Bringing back the glamour to MIAMI
Miami Beach was a mangrove swamp before its massive development started in the 1920s
WHEN you enter ‘the cathedral,’ it’s quite a spiritual experience.
It certainly lifts the spirits, it’s inspiring, it’s eye-catching... and it’s different.
It faces East, just like church, but it’s not every day you enter a vast, gold-columned space that may have a cathedral calm, but is in fact the entrance to one of the world’s most amazing hotels.
Because the Faena Hotel in Miami Beach is something else.
This imposing and impressive entrance – complete with meaningful murals painted on the high, surrounding walls – is not the only place that gives you an ethereal experience.
British artist Damian Hirst may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but two of his commissioned giant sculptings here are ‘awesome,’ as the Americans say at the drop of a hat.
His gilded mammoth, called ‘Gone But Not Forgotten,’ is in a huge glass case on the pathway between the hotel and the Atlantic Coast beach and boardwalk. And in one of the restaurants is a huge unicorn, showing its inside structure on one side. Sounds odd, but it works well. The hotel itself, the brainchild of Argentinian architect and designer Alan Faena, is the centrepiece of a whole new cultural district that has been given special designation by Miami Beach, alongside its more famous cousin down the road, the famous Art Deco District in South Beach.
This district already has iconic status on the historic register, and its kid brother is destined to follow suit.
A $1 billion investment programme aims to bring back the glamour and the cachet of the era when Hollywood stars flew south for the sun, sea, sand and celebrity lifestyle.
The wonderfully preserved Art Deco seafront buildings of nearby South Beach give away the era of those golden days when the Roaring Twenties set would be in residence, stretching right up to the 1950s and 60s, when celebs like the ‘Rat Pack’ of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Junior and Peter Lawford would be in town.
Faena hopes to bring back that high- end feel, ending the faded glory that sneaked in. With that in mind, he brought in film director Baz Luhrmann to help with the design, hoping to recapture the excitement and élan of his films The Great Gatsby, Moulin Rouge and Romeo and Juliet.
Faena also engaged Luhrmann’s wife Catherine Martin, the renowned designer, to add even more class and style.
Faena’s revamped and restyled hotel – originally the 1920s-style Saxony Hotel – is a temple of taste and visual pleasure. It has beautifully designed Latin American chic, without being garish or unpleasantly in your face.
There are vibrant colours – the Faena Red is its signature – for outsidee chairs, or for bedroom sofas, but the e turquoise carpets and curtains made e by Catherine Martin provide a soothing g addition. It blends beautifully.
Hotel rooms are expansive and ultraa modern – including a loo that washess your private parts! The bedroomm corridors are, however, original Art t Deco, with clean and understated lines.
To stay is not cheap, but it is one off THE greatest-ever hotel experiences.
A real one-off or special occasion ‘tick,’ unless you have lots of money, love the fine things in life, have a highbudget business account, or include it on your bucket list. You can, of course, dine there as a non-guest at one of the two fine restaurants.
Los Fueges – The Fire – has celebrated Latin American chef Francis Mallmann, with his traditional Argentinian flame cooking technique. Pao offers modern Far East cooking from chef Paul Qui. Without exaggeration, it was perhaps the best fusion of tastes and ingredients my wife and I have ever had in a meal. Quite exceptional.
The hotel’s Tierra Santa Spa – Holy Earth – carries on the spiritual aspect, offering a ‘healing house’ for mind, body and spirit – not just massage. Ancient South American Sharman techniques go alongside modern therapies. The centre has a most original and pleasing chandelier made of colourful Norwegian fish floats. Very different and distinctive.
The six-block Faena Cultural District includes a fine, high-rise apartment building designed by renowned British architect Norman Foster, now ennobled for his style and design of London’s new Wembley Stadium, and the Gherkin on the Thames waterfront.
In Miami Beach’s Faena district, his contribution is a ‘male’ building next door to the ‘ feminine’ hotel masterpiece, with its beautiful exterior curves.
Across the street is another distinctively designed building, the Faena Forum, which is an events centre standing at the heart of the new cultural district. Next door is the classic Casa Claridges boutique hotel – more Bohemian, less expensive, but still historical.
Another building, the Versailles, awaits development, and The Bazaar, a shopping area of style and taste, awaits completion.
It’s a whole new defined ‘district’ of style and taste that is fast taking shape, adding Miami spice.