Big Brother....

....praise to the market.

And finally I was ready to accomplish my sense of dwelling, approaching the yellow and blue shelter, ready to start creating that intimate universe where the memories are triggered by the perfect scale.

But my intuition sent me a bitter caveat, and suddenly behind my dreams, a big mass of concrete and steel made its bulky entrance. Again like other many times, again with the same voice, and effectively destroying my illusions.

Building behind the shelter.  Miami Beach.

Sotto Voce Miami

Ray Bradbury's envisions

...of a distant hereafter that can be triggered by this Illustrated Man building, an all-nighter teller of astounding stories of betrayal, cruelty, transpiration and shattered sounds of shaky galleons anchored at the humid coastline of the Malecon, with Don Facundo Bacardi standing between hallucinations of better times…

It’s not just that, is also declaring a vertiginous future with a myriad of images. Open scares with an incontrollable voice of hope. 

Latin modernism at its best! 

The Bacardi Buildings in 1975

The Bacardi Buildings
Biscayne Boulevard at NE 20th. Terrace
Midtown Miami.

The 8-story tower was designed in 1963 by Cuban architect Enrique Gutierrez, who previously worked on Bacardi’s headquarters in Mexico City.

Miami's iconic Bacardi Building and  the adjacent Jewel Box (designed by local architect Ignacio Carrera-Justiz in 1975) were declared historic sites by the Miami Historic and Environmental Preservation Board on Oct 6, 2009 and  are a landmark of Midtown Miami. 

On April 18, 2012, the American Institute of Architects' Florida Chapter placed the building on its list of Florida Architecture: 100 Years. 100 Places, as Bacardi USA.

© Luigi Seta



Recommended reading: Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: The Biography of a Cause
By Tom Gjelten