The Significance of the Unbuilt Project

ArgGEO’s proposal for a continuous waterfront walk along Biscayne Bay in Downtown Miami, known as the Pink Link, had its roots in a number of waterfront proposals alongside Biscayne Bay. Beginning with a 2007 proposal called Miami Waterline, the firm began to think deeply about pedestrian connectivity alongside the waterfront edge. The effort would continue with a series of other projects spanning a decade: a 2011 proposal known as Biscayne Line; an art installation called “Migration;” and, finally, the Pink Link in 2017.

The fact that none of the proposals were realized, hardly diminishes their importance. Each iteration spawned a legacy that could have an effect on the city and future work at the firm. Aspects of the designs have already found their way to a number of other built projects, including the Perez Art Museum Miami and Icon Bay Park, both on Biscayne Bay. Several resiliency concepts from the plans were implemented at PAMM. A mangrove leaf motif from Miami Waterline found its way to Icon Bay, as well as in several designs at other projects where elliptical gestures have become something of a signature for the firm. 

But if one were to ask Laurinda Spear what inspired the elliptical motif, she’d likely point to opposing ellipses developed by 17th century Italian architect Francesco Borromini. Or she might suggest a reading of T.S. Elliot’s 1919 essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” to underscore the notion that whatever inspires an architect, likely comes from their own previously completed work or that of another artist or architect—and that’s OK.  

“You always draw from your own work or other historical work,” says Spear. “Somewhere in your education and your consciousness, there's a continuum and you're just part of it.”  

In Elliot’s essay, he eschews the notion of nostalgia as a negative, something to be dismissed by modern thinkers. Instead, he points out that contemporary artists, or in the case of his essay, poets, owe a debt of gratitude to “the dead.”

 He notes that contemporary artists often praise aspects of a work that least resembles the work of anyone else, hyping the artist’s individuality. But this egocentric view ignores the reality of how a work of art affects others, a particular concern to landscape architects working in the public realm.

“No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone… …What happens when a new work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it. The existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new (the really new) work of art among them.”

That Elliot uses the pronoun him is a sign of his times. But more importantly, in the case of this series of proposed projects, it could be argued that each project became an “existing monument” for the next iteration, and, eventually, for future projects, and ultimately for the language of the firm itself.

The initial idea of a continuous pedestrian link arose from a private client’s effort to give a contiguous waterfront park to the city. The client touted the proposed Miami Waterline as a “living edge” that would maintain a “delicate connection between the wild landscape horizon and the contemporary vertical city.”

Planned for the former site of the Miami Herald, just north of the MacArthur Causeway the project dealt head on with how the proposed development would affect its neighbors by attempting to connect with them via the waterfront and further developing the Baywalk, a preexisting pathway  along the bay.

 Plenty of physical hurdles stood in their way, including the causeway and a boat slip that would force a downtown detour for anyone hoping for a walk along the bay. By using the mangrove leave motif, GEO  sought to link the development to nearby Museum Park. Leaf-like islands connected by “branches” jutted out into the bay, creating haven for boats while building bridges above and below the causeway, as well as in front of the boat slip. Seagrass meadows and mangrove bosques were used to mitigate human effects on the natural environment. ADA accessible and solar powered water taxis were conceptualized to connect neighboring islands to mainland amenities. 

 A second developer-driven attempt at waterfront connectivity came with support from The Related Group . The newly renamed Biscayne Line proposal kept several aspects of the Miami Waterline plan, including the mangrove leaf formations. With participation from the University of Miami School of Architecture, the firm identified the “missing teeth” of Miami’s promenade by detailing the many property-owning stakeholders along the Biscayne waterfront.

While both developers were willing, indeed, enthusiastic to support a world-class public amenity at the edge of their projects, by 2018, the city’s planning department had rolled out Miami 21, a revised city code that favored pedestrian accessibility. The code required property owners to develop easements fronting their properties alongside the bay. The hope was that the new regulation would stitch together disparate connections to the rest of the Baywalk. But without cohesive design guidelines, each developer could design their bay front portion in their own manner and a hodgepodge of designs could proliferate. A request for proposals ensued and GEO, with nearly a decade’s worth of research already behind them, proposed the Pink Link.

As if channeling Elliot, the Pink Link was a wholly new work inspired by all the projects of the firm since it was incorporated in 2006—and many designs before that. For example, the color pink was chosen to brand the project. In 1978, Spear designed the Pink House with Bernardo Fort Brescia just as they formed Arquitectonica with Andrés Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Hervin Romney. The Pink House became an iconic building frequently featured on television and in film nearly as much as the Atlantis Condominium, which was shown weekly across the nation as part of the opening credit sequence of Miami Vice. Five years after the Pink House, Christo and Jean-Claude created “Surrounded Islands,” a series of Biscayne Bay islands wrapped in pink. Nature gave Miami pink flamingos, commerce gave it pink neon. The new Bayfront identity would make it official: Miami is pink; pink is Miami.

To underscore the point, GEO incorporated an unbuilt work, Migration, to punctuate, identify, and brand the heterogeneous sites that made up the newly extended Baywalk. Migration was composed of Melaleucas trees harvested and painted pink. The tree groupings would be imbedded into existing hardscape surfaces. The installation, which would serve as bird perches, would be a reminder of the lack of much needed resting spots for the birds that funnel through the region on their seasonal journeys to and from the Caribbean and South America. Blue circles painted on the ground would symbolize lost canopies, while bird silhouettes would indicate major migratory routes. The use of Melaleucas, an invasive species to the region, would also call attention to how much unwelcome species have thrived in the region.  

The firm designed a  simple three lined logo for Pink Link: one long vertical pink line, with two offshoots vertically angled upward, one green, the other pink. The long line represented the unified Baywalk, while the pink offshoot represented the Brickel Key connection (a nearby island), and the green offshoot represented the Miami River Greenway, previously not included as part of the ensemble.

The new plan envisioned a diversity of access points to navigate east-west causeways, rivers, and boat slips. An ADA-accessible boat shuttle was proposed as a free amenity, that would no doubt attract tourists as well as commuters. A pink floating dock inspired by the logo would run beneath the MacArthur Causeway, finally connecting PAMM and Museum Park to future developments north. In addition to Migration, painted pink palm tree trunks, and other pink icons would continue to guide visitors along the route as well as encourage social media photos.  

The many plans received endorsements from past clients, elected officials, the press, and the public. Yet, all of the plans, spanning nearly a decade, remain unbuilt. Even with the support of public officials, the actual process of building in Miami has, like opinions nationally, fallen under the groundswell of noise fostered by social media, which can sway and mobilize public opinion in a heartbeat.

The change of heart on initially well-received plans can’t be explained in a single essay. Suffice it to say that Spear and Blanco dealt with the loss and got on with the work jobs at hand, though not without an initial bit of soul searching.

“I'd say it pierces our armor to some extent, I mean we're not ignoring it. I guess we're just plain old hardheaded,” said Spear. “It's the commitment to making, having an impact on the built environment and it's not just architecture. It's all the spaces in between, the spaces in the city. It's bringing nature in and helping people understand how to be connected to it. And that's a marvelous thing.”

That a firm led by two women continues to produce radically innovative work for world class clients, despite setbacks, speaks to a tenacity that should go without comment. But both agree that a whiff of chauvinism still wafts through real estate board rooms, municipal halls, and architecture studios. They’re not alone. In a previous generation, architect Denise Scott Brown and architectural theorist Ann Tyng, Ph.D., toiled in the shadow of male partners before getting their due. Tyng, a partner of Louis Kahn, didn’t get a retrospective till the end of her life and Scott Brown was denied the Pritzker Prize awarded to her partner Robert Venturi.  

Spear notes that as far back as the 1950s, when Mary Bunting, Ph.D., was the first female president of Radcliffe, Bunting identified the problem. At the time Bunting, herself a widow and mother of four, created a solution through what became known as the Mary Ingraham Bunting Institute, which helped “gifted women who wish to carry on independent scholarly or creative project” particularly as they continued to raise families. 

“There was quite a period when I was finding one thing after another that supported my basic hypothesis,” Bunting wrote at the time. “There was a climate of unexpectation in America about how women were likely to use their talents and training.”

It’s worth noting that Spear and Blanco, who were both already established architects, received their master’s in landscape architecture while working full time to start the firm. Spear raised six children while establishing her reputation as a world-renowned architect. And Blanco would go on to receiver her Ph.D. in 2019 in landscape architecture while directing the firm.

Miami Link, Biscayne Line, Migration, and Pink Link are part the ArqGEO canon, monuments that will inform and be informed by the new work produced by GEO.

“You just ignore all the noise,” says Spear.

 “Yes. We keep going and do the work,” concurred Blanco.