October 31st, 2015 5:45 PM by Nour Ailan
The Miami Innovation Tower is a kinetic sculpture proposed as a new icon for the city of Miami and a major public entry-point into the creative life of the Miami Innovation District at 1031 NW First Avenue. With its fully-integrated active skin—a global first—the Miami Innovation Tower celebrates the unique flavor and vitality of Miami and announces its arrival as a world-class center for information technologies.
The architecture of the tower is inspired by a variety of forms associated with the identity of the city, ranging from contemporary sculpture and fashion to the taught, wing-like, graphics-covered sails of modern racing sailboats—an homage to nearby Biscayne Bay. The lighting, too, is intended as a continuation of the tradition of building illumination that Miami has taken to a high art.
The programming of the tower’s displays will include public service announcements, updates from companies within the district, video art, as well as advertising which, in addition to generating significant revenue for the community, will become art itself as creative directors customize their messages to the special possibilities and parameters of the tower’s unique active skin.
Unlike traditional billboard signage, the mesh-like messaging technologies are in fact integrated completely into the complex, pleated form of the tower’s exterior. The result is an ethereal, highly-transparent surface, open to the slender concrete tower core and views of the city and the sky beyond.
Like the Miami Innovation District as a whole, this Digital Age landmark is also a responsible neighbor. At ground level, a public plaza and amphitheater will host cultural events for all comers, as well as providing an inspiring setting for retail. As it rises, the tower hosts several observation decks, one of which, a garden in the sky, will also serve as a demonstration site for the installation of environmental technologies. Two restaurants complete the Tower’s program.
In addition to drawing visitors to the local Park West streets, these programs will drive sustainable economic growth to the nearby Overtown historic community. They will create employment opportunities—a percentage of which are reserved through agreement with the city for job-seekers from a local labor pool. In addition, a significant proportion of revenue generated by the tower’s signage will be channeled every year to the support of the local community. All of these community benefits are vitally important to the developer, Michael Simkins, whose family presence and philanthropy in Miami span decades.
Inspiring and responsible, inventive and original, rooted in the traditions of the local community even as it marks its place in global culture, the Miami Innovation Tower signals to the world that Miami is holding on to its special flare even as it catches and rides the coming high-tech wave.