Morris Lapidus (November 25, 1902 - January 18, 2001) is an architect, especially known for his Neo-baroque hotels "Miami Modern" built in the 1950s and 60s, style resort-hotel era - synonymous with Miami and Miami Beach.
A New York-based Russian immigrant, Lapidus designed over 1,000 buildings during a career spanning over 50 years, mostly spent as an outsider for American architectural establishment.
Video Morris Lapidus
Early life and career
Born in Odessa in the Russian Empire (now Ukraine), his Orthodox Jew family escaped from Russian pogroms to New York when he was an infant. As a young man, Lapidus explores the acting that led to his interest in the design of the theater set where he was directed by scene painters to study architecture. He studied at Columbia University, graduating in 1927. Lapidus worked for the leading Beaux Arts company in Warren and Wetmore. At that time his first project was to design garage ornaments for the Vanderbilt house. His design combines Mercury, the god of Speed, into a modern sculpture. Lapidus explained that "the horse's head and the proposed horse cart are anachronisms". From 1929-1943 he worked with Ross-Frankel as a retail architect. When in early 1942 his father's company, US Metals, hired Morris to design the Lights Searched Lights because requested by Admiral Rickover, he withdrew from Ross-Frankel, but not before Evan Frankel, the potato field at The Hamptons where they succeeded in testing the light.
After a very successful 22-year career in retail interior design with Ross-Frankel, Lapidus was asked to become a "hotel doctor" in some Miami hotels. He soon became the associate architect of five hotel projects in Miami Beach - Sans Souci Hotel 1947 (opened in 1949, after 1996 called RIU Florida Beach Hotel), followed by Nautilus 1950, in Lido (1951), Biltmore Terrace (1951), and Algeria (1951), along Collins Avenue, and as big as a one-handed redesign of the entire district. The hotels were an instantly popular success and Lapidus began pushing the boundaries of the hotel experience further.
Then in 1952 he got a job as the biggest luxury hotel in Miami Beach, the property he most closely associated with, Fontainebleau Hotel, which is a 1,200-room hotel built by Ben Novack at the former Firestone estate, and perhaps the most famous hotel. In the world. It was followed the following year by the equally successful Eden Roc Hotel (where Harry Belafonte broke the "color line" on the Beach with a night's stay there), and Americana (then the Sheraton Bal Harbor) in 1956. The Sheraton was destroyed by explosion soon after dawn on Sunday, November 18, 2007 and now the W Hotel The St. Regis in Bal Harbor. Using this hotel as a "design laboratory" and exploring "how to sell a good time" Lapidus became famous for its hotels in Miami Beach: Fontainebleau (1954), Eden Roc (1955), and Americana (Bal Harbor Sheraton) (1956). Opening Fontainebleau is displayed on TV. Americans watch when people who dance in the ballroom in the ballroom flow into their living room. In fact, Lapidus has ruled out the palace and the modern era of Miami Beach and its resting hotels have begun: everyone has to leave.
In 1955, Lapidus designed the Ponce de Leon Shopping Center near the square in St. Petersburg. St. Augustine, Florida. The anchor shop, Woolworth's, was the first seat by black demonstrators from Florida Memorial College in March 1960, and in 1963 by four young teenagers, later known as "St. Augustine Four." Woolworth's door handle and the Freedom Trail marker commemorate the event.
Lapidus then worked with Igor Polevitsky beside the Shellborne Hotel where the same as the previous hotels, from the last eight. In all the early hotels he provided the architectural style of Miami Beach Collins Avenue and made an exciting night scene with his neon signature; superior to the letters of Venice for "diLido", curved "S" in Shellborne, or in "ER" on a rock in Eden Roc. In the interior of the hotel he anticipates post-modernism while serving postcard views through modern glass and a clear modern exterior. Lapidus's modern tropical style continues on the residential projects he completed along the coast at Collins Avenue from 44 to 94; The Northeast and West Coast and Haulover Beach condominiums mark sensual bookends to a fabulous winding trip on the Florida Millionaire Row in the Atlantic Ocean.
Lapidus's style is idiosyncratic and easily recognizable in photographs, derived from its innovative techniques and attention-grabbing techniques in its commercial store design: sweeping curves, theatrical backlit ceilings, beanpole, and ameboid forms that he calls' woggles', 'cheeseholes ', as well as the use of their colors, signboards, lamps, mirrors, techniques for "floating columns", floating staircases and moving people along a winding path - because people do not walk in a straight line - is the vocabulary of the design style. Many of his small projects provide Collins Avenue Miami Beach style, including neon-style font style in "diLido" and Shellborne anticipates post-modernism. Beyond the visual style, there are several levels of functionalism in the workplace. The curved walls catch the sea breeze that existed in the era before the central air-conditioning, and the order of interior space is the result of careful attention to the user experience: Lapidis hears complaints from the hotel corridor without traits and if possible curved the hallway to avoid that effect.
Fontainebleau is built on the Harvey Firestone estate site and defines a new Gold Coast in Miami Beach. The hotel provides a location for Jerry Lewis 1960's The Bellboy, a success for Lewis and Lapidus, and the James Bond thriller Goldfinger (1964); Whitney Houston was filmed there at The Body Guard (1992) and Madonna recorded her CDs for the 2005 album Bedtime Stories in Eden Roc. The most famous Fontainebleau feature is 'Staircase to Nowhere' (which is officially called the "floating ladder"), which only leads to mezzanine-level level checks and women's bathrooms, but offers the opportunity to make a sparkling offspring into the hotel lobby. The planter under the stairs is all the original today from the opening interior of 1954.
- "All my success is that I always design for people, first because I want to sell them to the merchandise, and when I get to the hotel I have to rethink what I'm selling right now selling a good time. "
From 1993 to 2001, in the period before his death, the style of Lapidus again became a focus. Deborah Desilets, architect and artist, is the last collaborator Morris Lapidus. He first associated with Lapidus when he was the marketing director for Arquitectonica in 1993. On January 18, 1996, Desilets left ARQ to set up his own company VVA INC, where he could work with Lapidus on a number of architectural projects. , organizing his theoretical notes, stories and drawings for college, and exploring product design. Lapidus said, "I'm going from Fontainebleau to the pen!" In the same way he helped the expansion of Fontainebleau by attending a meeting with Hilton and owner, Stephen H. Muss. From the new design, Lapidus says that it is the "Exclamation Point" for the 1954 building and provides prestige to help collect new additions. Desilets and Lapidus were the team and this collaboration continued until his death. Prior to this Lapidus bequeathed his name and heritage to Desilets' - in unprecedented action in a history of architecture - as a female collaborator. To secure his legacy, Desilets is awarded to Syracuse University Special Collections all remaining Lapidus Paper; because Lapidus himself had sent newspapers to Syracuse a few years earlier. Following its style, Desilets has been producing furniture, carpets and mirrors with Dennis Miller and Associates, New York, NY from 2005-2018 under the trademark Morris Lapidus. From the projects they work on there are three projects for Roots of Canada; Roots, at The Promenade Mall Toronto, Roots in Bloomfield, IL and Roots in New York, NY. From several Miami projects, the first is for decoration for a Spanish-Italian style house on Sunset Island II; next truly modern design in the colorful and bright Aura restaurant on 603 Lincoln Road, in Miami Beach on Lincoln Road Mall that appeared in the first color edition of the New York Times, December 23, 1999. As soon as there was a total awakening in Lapidus. He began giving lectures, making appearances and making numerous memorabilia collections: 100-150 years of books donated to the School of Architecture at Florida International University, Miami, Florida, the new SOA campus designed by Bernard Tschumi, Dean of Columbia; The Wolfsonian Museum, Miami Beach received its design slide for the Distillery at the 1939 World Exposition; The Bass Museum accepts a set of living room furniture; and Columbia received more paper. At various Miami Beach functions, Lapidus is honored for his assistance in the 1994-1996 Lincoln Road renovation by Ben Wood of Wood and Thompson. Lapidus did not live to see Frank Gehry's building, Saha Hadid or Herzog and De Meuron, or Ray Jungle's "jungle on the mall," but his expression on Lincoln Road fits: "Why is it exotic in Private?"
Lapidus and Desilets appeared on CNN discussing the project for Ron Bloomberg at 21st Street; a very modern building that houses production staff for Miami Beach Ballet (MBB), which has their new headquarters next to the Bloomberg site. The MBB Arquitectonica in the style of their tropical modernism. (It should be noted that Laurinda Spear was interned with Lapidus in the 70s and later introduced Desilets' to Lapidus while criticizing the work of Miami University students at ARQ's office Desilets worked at ARQ and set up a computer lab and later became the Marketing Director he left behind to pursue his work with Lapidus.) Lapidus was also honored by the Society of Architectural Historians at a convention held at the Eden Roc hotel in 1998. Lapidus has a plaque erected in his honor on Lincoln Road at "The Clam" "Bandshell in Euclid, quoting it" A car never bought anything. "At a lecture at Harvard Dean Silvetti asked," Who is afraid of Lapidus? That for 50 years the architecture was not published in the magazine... "In 2000, the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum honored Lapidus as an Native American for his tenure, he was interviewed on November 14, 200 by Charlie Rose. he was accompanied and/or employed by Desilets at lectures across America, Cranbrook, Harvard, New York Architectural League, Corcoran Gallery, Columbia University, SOA Ruston, Austin, Texas, LA and etc. Desilets continued this work until currently.
After all of this new interest, Lapidus was quoted as saying, "I never thought I would live to see the day when, suddenly, a magazine wrote about me, a newspaper wrote about me!" And indeed the people - clients of his clients - clapped for him at the Copper-Hewitt party when Lapidus exclaimed; dismantle the "form following the function" Bauhaus with "feelings of finding shapes." == Personal == Desilets "wrote Rizzoli" Morris Lapidus: The Architecture of Joy ", released in October 2010. Before that, Assouline published the book Desilets three books:" Morris Lapidus "2004;" The Eden Roc 50th Anniversary "2005; "The DiLido" 2006.
His son, architect Alan Lapidus, who worked with his father for 18 years, said, "The theory is if you make stage settings and that's great, everyone who enters will play their part."
In 2001, Morris Lapidus died of heart failure at age 98 in his Miami Beach apartment. The wife of 63-year-old Morris Lapidus, Beatrice, died in 1992.
Maps Morris Lapidus
Critical reception
Lapidus designed 1,200 buildings, including 250 hotels worldwide. The American architectural establishment considered Lapidus an outsider, trying to ignore his work, then characterized it as a striking kitch. There's Louise Huxtable, writing in the New York Times, saying about Americana, "The effect on arrival is like being hit by the exploding golden eggplant." This rough critical acceptance may have culminated in the 1963 American Institute of Architects (AIA) meeting held at Americana, where well-known architects including Paul Rudolph, Robert Anshen and Wallace Harrison took Lapidus on assignment because of what they described as vulgar, and incompetent.
The 1970 Architectural League Exhibition in New York started a serious assessment of his work. Lapidus tries to ignore critical repetition, but it affects his career and reputation. He burned his image for 50 years when he retired in 1984 and remained personally bitter about some aspects of his career. Some of the undeveloped Lapidus hotels were donated to Desilets by Don Seidler, who had been the production of Lapidus for over thirty years. The projects not made by Lapidus are the focus of Desilets' new book, "Too Much To Be BUILT: Morris Lpaidus". Lapidus is rediscovered in his autobiography Too Much is Never Enough , 1996, which is the answer to the Ludwig Mies van der Rohe 'dictum Less is more.' According to her biographer, Martina Duttmann, she is always more respected in Europe than in the United States, where comparable jet-set futurism is defined as "Googie". Today, books published by AIA such as Essentials Architects Started Design Company 2003, refer positively to the work of Morris Lapidus.
Project
The list is adapted from Works in Lapidus autobiography.
- Martin's Department Store, Brooklyn, New York 1944
- Main clothing store store, 372 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York, 1948
- Grossinger's Catskill Resort Hotel, several buildings from 1949 (abandoned)
- Ainsley Building/Leading Building/One Flag, Miami, Florida, 1952
- Fontainebleau Hotel, Miami Beach, Florida, 1954
- Shopping Center Ponce de Leon, St. Augustine, Florida, 1955
- Eden Roc Miami Beach Hotel, Miami Beach, Florida, 1955
- Aruba Hotel, now Hilton Aruba Caribbean Resort & amp; Casino, Aruba, 1955
- Americana of Bal Harbor Hotel, Miami Beach, Florida, 1956, destroyed 2007
- Deauville Resort, Miami Beach, Florida, 1950s
- Concord Resort Hotel, Catskills, New York, the Imperial Room nightclub, and several other projects from the mid-1950s (unloaded)
- Golden Triangle Motor Hotel, Norfolk, Virginia 1959-60; only interior
- Lincoln Road, Miami Beach, Florida, 1960
- Sheraton Motor Inn, now Consulate of China, New York, New York, 1959
- The Summit Hotel, now Doubletree Metropolitan Hotel, New York, 1960
- Ponce de Leon Hotel, then Hilton San Jeronimo Hotel, now The Condado Plaza Hilton, San Juan, 1960
- Shaare Sion's Session, Brooklyn, New York, 1960
- Richmond Motel, Richmond, Virginia, 1961
- The Americana of the New York Hotel, now the Sheraton New York Times Square Hotel, New York, New York, 1961
- Americana San Juan Hotel, now InterContinental San Juan, San Juan, 1961
- International Inn, now Washington Plaza Hotel, Washington, D.C., 1962
- Capitol Skyline Hotel, Washington, D.C., 1962
- Temple Menorah, Miami Beach, Florida, 1962 (since rebuilt)
- 1800 G Street NW, Washington, D.C., 1962
- Crystal House Condominium, 5055 Collins Avenue, Miami Beach, FL, 1962
- El Conquistador Resort, Fajardo, Puerto Rico, 1965
- Hotel San Juan Intercontinental, now El San Juan Hotel, San Juan, Puerto Rico, 1965
- Seacoast 5151, Miami Beach, Florida, 1966
- Temple Judea, 5500 Granada Boulevard, Coral Gables, Florida, 1966
- 1100 L Street NW, Washington, D.C., 1967
- Portman Square Hotel, London, England 1967
- Royal Embassy Condominium, 5750 Collins Avenue, Miami Beach, FL 1968
- Whitman (Co-op apartment) 75 Henry Street, Brooklyn, New York, 1968
- 1425 K NW, Washington, D.C., 1970 (rebuilt) roads
- Parker Plaza Estates, 2030 South Ocean Drive, Hallandale Beach, FL 33009
- TSS Mardi Gras , 1975
- TSS Carnivale , 1975
- Building Carnival Cruise Terminal, Port of Miami, Miami, Florida, 1975
- Apartment Lausanne, Naples, Florida, 1978
- Grandview in Emerald Hills, Hollywood, Florida, 1981
References
- Notes
- References
External links
- Photos and highlights from Lapidus's career.
- Lapidus career sketches.
- Frances Loeb's Library: Bibliography.
- The photo collection of Morris Lapidus, 1929-1992, is held by Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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