism) and new inhabitants with different identities — ignored what was there to build something new. Since the city’s inception just over 100 years ago, so many ideas have pursued exe-cution on the shores of Biscayne Bay that an assigned identity stronger than any one idea has formed. This prescribed tropicalism grew to drive built form, from Miami Modernism to contemporary grand visions solicited from starchitects the world over.

So how does one design in a place whose identity is pre-determined by forces other than physical reality while also drawing from the form and culture that exist? Critical in this complicated context, as is all good design, is an understanding and deft utilization of nu-ance. Sharing the cultural identity of the immigrants that catalyzed the city’s massive and tumultuous changes, the Bacardi buildings were uniquely positioned to tap into and re-flect what Miami was at time, not an idea of what it was. The office tower’s murals display “tropical flavor” skin deep, a canvas and commentary. Instead of internalizing the pre-scribed into built form, the flowers are worn on the face. The imagery of the rum making process on the annex building was a billboard strongly announcing a new Miami culture, with a ties to the history of another place and practices that were largely incomprehensi-ble to an outsider. The annex’s cantilever used the instruments of an international archi-tectural style specifically detached from place to acknowledge the negatives of a tropical locale and protect inhabitants from it, rather than blindly celebrating the image of the joyful sunshine.

Organic identity requires a critical mass of individual entities so that no one overpow-ers the whole. Out of a particular amalgamation a unique thing forms, eventually strong enough to hold its own though ever shifting incrementally as new influences arrive. As one of the nation’s youngest major cities, no homegrown mass has yet arisen in Miami. Where a critical mass does exist is in mass of outside visions that have forged a familiar and readily identifiable language. Just north of Downtown Miami, there are two beautiful exceptions.Published in CLOG Magazine, Miami Issue. 2014.

Prescribed TropicalismDaniel Rojo