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Wednesday, June 15, 2016

You win some, you lose some


This is the 14th floor pool deck of the Icon Brickell complex in Miami, looking out over Biscayne Bay.

Three buildings form around it on the north, south and west sides, leaving the open view you see here facing east. The buildings to be seen are on Brickell Key a small island just offshore. Each of the three Icon buildings are more than 50 floors, offering magnificent views of the bay, Miami River and downtown.

The Viceroy Hotel occupied the west building until it was acquired in June 2016 and changed to a W. I shot it and this picture in 2010 when it was Viceroy managed.

I loved this pool deck and watched the sunrise from it more than a few times.

So what?

Well, the damn thing leaks and had been found to be structurally unsound. The residents of Icon Brickell and the new owners of the hotel tower (an arm of the government of Qatar) have to cough up $14.4 million dollars to fix it. The fix will also take well over a year during which time there will be no pool deck and ongoing construction noise as it is shored up from all sides.

The lawsuits are flying, not at the talented architects at Arquitectonica and Phillipe Starck's firm Yoo, who designed the buildings, but at the contractor.

It's going to be a mess. Such a shame.

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