Photo courtesy Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company

An Art Deco apartment building in Miami beach (top) / Photo by William Hanley, The Wolfsonian entrance on Washington Avenue / Photo courtesy Florida International University (middle), The Wolfsonian café and bookstore / Photo courtesy Florida International University (above)

Andrés Duany, FAIA, founded the firm Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company (DPZ) in 1980. He is widely recognized as a leader of New Urbanism, a movement to reform urban growth, and delivers lectures and seminars on the topic.

Best New Architecture
1111 Lincoln Road ' Herzog & de Meuron

Best Historic Architecture
Miami Beach Art Deco Architectural District
“This place is unique because it is a place that has both great urbanism and a great beach. But what maintains it is a great building type. This building type, which is the relatively tight [Art Deco] apartment building, intrinsically creates better and worse apartments. Toward the front of a building you have bay windows and some of the more expensive apartments in Miami Beach, but as the building goes back or turns an inside corner, the apartments only face the very small side yards or the alley.

Regardless of how Miami Beach may or may not gentrify, the rear apartments will never become as expensive as those in the front. Where you have this kind of building type, the diversity of housing ensues organically. The affordability ratio is always maintained because there are always apartments that are better and worse. 

I think that’s the lesson of Miami Beach. Over the years that I’ve been here, this place has gone from gritty to expensive and is now becoming grittier again. But it never really stopped being gritty, and the social mix is guaranteed by the type of building.”

Best Museum
The Wolfsonian - Florida International University
“The Wolfsonian collection is of incomparable interest to architects. It includes some of the earliest prefab shelves in the world. They’re made from cast iron. Also, it has the most interesting café and bookstore.”

During the American Institute of Architects’ annual convention, the museum is presenting the exhibitions Unrealized Architecture and The Grand Hotels of Schultze & Weaver.

On June 10th at 7:30 p.m. the museum hosts a talk about the recently published Miami Architecture: An AIA Guide Featuring Downtown, the Beaches and Coconut Grove with authors Allan Shulman, Randall C. Robinson, Jr., and Jeff Donnelly.

Best Restaurant
Hosteria Romana
“Real Italians—with accents and  attitude—on the tightest street space in Florida. The outside tables face a high-end bikini shop.”