Miami Marine Stadium Comes Alive?

I was happily surprised by a recent Washington Post article, In Miami, the fate of an architectural gem hangs in the balance by Christine Armario. First, because WAPO doesn’t often publish articles on the front page of the Style section on preservation topics originating in South Florida, and second, because the ‘gem’ in question I recognized from the accompanying photo.

Ms. Armario reported that the City of Miami commissioners are considering whether to approve a $61.2 million bond issue to restore one of the few folded-plate concrete structures in the U.S., namely the Miami Marine Stadium. Perched at the edge of Virginia Key, the stadium’s original purpose was as a grandstand for speed boat races, later adapted for outdoor concerts, and eventually fading into obscurity despite its rather prominent location just off the Rickenbacker Causeway heading to Key Biscayne’s high rent district.

The night I sat in the stadium grandstand to watch Loggins & Messina perform was magical, rising moon with a cool breeze off the ocean, the distant lights of downtown Miami sparkling off the water, an assembly of small crafts tied off between the stadium and the floating stage—and the music to be sure.

“The two recorded a number of Loggins' compositions in Messina's home living room. When Columbia signed Loggins to a six-album contract… recording began in earnest for Loggins' debut album, with Messina as producer… However, by the time the album was completed, Messina had contributed so much to the album–in terms of songwriting, arrangement, instrumentation, and vocals—that an ‘accidental’ duo was born.

From Wikipedia article on Loggins & Messina

Jim Messina came from Buffalo Springfield, who I had first listened to in early in high school, and needed to check out Messina’s new bandmate. Buffalo Springfield was a seminal band that hung together only long enough to leave us besotted fans wondering what they might have become. Theirs were lyrics well beyond the typical pop in the 60s, foretelling what was about to follow.

Lyrics and music, if I’ve not explained, had been a passion since before I was a zygote.

Starting out that evening, it’s also possible I may have shared a few joints with a girl sitting beside me, hair in curls and an elfin smile, and she in turn led me down into that mosh pit of boats where we finished watching the show. I think she knew one of the boaters. It was a grand concert we saw from seats moving gently in the water, side by side, strangers sharing music.

Being married, I had to return home by myself, something we both may have regretted. She’d be a senior citizen by now—that’s how fast time goes by—though I took away memories of that gorgeous musical setting.

That the marine stadium had ever been abandoned continues to puzzle me. Colorado has the Red Rocks Amphitheatre—and Miami once had that special place facing the South Atlantic.

At the time, I don’t believe I knew the name of the architect who had designed it.

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Hilario Candela’s first signature design was the Miami Marine Stadium, sited on Virginia Key, a spit of landfill on the way to Key Biscayne.

At my first post-graduate job, Candela was my top boss. Ferendino Grafton Spillis & Candela was where I landed by luck, alien to all but low country, gators and slow fishers. The infrequent times I was in the great man’s presence, Hilario’s ascetic way of speaking, always tense, always jumping to another topic in accented English with never time to dwell among the common folk, that is what I remember.

So we did not become friends. No matter, either share what you know, or I’ll go looking for it elsewhere. Though, I’m wondering about his own ghosts now.

Ferendino was the first name on the shingle, following previous iterations with Lester Pancoast, who was surely a founding architect in modern Miami. Grafton came from an old line Florida family linked by marriage to Lawton Chiles, then a U.S Senator. Spillis, no one saw ever—so his nickname was ‘the Ghost.’

And then we come to Candela. His name on the masthead was last in the lineup, his being the newest partner. Who had come before, I don’t know, but he was the firm’s lead design architect. Whether he was the first architect to immigrate from Cuba after Fidel took over, he was not the last. Being the firm’s principal designer meant a major number of design architects were also Cuban born—something I had not expected.

It might have helped if I spoke Spanish—even more if my ancestors on both sides were conquistedorses from the Old World. There was a visible hierarchy based on skin tone in that office, probably no more so than other large offices of that time—and the gringos didn’t fit into either.

Candela wasn’t a leader I ever expected to gain from—good guess. I worked under several of the firm’s Cuban associates, but they always went back to what Candela wanted. I wonder now, did he seek the position or find himself stuck there? I passed the architectural exam two years out of grad school, and was laid off in that late 70s recession. Sad to think we never engaged in a real conversation, say for example, he’d gotten his degree from Georgia Tech and I came close to the same. Who’d a thunk.

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Ms. Armario misses on a few points of architectural history. The stadium does not derive its meaning, in any shape or form, from the Brutalist style of architecture, itself a creature in this country largely of the 60s. Rather, the stadium comes from earlier modernist roots, the thin-shell concrete forms of Oscar Niemeyer and Pier Luigi Nervi, who in turn harked back to the great Spanish architect, Antoni Gaudi’s Church of the Holy Family in Barcelona.

Structural expressionism is what it’s best termed. From early on, I was drawn to it. Gaudi was a hero of mine from not so many years after I was a zygote. Eero Saarinen was another early hero. The bones of a place speak to me; they tell a quiet story.  They always have.

Cathedral of Brasília, hyperboloid structure by Oscar Niemeyer—photo by Ugkoeln CC BY-SA 3.0

The National Congress of Brazil, Brasília by Oscar Niemeyer—photo by Mario Roberto Duran Ortiz Public Domain

Antoni Gaudi’s Church of the Holy Family—photo by Robertgombos CC BY-SA 4.0

Gaudi’s paraboloid arches were unique, coming only from the gothic in scale. And his were built from hand-drawn details and his directions on site. That he died being run over in the street seems another on the tally someone ought to pay.

The tradition of structural expressionism is being carried forward today by Santiago Calatrava, the Spanish architect and structural engineer, whose Milwaukee Art Museum is but one example, another being the new transit hub at the World Trade Center site in NYC, but look at these:

Milwaukee Art Museum by Santiago Calatrava—photo be Andrew C. from Flagstaff, USA CC BY 2.0

Auditorio de Tenerife by Santiago Calatrava—photo by Diego Delso CC BY-SA 3.0

Thin-Shell vs Brutalism

Ms. Armario’s story was accompanied by an unfortunate photo taken from the back side of the stadium—the parking lot side, complete with large dumpster, and probably the only view to which she had access. A second archive photo shows Candela in his late 20s during the stadium’s construction. The third photo of the stadium seating itself is overexposed and too close to give the full effect of the folded-plate umbrella Candela had designed to provide shade from a tropical sun.

What thin-shell designs and brutalism share in common is concrete, though how the material was put to use bears little resemblance.

Romans used a form of reinforced concrete, though it took the early Modernists to declare the beauty of the raw material itself, wanting to shed the world of stone and brick.

By itself, concrete is massively strong in compression, the reason it’s used for foundations—similar to stone and masonry. What concrete is lousy at is fighting tension; it breaks too easily. Pound for pound, wood is far better in tension. But combining it with steel reinforcing, allows concrete to span distances it otherwise couldn’t. The physics of reinforced concrete is far more complicated than structural steel, as witnessed by the fact that they teach steel engineering before concrete. Among other issues, the steel is buried inside the concrete, making it a challenge to diagnose—as they discovered in the recent Miami condo collapse.

What the Romans had so successful constructed—employing arch and dome structures—putting otherwise inert materials such as brick, stone and concrete to let gravity lock in the structure, was lost with the Roman order. Gothic builders in Europe lost the art of the round Roman arch and vault—pointed arches only, and those needed massed buttresses to keep from blowing out sideways. Gothic architecture was all about resisting the lateral forces the goths of those times could not otherwise overcome. Oh, I kid the goths.

Harry Weese’s Washington Metro stations—the initial underground ones—employed coffered vaults the Romans would have recognized, and the above ground gullwing station design was of the thin-shell style. Eero Saarinen’s Dulles Airport and his former TWA terminal at JFK Airport both fall clearly into structural expressionism’s camp.

What thin-shell concrete engineers and architects have always striven for is to defy gravity to the extent of the available technology. What Brutalism expressed was the weight and mass in the manner of gothic architecture. One might mistake Hoover Dam as being brutalist, expect it’s really a vault laid on its side to resist the weight of the water behind it.

Hilario Candela’s cantilevered concrete roof flying out over the stadium seating comes from the school of structural expressionism. The site is one of a kind, befitting Candela’s design. Were a sympathetic architect to compliment it by, say, a floating stage of structural glass and steel, linked with a pedestrian bridge of a kind Calatrava could provide—perhaps amplified with a boutique restaurant and bar extending further into the water—what a way to spend an evening on the water.

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It's hard to find good photographs of the Miami Marine Stadium. The National Trust for Historic Preservation website shows the stadium in its abandoned state.

“During its heyday, powerboat races, Easter sunrise services, and concerts under the stars all drew thousands to Miami Marine Stadium. Hundreds of boats would surround the floating stage to enjoy the festivities. The experience was authentic Miami—there was nothing else like it, anywhere.

“The 6,566-seat stadium was designed by 27-year-old, Cuban-born architect Hilario Candela. When it was poured in 1963, its 326-foot, fold-plate roof was the longest span of cantilevered concrete on earth. It is a masterwork of civic architecture and modern construction.”

from the National Trust for Historic Preservation website article, Miami Marine Stadium

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Ferendino Grafton Spillis & Candela was sold to DMJM, which was later absorbed into AECOM in a feeding frenzy of acronymic names. Hilario Candela died last January of Covid-19 at age 87. And the jewel he is best known for, the Miami Marine Stadium, continues to face an uncertain future.