Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/603573
CULTURED 251 Noting that even basic room proportions impact an occupant's perception, he says, "I cannot design something that does not make you feel something." For Weinfeld's next American project, the Fasano Hotel and Residences at Shore Club—to be completed at the end of 2017—the desired feeling is escape. To describe his remaking of the circa 1939 Shore Club building (which was last reworked by David Chipperfield a decade and a half ago), Weinfeld flirts with one of those taboo big statements. "When I enter a hotel in Miami I have to take three pills, because it's so unbearable that you are forced to listen to bop bop boop music at six in the morning." Even so, Weinfeld's work will speak loudly, as he has squared off his signature terraces—some measuring 3,100 square feet—of The Central Tower. The result will be not only an attenuated, razor-sharp counterpoint to the adjoining Art Deco–era Sheraton, but also an urban oasis of wide-open expanses, lush balconies and other antidotes to overdone slickness. If one were to describe Weinfeld's magic, it might just be this combination of humble self-presentation and incisive action. "I never advertised my work in 42 years, never sold myself, never gave a dinner to have a client. I'm not even a social guy," Weinfeld says. "I'm not here to make a masterpiece; I listen to people and respect their wishes. Though I think I do a little more, because I try to touch people in my work." Weinfeld is the rare architect who recognizes that his is a service profession, yet still finds ways to unite accommodation and mastery. This understanding unlocks exactly why his other favorite memory was made at age 27 when, visiting New York, Andy Warhol strolled past his hotel window—"And I went crazy, because I knew everything about him, and yet I couldn't go and run after him, because I had already held such a strong image of him." The artist who elevated commerce to art is inspiring this virtuoso to achieve transcendence on similar terms. PHOTO BY FERNANDO GUERRA