Join us Thursday, February 2 for an intimate conversation with Roberto Behar and Rosario Marquardt, from the interdisciplinary office R & R Studios. We will hear a brief presentation and then engage in dialogue with Roberto and Rosario on The Biggest M in the World, the studio’s public art project at the Riverwalk Metromover Station. The conversation will explore not just the meaning and implications of the M, but also, as a consequence, the greater story of Downtown Miami.
The night will conclude with a book signing of R & R Studios’ M, a recent addition to Neushop’s curated selection of titles on design & architecture.
About The M Project
The M is a public art piece along the Miami River in Downtown. Part of the Miami-Dade Art in Public Places Program, the M is located where Miami’s founding mother, Julia Tuttle, once held her home, and celebrates Miami’s centennial anniversary. The aim of this project is to reconsider the notion of art in public places from the point of view of architecture as public art.
The M resides at the encounter of ships, elevated trains, highways, skyscrapers and airplanes above. It engages the wild, gray, unfinished beauty of ethnically diverse downtown Miami. Within this atmosphere of motion, “the biggest “M” of the world brings e-motion; a pause for the eye where to fix a memory; an element of reference beyond doubt within the area, and a source of wonder in the on-going collective invention of Miami.
The “M” stands for Miami, Magic Metro, Mover and as landmark in a land of immigrants that may also celebrate Motherhood and Memory, and hence the birth of the first Pan-American city under construction. In this regard, the “M” is a Model of Multiples Meanings, the secret of which remains a Mystery. Thus, from one state of mind the “M” might be seen as a ruin while from another may be perceived as an unfinished event.
As a Monument, the “M” doubles as a toy, introducing human scale to the life of this part of the city, while simultaneously participating in the tradition of the colossal in America. Thus, the project provides identity to the area and mediates between the scale of the context and the size of the station creating a small square of sorts as one exits or enter the Metro-Mover station.
Like Alice in Wonderland, who changes scales to transform through dreams her perception of reality, the “M” of Miami provides physical evidence of the fantastic as part of everyday life.
About Roberto Behar & Rosario Marquardt | R & R Studios
R & R Studios, the collaborative office of Roberto Behar and Rosario Marquardt is a multidisciplinary practice weaving together visual arts, architecture, design and the city. Celebrated, as one critic put it “as architects of hope” their works propose encounters of stories and spaces, which alternate between the personal and the public, the quotidian and the extraordinary, the poetical and the political. R & R Studios works erase boundaries between art and life and suggest “imaginary solutions” for a better world.
Rosario and Roberto are known for creating social sculptures for public pleasure. All together Now in downtown Denver, the biggest M in the world in Miami, The Living Room, their iconic Miami home turned inside out; Public Squares in Mexico DF and Copenhagen and most recently Besame Mucho their “super billboard” at Coachella Music and Arts Festival 2016 all suggest a world of possibilities were the fantastic becomes part of everyday life.
Their award winning practice has been published in over 250 publications worldwide and exhibited in solo and group shows in museums, institutions and galleries in America and Europe. They have received American Institute of Architects awards and Americans for the Arts selected their projects among the best Public Art of 2007 and 2013.
Rosario and Roberto have known each other since childhood, received Diplomas in Architecture from the Universidad Nacional de Rosario in Argentina and later studied at the legendary Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in New York City. Roberto has been a Visiting Artist at the Getty Research Center in Los Angeles and a Visiting Professor at Harvard University and Cornell University and together with Rosario Visiting Artists at the American Academy in Rome. In 2007 they published The Peace Project, in 2011 and 2013, M, The Living Room and Museum Works, the first three volumes of R & R Studios’ “Incomplete Works”. Roberto Behar & Rosario Marquardt currently teach at the University of Miami School of Architecture.
The works of Roberto and Rosario belong in diverse private collections and public institutions, amongst them the Perez Art Museum Miami, the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, the NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale, the Boca Raton Museum of Art, the Archives d’Architecture Moderne in Brussels, and the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires.
Thursday, February 2nd, 2017
7:00 PM
Neushop
Downtown Miami
15 SE 2nd Avenue
33131
Validated Parking
College Station Garage 190 NE 3rd St
Convention Center Garage 100 SE 2nd St
$1 up to 3 hours
