The Delano South Beach Hotel is an Art-deco skyscraper designed by Robert Swartburg and built between 1944 and 1947 in Miami, FL.
Its precise street address is 1685 Collins Avenue, Miami, FL. You can also find it on the map here.
- About the Delano South Beach Hotel in Miami
- Architect and team
- Architectureal style
- Spaces and uses
- Structure and materials
Building's timeline
Construction begins
1944
80
Construction completed
1947
77
years ago
2024
Architect and team
Robert Swartburg was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design. But there was also one other architect involved, as far as we know. We are talking about P.M.G Architects.
Robert Swartburg and the other architects already mentioned were in charge of the architectural design, however, architecture is a complex discipline, which usually involves many professionals from different fields, without whom this building would have not been possible. We will surely be leaving out a lot of names here, but at the very least we know that there was one other part involved, that was Rob and Rose Schwartz as the Main Developer.
Architectural Style
The Delano South Beach Hotel can be categorized as an Art-deco building.
The Art Deco movement flourished during the 1920s and 1930s, with many historians marking the outbreak of World War II as its final decline. Even though a couple of decades might not seem as much, the Art Deco movement had a great impact on architecture, and it's widely represented in many American cities due to the development boom that happened during that time.
Art Deco marked the abandonment of traditional historicism and the embracement of modern living and the age of the machine. In architecture, that meant leaving behind the ornaments of Beux-Arts and Neo-Gothic buildings and instead favoring simplicity and visual impact through geometric shapes, clean lines, and symmetrical designs. Ornaments were still an important part of the design, but they became bold and lavish, and were often inspired by ancient cultures or industrial imagery, instead of nature.
The Delano South Beach Hotel was completed in 1947, significantly after what could be considered the end of the Art-Deco movement. It was clearly inspired by the movement, but because it doesen't really fit into the movement's timeline it would be considered as a post-movement or neo-movement.
Especially during modern times, there are less imposed rules when it comes to design. Variety and experimentation are welcome, and architects are given the freedom to take inspiration from a wide range of sources.
Looking at the past for inspiration can be a great starting point for an architectural project, and something which Robert Swartburg clearly took advantage of to design the Delano South Beach Hotel. Architects may choose to look to the past for multiple reasons. It could be that they want the building to merge with an older surounding, give it the feeling of having been there for longer than it actualy has, personal preference or it might even be a requieremnt from the client.
Spaces & Uses
The Delano South Beach Hotel reaches an architectural height of 190ft (58m). It has a total of 15 floors.
In regards to parking space, the building has a total of 700 spots available, which roughly equals 47 spots per floor (above ground).
When it opened its doors to the public in 1947, the Delano South Beach Hotel was primarily used as Residential space. That however, is no longer the case, and today it mainly provides Hotel space.
About the Hotel
The hotel is a 5 stars category hotel, with a total of 194 rooms available to the public. The name of the hotel is Delano South Beach Miami Beach.
Materials & Structure
The Delano South Beach Hotel's strucutre consists of concrete load bearing walls.
This means that both the facade and some of the interior walls are structural, and play a curcial role in supporting the building all the way down to the foundations.This solution is cost-effective and straightforward for low and mid-rise buildings, but does not allow for very flexible interior spaces. Structural bearing walls cannot be demolised or easily altered, and even opening new doors and passageways on any of them would requiere a meticulous structural analysis.
This also means that the openings on the facade have to be limited in size and are usually evenly distributed to allow vertical forces to make it's way down.
From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features a continuous plain white painted finish with no ornamentation. Its main characteristic is the top central tower adorned with a pair of wings.
The geometry of the facade is also interesting. Instead of being "flat" like in many other buildings, the Delano's facade is made up of different volumes which are rotated on the floorplan and then extruded from the ground level all the way to the top of the building, generating smaller planes with different orientations.
