Gehry Tapped for Bacardi Renovation in Miami

Photo courtesy Marc Averette/Wikimedia Commons

Frank Gehry has been tapped to master-plan the interiors and a new park and performing arts center for the iconic Bacardi Tower and Museum campus in Miami. The former Bacardi headquarters, whose blue-and-white tiled and stained glass facades has made it one of the city’s most recognizable structures, recently was sold to the National YoungArts Foundation, a non-profit organization Gehry has long supported.

With its new campus, the YoungArts Foundation will introduce a mentoring and scholarship program targeting talented students in architecture and design. Gehry will commission some of these students to assist him with the campus design.

The main eight-story building was completed in 1963 and designed by Enrique Gutierrez, a Cuban architect and Mies Van der Rohe collaborator. Ignacio Carrera-Justiz designed the second structure, completed in 1975. In 2009, Bacardi moved its corporate headquarters to Coral Gables, Florida.

Read more about Gehry’s involvement in the project in the press release.

In the video below, Miami architect and historian Allan Shulman and Rebecca Stanier-Shulman discuss the Bacardi buildings.