Artist-designed rooms
Message In A Bottle
Camo Clash
The Creek South Beach is a 90-room motel located on Collins Avenue and 23rd Street in the American city of Miami Beach, Florida.
The motel's building is an example of Miami Modern architecture (MiMo) and is situated just north of the Art Deco District, in the Collins Park neighborhood and the CANDO (Cultural Arts Neighborhood District Overlay) in Miami Beach. The motel's building is one of the few remaining examples of post-World War II motel architecture in Miami and the only example in Miami Beach's South Beach neighborhood.
The property has been featured as an architecturally significant structure in the book on MiMo architecture MiMo: Miami Modern Revealed. [1]
The Creek South Beach (originally named The Ankara Motel) was built in 1954 by the architecture firm of Reiff & Feldman. Designed in a classic motel or googie-style "L" shape, "the central element is a radically cantilevered-raked delta-wing roof, perched lightly as a paper airplane atop a triangular glass lobby." [2] The lobby design sets the tone for architectural elements throughout – zigzagged lines, floating staircases encased in brick and a central pylon overlooking the waterway.
The popularity of the property rose and fell with Miami Beach's economic tides changing hands and names many times over. By the turn of the 21st century, the motel was operated as a youth hostel under the name of Banana Bungalow and suffered from severe neglect and poor maintenance.
In 2003, the property was purchased by Ken Fields, who renamed it The Creek South Beach and turned the motel into the first art hotel on Miami Beach. Young artists from across the country were invited to design individual rooms, re-christened The Creek: Signature Series. The project managers for the Signature Series were Bo Sundius of Bunch Design and Tim Ronan of SBK Global, with curatorial input and coordinator of artists' installations from artist Ellen Jong. The hotel re-opened in time for Art Basel Miami Beach 2002, hosting guests including Jeffrey Deitch of Deitch Projects. [3] The Creek South Beach won Best Hotel in Miami New Times Best Of 2003. [4]
The Creek South Beach has been featured as a back drop for several films and television productions over the years, most notably the films The Specialist (1994), Bad Boys (1995), Transporter 2 (2005) and several episodes of the television series Miami Vice .
A motel, also known as a motor hotel, motor inn or motor lodge, is a hotel designed for motorists, usually having each room entered directly from the parking area for motor vehicles rather than through a central lobby. Entering dictionaries after World War II, the word motel, coined as a portmanteau of "motor hotel", originates from the Milestone Mo-Tel of San Luis Obispo, California, which was built in 1925. The term referred to a type of hotel consisting of a single building of connected rooms whose doors faced a parking lot and in some circumstances, a common area or a series of small cabins with common parking. Motels are often individually owned, though motel chains do exist.
Googie architecture is a type of futurist architecture influenced by car culture, jets, the Space Age, and the Atomic Age. It originated in Southern California with the Streamline Moderne architecture of the 1930s, and was popular in the United States from roughly 1945 to the early 1970s.
South Beach, also nicknamed colloquially as SoBe, is a neighborhood in the city of Miami Beach, Florida, located east of Miami between Biscayne Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. The area encompasses Miami Beach south of Dade Boulevard.
Streamline Moderne is an international style of Art Deco architecture and design that emerged in the 1930s. Inspired by aerodynamic design, it emphasized curving forms, long horizontal lines, and sometimes nautical elements. In industrial design, it was used in railroad locomotives, telephones, toasters, buses, appliances, and other devices to give the impression of sleekness and modernity.
Miami Modernist architecture, or MiMo, is a regional style of architecture that developed in South Florida during the post-war period. The style was internationally recognized as a regionalist response to the International Style. It can be seen in most of the larger Miami and Miami Beach resorts built after the Great Depression. Because MiMo styling was not just a response to international architectural movements but also to client demands, themes of glamour, fun, and material excess were added to otherwise stark, minimalist, and efficient styles of the era. The style can be most observed today in Middle and Upper Miami Beach along Collins Avenue, as well as along the Biscayne Boulevard corridor starting from around Midtown, through the Design District and into the Upper Eastside.
Lincoln Road Mall is a pedestrian road running east–west parallel between 16th Street and 17th Street in Miami Beach, Florida, United States. Once completely open to vehicular traffic, it now hosts a pedestrian mall replete with shops, restaurants, galleries, and other businesses between Washington Avenue with a traffic accessible street extending east to the Atlantic Ocean and west to Alton Road with a traffic accessible street extending to Biscayne Bay.
The Miami Design District is a neighborhood in Miami, Florida, United States and a shopping, dining and cultural destination. The Design District was redeveloped in the early 2000s under the direction of developer Craig Robins, president and CEO of Dacra, and L Real Estate with investment from General Growth Properties. It is home to over 130 art galleries, showrooms, creative services, architecture firms, luxury fashion stores, antiques dealers, eateries and bars.
The Upper Eastside is a neighborhood in Miami, Florida. It is north of Edgewater, east of Little Haiti, south of the village of Miami Shores, and sits on Biscayne Bay. In geographical order from south to north and east to west, it contains the subdivisions of Magnolia Park, Bay Point, Morningside, Bayside, Belle Meade, Shorecrest, and Palm Grove. The MiMo District along Biscayne Boulevard in the area is host to many art galleries, shops and restaurants.
Carlos Betancourt is an American artist, generally described as a multi-disciplinary artist. His works explore issues of memory and his own experiences, while also dwelling in matters of beauty, identity and communication. Through re-examination, he recycles and reinterprets the past by delivering it in a fresh and new relevant context. Influenced by his own personal memories, he believes that art can be informed by one's own experiences.
The Sherry-Netherland is a 38-story apartment hotel located at 781 Fifth Avenue on the corner of East 59th Street in the Upper East Side neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It was designed and built by Schultze & Weaver with Buchman & Kahn. The building is 560.01 feet (170.69 m) high, and was noted as the tallest apartment-hotel in New York City when it opened.
The La Concha Motel was a motel that opened in 1961 and closed in 2004. It was designed by architect Paul Williams who was one of the first prominent African American architects in the United States and was also the architect who designed the first LAX theme building. It was located at 2955 Las Vegas Blvd South, on the Las Vegas Strip, in Winchester, Nevada, and was considered one of the best-preserved examples of 1950s Googie architecture. It is believed to be named after the Beach of La Concha in Spain.
The Collins Park Neighborhood in Miami Beach sits on the north eastern point of the South Beach Historic District. Its boundaries are 17th street to the south, 25th Street to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east and Washington Avenue, Dade County Boulevard and Pinetree Drive to the west.
Ken Fields is an American real estate developer, entrepreneur and environmentalist.
The Surfcomber Hotel is a boutique hotel on Collins Avenue in the historic Art Deco district of South Beach in Miami Beach, Florida. The hotel was built in 1948 and was acquired by the Kimpton hotel chain in April 2011. The Surfcomber is known for pool parties, and it served as the headquarters for MTV during the 2005 MTV Video Music Awards and for Bud Light during Super Bowl XLIV in 2010. The hotel is located at 1717 Collins Avenue, on the shore of Miami's South Beach.
The Atlanta Cabana Motel was a 200-room motor hotel located at the southwest corner of Peachtree Street and 7th Street in Midtown Atlanta. It opened in 1958 and was razed in 2002; the site is now occupied by the 28-floor Spire residential tower. The Cabana was Atlanta's first major new hotel in 30 years as well as a pioneer in the concept of motor hotels, that is, motel-like facilities in cities, as opposed to alongside highways between cities. It was recognized as a prime example of modern motor hotel architecture.
Craig Lewis Robins is an American businessman, investor, and philanthropist. He is the founder and CEO of Dacra Development, the co-founder and co-owner of Design Miami and developer of the Miami Design District.
B. Robert Swartburg was an American architect working in New York and Florida primarily known for his Modern and Streamline Moderne architectural style. He was one of the leading modernist architects in South Florida contributing greatly to the development of MiMo Modern style in the post- WWII 40s and 50's. In his 35-year career he is said to have designed over 1000 buildings. Swartburg was also an accomplished artist who painted for pleasure, and executed murals and sculptures to embellish his buildings.
Rene Gonzalez Architects (RGA) is an American architectural firm based in Miami, Florida. The work of their interdisciplinary design office encompasses architecture, interior architecture, landscape design, and product design. The firm's work includes museum and gallery spaces, hospitality, commercial, retail, and residential projects.
Shore Apartments is a historical modernist landmark on Indian Creek in the Normandy Isles neighborhood of North Miami Beach, United States. It was designed by B. Robert Swartburg in 1948 for Maurice Gusman and opened on January 9, 1949.
