The Miami Seaquarium is MiMo central on Virginia Key.MiMo stands for Miami Modernist Architecture, a term landscape architect Randall Robinson and Miami Beach interior designer Teri D’Amico coined to describe a style of architecture from the 1950s and 1960s. (see info and link to the Nov. 28 MiMo Festival below).
The Miami Seaquarium, with its Buckminster Fuller-designed geodesic dome (19
60) and the historic Miami Marine Stadium, distinguish Virginia Key as home to a small, yet remarkable collection of institutional mid-century Modern architecture, according to Miami Architecture (University Press of Florida), a new book co-authored by Robinson.
The entry on the Seaquarium explains how it came to be:
..the Miami Seaquarium was one of a network of attractions constructed to exploit tourists’ thirst for exotic flora and fauna in this outpost of ‘subtropical America. It was also a major thematic attraction, designed to bolster tourism in Miami and to increase toll revenue on the Rickenbacker Causeway. ...The construction of more advanced aquatic theme parks in the intervening years, such as Sea World near Orlando, makes the Seaquarium’s 1950’s vintage plant seem quaint today. However, when completed it was one of only three large tank oceanariums in the United States and a technological feat of marine architecture and showmanship.
The inaugural MiMo Festival takes place Sunday, 28, 2010. This "living art" festival includes a walking tour, art mural installations and performances throughout the day.
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