Miami Beach Soundscape
Miami Beach Soundscape
Miami Beach, Florida
Miami Beach SoundScape transforms what was once a parking lot into a 3-acre urban oasis for music, performance, and landscape. Directly adjacent to the Frank Gehry-designed New World Symphony in the heart of downtown Miami Beach, the park functions seamlessly, day and night, as a green sanctuary for everyday use and a special gathering place for major cultural events such as Art Basel. Its design knits together cultural institutions and the public realm, bringing new life and newly democratic access to music in the center of the city.
The design team was tasked with creating an exceptional urban park that could support a host of diverse programs and audiences. Typically, a 3-acre site with multiple programmatic demands calls for a durable, hard-surface approach. But, through significant community input, we came to feel strongly that our mission was to deliver a park, not an exposed plaza. This philosophy guided the design to completion, using the careful manipulation of topography, shifting veils of palm trees that conceal and reveal, and a mosaic of meandering pathways to create the illusion of a park much larger than its 3-acre envelope.
After 14 months of planning and construction, the park opened on time and on budget in January 2011 and has seen incredible attendance and success in the community. One of the park’s most prominent features is an unprecedented and ambitious audio-visual program, providing free space to enjoy performances at concert-level quality. SoundScape Park complements the New World Symphony and celebrates Miami’ Beach’s euphoric vitality and cultural resurgence, delivering a unified narrative of music, landscape, and experience.
As a Senior Landscape Architect at West 8, Unknown Studio’s Claire Agre worked on the design team from public engagement and concept design through construction documentation over a two year period (2009-2011).
Project timeline: 2009-2011
Client: City of Miami Beach, New World Symphony
Scope: Full Design Services
Project Type: Culture | Park
Size: 3 acres
Budget: $10,000,000
Team: West 8 urban design & landscape architecture, p.c. Claire Agre, Principal & Senior Landscape Architect
Awards & Recognition:
2015 ASLA New York Chapter Honor Award
2012 AIA Honor Award for Regional and Urban Design
2012 Excellence in Structural Engineering Award, National Council of Structural Engineers
2011 Frederic B. Stresau Award, Cultural Landscape Foundation
2011 ASLA Florida Chapter Award of Excellence
