Construction Update
Posted 12.05.2024On July 12th, when the construction of Missoni Baia was completed, East Edgewater got its own 57-story sculpture gracing Biscayne Bay. The topping off marked the completion of a work whose architects were inspired by minimalist artists like Donald Judd, Josef Albers, Sol LeWitt, and Agnes Martin. For the first time, the envisioned structure of the tower became a physical reality on the Miami skyline, glowing in the sun like the planes of color evoking Earth, sea, and sky seen in Martin’s paintings.
The finished building is also in direct dialogue with Judd’s vertical stack sculptures, which resemble buildings floating in air in an endless pattern of reach and possibility. As Judd once wrote in his notebooks, “The independence of the artist, which can be argued as progress, and which quickly connects to the independence of the individual, are clearly in work, and have partly determined its nature.” It’s easy to see why Hani Rashid of Asymptote Architecture — the firm behind the design of Missoni Baia — would look to artists like Judd to evoke something new on the Miami skyline and to embody Rosita Missoni’s intention for her brand to express a sense of freedom. The completed building now rises through the air and surrounds each home with floor-to-ceiling views of sea, city, and sky.
As Rashid told Designboom, “Albers, Lewitt, Judd, and others, such as Fred Sandback, Agnes Martin, etc., developed a uniquely American position with respect to mathematically inspired and instigated works. These artists, and others, such as Jesus Soto (Venezuela), were very much in our minds as we designed this project. The challenge was for us to develop a tall tower on Biscayne Bay that would stand out against an otherwise cacophonic collection of buildings that make up the fast-changing Miami skyline.”
That skyline is now punctuated by the 649-foot tower and its 249 stylish Edgewater condos from OKO Group and its CEO Vladislav Doronin. The building has been completed by general contractor Civic Construction, and the topping off marked the beginning of a new way of living where the imagination that drives great art is combined with Florida’s natural tropical beauty and luxury living. This is the moment when the Missoni vision of playful, creative living will become a reality in Miami. Missoni Baia will be a monument to a family whose vision changed how we dress and will now expand how we live and play.