Story by Karen Wong, New Museum deputy director and A+ Awards juror.

This past December, Snarkitecture made a splash at Design Miami with its audacious inflatable tubes, which created an oversized canopy at the entrance to the eighth annual international design fair. In the spring of 2011, Snarkitecture partners Daniel Ashram and Alex Mustenon caught my eye with their intervention “Dig!” at the Storefront for Art and Architecture. The designers filled the iconic wedge gallery with styrofoam, and then they, friends, and interlopers carved out crevices, rooms, and skylights to create a new typology of interior-igloo wonderland.

So in January, I approached Snarkitecture with an odd request: Could they bring their flair for the temporal to the New Museum’s Spring Gala? This benefit event attracts a discerning crowd of 600, which this year would include honoree Christian Marclay, as well as artists John Baldessari, Annie Leibowitz, George Condo, Cindy Sherman, Marilyn Minter, and John Waters. The venue: Cipriani Wall Street in Downtown New York City. Read more.

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Only a GIF can truly capture the most captivating moments from Design Miami. That’s why we’ve made five!  Above is Booo’s Surface Tension Lamp (by FRONT), a light fixture that blows a continuous stream of incandescent bubbles which stopped visitors in their tracks and created a permanently hypnotized crowd surrounding the booth. Click through to see the rest of the “moving” projects we saw this year!

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“Kosmaj Toy”, 2012 by Los Carpinteros at Sean Kelly

You would expect to see architects wandering the stalls of Design Miami or lounging by the entrance yearning to be chosen to design next year’s pavilion. But cross the parking lot and head into Art Basel Miami Beach and you’ll find that architecture is quietly taking over the art world. Proof of architecture’s ascension: Low Carpinteros’ spiky, sculptural Kosmaj Toy, pictured above, sold within 10 minutes of the opening, according to the New York Times ArtBeat. Indeed, scale models of buildings, cross-sectional drawings, feats of engineering, wild architectural fantasies, and even some full-scale built prototypes could  all be found at the Miami Convention Center (which is itself at the center of an oedipal architectural contest between OMA and BIG). Given that architecture is the mother of all arts, the strong architectural themes at ABMB might indicate a reunification is underway — and we couldn’t be more excited.

We’ve rounded up some of our favorite architecture-inspired art at ABMB. Click through to see them all, and don’t forget to share your favorites in the comments section below.

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By Grace Ehlers

Though almost no Design Miami-goer could look past Snarkitecture’s monolithic Drift pavilion, those who did were rewarded with leather-wrapped trees, 1 million Swarovski crystals, (purposely) broken furniture and more. We’ve rounded up our 10 favorite things we saw during the crazy, party-filled week. So click through to see our top picks, and don’t forget to share your favorites in the comments!

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The eighth edition of Design Miami is officially open! This year, Snarkitecture has designed an inflatable pavilion, ”Drift,” that will greet visitors as they arrive at the event. Luckily for us, Architizer’s fearless leader Marc Kushner is there and has been gracious enough to send us a few shots, up close and personal with the enormous suspended structure. Click through to see the photos!

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This December, controversial artist and architect Vito Acconci will be named Designer of the Year in Miami. He will be joined and honored by the thousands of art and design fans who flock to Florida for giant festivals such as Design Miami and Art Basel. In honor of this award, Acconci has created a jungle gym of sorts called the Klein Bottle Playground to be installed in Miami’s design district by 2014. The mathematical model for the playground is somewhat of a visual trick, typical of Acconci, where no inside or outside exists, just one continual surface. Read more!

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This year marks the eighth edition of Design Miami, and it promises to be bigger than ever. The global design forum, which takes place in December, has upped the number of exhibiting galleries representing both new and iconic design works. And it’s expanded its geographic reach, featuring galleries from previously unrepresented countries and a larger focus on American design. To announce this super-sized theme, the New York-based firm Snarkitecture has created an enormous inflatable pavilion called Drift, which will greet visitors to the week’s events. Read more!­

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Tony Chambers with Marc Kushner; All photos: Emilio Collavino

This past week the art and design world decamped to South Beach for Art Basel Miami Beach, the largest art fair of its kind in the world, and Design Miami, a spin-off event that gathers together the work of international designers and architects. Over the course of six days, $2.5 billion worth of art from as many as 260 galleries and over 2,000 artists shared space with multiple architectural pavilions–the most memorable of which were Norman Foster’s full-scale replica of Buckminster Fuller’s “Fly’s Eye” Dome and David Adjaye’s cave-like folly–not to mention installations and furniture from the likes of Matali Crasset and Daniel Libeskind.

Against this backdrop, Wallpaper* Magazine and Architizer hosted the first ORNARE Architecture Talk, which investigated the impact of Brazil’s building boom on the world of design. Led by architecture writer Fred Bernstein, the esteemed panel of international architects included Wallpaper* editor Tony Chambers, Architizer CEO and Co-founder/principal architect at HWKN Marc Kushner, Miami-based architects Chad Oppenheim and Rene Gonzalez, and some of Latin America’s most interesting architects such as Joao Armentano from Brazil and Fernando Romero from Mexico. The talk focused on the notion of Brazil’s emergent turn as incubator for progressive and experimental design. With a robust and growing economy that will invest heavily in infrastructural and architectural projects for high-profile events such as the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics and beyond, Brazil will be seen as a new design frontier with seemingly endless opportunities for architects around the world. Now onto the event pics…

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Art Basel/Design Miami is upon us! As you’re packing up your flippy floppies and penciling in your schedule for next week, here’s a quick reminder about our event with Wallpaper* at the Ornare showroom on December 2nd! Read on.

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Ryan Quinlan, Fred Bernstein, Chad Oppenheim, and Marc Kushner.

Not all of us are lucky enough to be heading to Design Miami and Art Basel Miami in two weeks, but at last night’s Design Into Miami event in SoHo, we felt like we were in Miami (B*tch).

The evening — hosted at Relative Space‘s Bond Street showroom – celebrated the approach of Design Miami with a conversation between Miami-based architect Chad Oppenheim and Architizer’s Marc Kushner. Their chat ranged from modernism, to love, to sustainability (no joke), all deftly moderated by Saxon Henry, founder of social media consultancy Adroyt and author of Four Florida Moderns. The walls of Relative Space were draped in pastel-and-neon images from Miami photographer Paul Clemence, making the evening a tropical mirage amidst an East Coast November.

As we departed into the chilly night, we were already anticipating the December 2nd Miami event at Ornare, where Fred Bernstein will moderate a discussion with Kushner and others on Florida, Brazil, and Tropical Modernism. More on that to come – in the meantime, here are the party pics.

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