Miami Beach is home to one of the most fabulously preserved historic districts, thanks to the Miami Design Preservation League (MDPL), which focuses on masterpieces from the Art Deco era & Miami's own unique "MiMo" (Miami Modernism) designs.
The Amadi Companies purchased this amazing waterfront Art Deco/MiMo property, which was orginally built in 1941 & designed by the famed architect Igor Polevitsky.
A word from the MDPL on Art Deco and MiMo:
"In the United States, Art Deco was a product of new ideas and movements and found its inspirations in many distinct early 20th Century European design styles such as Cubism, French Art Deco, German Bauhaus and Expressionism, Dutch de Stijl and Amsterdam School, Vienna Secession and others.
The term Art Deco came into common usage in the 1980s as public interest in the style was renewed and is generally used to cover several distinct periods. Art Deco became known as the Skyscraper Style for the buildings that sprang up in every big city in the mid to late 1920s. This was classical Art Deco, as first popularized at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes held in Paris in 1925, featuring expensive materials, angular yet voluptuous with elaborate motifs of fountains, nudes and flora.
Miami Beach’s building boom came during the second phase of Art Deco known as Streamline Moderne, which began with the stock market crash and ended in most cases with the outbreak of World War II. It was less decorative—a more sober reflection of the Great Depression. It relied more on machine-inspired forms, and American ideas in industrial design. It was buttressed by the belief that times would get better and was infused with the optimistic futurism extolled at America’s Worlds Fairs of the 1930s. Stripped Classic or Depression Moderne was a sub-style often used for governmental buildings, the U.S. Post Office being the best example in Miami Beach. Miami Beach architects used local imagery to create what we now call Tropical Deco. These buildings feature relief ornamentation featuring whimsical flora, fauna and ocean-liner motifs to reinforce the image of Miami Beach as a seaside resort.
Art Deco — What to look for Over-all symmetry, ziggurat (stepped) rooflines, glass block, decorative sculptural panels, eyebrows, round porthole windows, terrazzo floors, curved edges and corners, elements in groups of three, neon lighting (used in both exteriors as well as interior spaces).
The term Art Deco came into common usage in the 1980s as public interest in the style was renewed and is generally used to cover several distinct periods. Art Deco became known as the Skyscraper Style for the buildings that sprang up in every big city in the mid to late 1920s. This was classical Art Deco, as first popularized at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes held in Paris in 1925, featuring expensive materials, angular yet voluptuous with elaborate motifs of fountains, nudes and flora.
Miami Beach’s building boom came during the second phase of Art Deco known as Streamline Moderne, which began with the stock market crash and ended in most cases with the outbreak of World War II. It was less decorative—a more sober reflection of the Great Depression. It relied more on machine-inspired forms, and American ideas in industrial design. It was buttressed by the belief that times would get better and was infused with the optimistic futurism extolled at America’s Worlds Fairs of the 1930s. Stripped Classic or Depression Moderne was a sub-style often used for governmental buildings, the U.S. Post Office being the best example in Miami Beach. Miami Beach architects used local imagery to create what we now call Tropical Deco. These buildings feature relief ornamentation featuring whimsical flora, fauna and ocean-liner motifs to reinforce the image of Miami Beach as a seaside resort.
Art Deco — What to look for Over-all symmetry, ziggurat (stepped) rooflines, glass block, decorative sculptural panels, eyebrows, round porthole windows, terrazzo floors, curved edges and corners, elements in groups of three, neon lighting (used in both exteriors as well as interior spaces).
MiMo
The Post World War II or MiMo Style of design became popular the 1950s when architects were heavily influenced by the International Style taught in most architecture schools. Architects in Miami Beach carried on the whimsical tropical tradition using new materials and forms. Eyebrows gave way to metal louvers and sun shades, tiled mosaic walls became a popular feature as did open balconies and catwalks. A Miami Beach variant, the Garden Style, features apartments that are accessed through open-air walkways built around a central garden.
The Post World War II or MiMo Style of design became popular the 1950s when architects were heavily influenced by the International Style taught in most architecture schools. Architects in Miami Beach carried on the whimsical tropical tradition using new materials and forms. Eyebrows gave way to metal louvers and sun shades, tiled mosaic walls became a popular feature as did open balconies and catwalks. A Miami Beach variant, the Garden Style, features apartments that are accessed through open-air walkways built around a central garden.
MiMo — What to look for Asymmetry and rakish angles; cheese hole cutouts; kidney and amoeba shapes; futuristic jet and space age forms; mosaic murals; anodized aluminum in gold and copper."
Igor Polevitzky is a name synonymous, and perhaps partially responsible, for the term "MiMo".
"He was a decisive figure in the development of the tropical modern home in Florida. Polevitzky was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1911, emigrated with his family to the U.S. and graduated from the Department of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania in 1934. That same year, he settled in Miami, where he quickly acquired a reputation for sophisticated commercial and residential projects. Polevitzky initially engaged the tropical environment with his “tropotype” series of houses, which were raised cottages with wrapping balconies. After World War II, his atmospherically transparent houses helped to characterize a new regional modernism. They emphasized the gentle, embracing qualities of a tropical atmosphere that allowed people to live in the outdoors.
The house in the Florida Home exhibit is a museum reconstruction of a residence that Polevitzky designed in Miami in 1947 for appliance salesman Michael Heller. It is a transitional house that balances the ascetic minimalism of Polevitzky’s postwar GI house types and the more dynamic screened environments of his later “birdcage” houses. A modest one-story box with a shed roof, the house is notable for the elaboration of its screened patio as an extension of the living space. Screened porches and patios were not a new element in Miami; but here the idea was, as Architectural Forum remarked, “extended to its logical conclusion, an airy large (19 x 30 ft.) cage, framed in aluminum.” The screened patio was almost as large as the house itself and created an alternative recreational environment. Its new role within the home was announced by its name: the 'outdoor living area.' "
The Amadi Companies, now being responsible for upholding such high expectations by following in the steps of such a legacy, commissioned the good people of Mac Construction to aid in what would be challenging renovation in terms of creative concept, design, and execution.
6301 Pinetree is currently still under construction. The expansive glass-block style windows, upholding the very essence of Igor's "BirdCage" house & the unique quality of "living outside" in the tropics, have been installed. A newly constructed guest-house in the back of the property was inspired by Igor, and is practically ALL glass!
The iconic round port-hole windows still grace the front of the house (in a group of 3, of course! There is also one by the entrance and on the second-story where the front balcony is located ( Igor was very big on balconies).
For Real Estate Purchase inquiries, please contact Michal at
305-710-4426
Finishing's, such as Art Deco mosaics, terrazzo floors, and decorative sculptural panels can all be customized to the buyer's taste and installed by our excellent craftsman!
With a house like this, the interior finishing design possibilities are truly endless, making it hard to refer to this as a house at all. Rather, we refer to 6301 Pinetree Dr as a true piece of art!
