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On the sort of picture-perfect building—points to a staunch couch in an indeter- Miami(which was ultimately delayed),a party co- , Q
day that improves the aes- urinate chenille and remarks,"We make sure that hosted by Margulies and attracting all manner of I t7
thetic tone of just about any-
J Y all furniture we design is Johnny De proof:He luminaries,from MAM's SuzanneSuranne Delehanty to
thing on Miami Beach, a stayed at the Astor,which Patrick a designed, Bonnie Clearwater of MoCA to the Art in America Q
brand-spanking-new Saga- and was pretty rough on the place,although he crowd-
never
rowd z
Saga-
more—the newest contender never seriously damaged anything.But in hotels, Contemporary an is the engine driving the
in the Collins Avenue hotel even ordmary people will have sex anywhere." Prof y,and it's everywhere at once,an engage-
sweepstakes—is looking With that reminder of the unchecked appe- mem of the senses that's endlessly diverting.The
even prettier than usual,a studyin elegance and rear lobbycould almost be an art gallery—a l- tY
rites of humanity,hanker takes in the whole of g D _
whimsy In the pocket-sized lobby bar,sawhorsesthe rear lobby with one sweeping gesture("We lery with a bar and a few pieces of way-designed f i
support two saddles—an English ladies'sidesaddle furniture—and it's framed by a precisely installed
had to blow out the entire first floor—it used to be 0
affair and a regular cowboy number—used as row of busts, seven somber heads by Christine + p
rooms—to do all this"),and leads the way into 1--
barstools, the bag of mixed stylistic signals the library. The long room is dominated by a Borland,who uses such titles as The Dead Teach I 0
accented by an imposing coral-rock sculpture ofthe living in her work.Carolyn Shave's Bruno a Ft-
marble
marble table and art books,focusing on everyone
=Absolute vodka bottle.In tum,that modem icon life-size sculpture of a ran in coral rock—anchors w
from Nan Goldin to Tina Barney to Mitch Epstein. to
is juxtaposed with Tseng Kwong Chi's arid self- one corner of the lobby.In an alcove is a series of to
portraits,the artist in gray Mao suit and sunglasses Contemporary art is a particular passion of the reinterpreted iconic photographs by Vik Muniz, , 3
doing a grin-and-grip routine with such American Sagamore's owner,Marty Taplin;along with his spanning the gamut from John Lennon in an"I
wife,Cricket,he is a devout collector and gallery C-
symbols as the Statue of Liberty and Mickey Mouse Love New York"T-shirt to the famed image of a
at Disneyland. owner.(The couple has the Margulies Taplin Gal- Vietnam officer blowing out a prisoner's brains =
1 in BayHarbor,a joint venture with renowned
Scott Hanker, who works with Patrick !cry J with a pistol.A piece that might be mistaken for
Kennedy—conceptual and space designer for the collector and developer Marty Margulies.)Appro- an especially elaborate coffee table is actually Tho- O
newly reborn 1948 Sagamore, originally cre- priately enough,the hotel debuted with a brunch mas Rose's steel,bronze and granite bench,Dark b
ated by Albert Anis of the 420 Lincoln Road during the slew of openings surrounding Art Basel Water/Night Sky. And one wall is pure pop nz.
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The Sagamore Hotel-Ocean Drive Magazine Article
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201
The Sagamore Hotel-Ocean Drive Magazine Article
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irony,Allan Sekula's Cibachromc triptych entitled Dear was brought in for that particular element of the project.
,,...• Bill Gates.The artist is photographed swimming just Aside from furniture from Kennedy's firm,some of the
offshore from Gates'massive home near Seattle,in the original Sagamore pieces were recovered and utilized,
1r '> manner of Winslow Homer's Lost on the Grand Banks, as well.)Artwise,the space is dominated by Massimo
- with a manifesto of sorts accompanying the image:"I Vitali's enormous Pic Me Allee#700,a photographic
x swam past your dream house the other day,but didn't mural of Parisians enjoying Bastille Day•and a nice
stop to knock," accompaniment to a retro-glam circular white sofa.
'V The front lobby,the most historically intact sec- Another wall corttains a bit of dreamy Grand Ho-
tion of the hotel—Miami Beach Design Review Board tel quasi erotica,Liza May Post's A Slower Life/
••. 'slextyn'. uidelines are prettystrict in that regard--is also the Lan amer leven,a white-on-white colorprint of a girl
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- '' most beautiful room of the property,awash in terrazzo in a hotel room bending over to pick up her bags.Beside
#roti•
andsuch historical details as streamlined comers,a faux the old-fashioned house phone is a Le Corbusier chair
n w r,•r t fireplace and a lobby desk with a restored series of vin and words-as-imagery art of the fun variety,a piece
r tage glass mail slots for guests.(Allen T.Shulman,who utilizing scraps of text from romance novels:"She said
1111
has done an array of historic renovations on the Beach, she'd never cheat on me._.He said he'd always hug me."
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The Sagamore Hotel-Ocean Drive Magazine Article
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Back to the rear of the property,by the pool
area, swimmers are immediately confronted by
Carlos Betancourt's Daca Baqua—With Letter to
Bartolome de s Casas,a 5'x'21'photograph of I
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the artist lying in the surf,his body covered with
his signature reverse script and ancient characters
as a kind of portable symbolism.Alongside the
high-Italian molded plastic chairs,pool and bad-
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minton court is the newly created wing of town- < 17;
house-style accommodations:The Sagamore is an
all-suite property,some 93 in all,an effort that also
° as wrae�
incorporated the design talents of Helene Weissner.
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(The rooms are comfortable,in soft modulated col- : ?`-
ors, with such touches as concealed refrigerators =
and built-in desks.) . ...
Standing by the pool, the ambition of this
particular stretch of Collins Avenue is thoroughly
evident.To the south,directly next door,is the lin-
gering construction mess of the Ritz-Carlton,on
hold this afternoon;to the north is the National and
the Delano. Of course,it's all in the details,and -:
Hankes points to a little trickery entailed in the key- ;" � "' r
stone pavers:"We made those look old by rubbing `
some buttermilk in the stone--the sun gives it that
effect.Patrick worked on a lot of movies as a de-
signer,and he learned that trick from Room With a ',
View,the Merchant-Ivory film.To him,hotels are
like movie sets." - 41144.
SHOCK OF THE NEW
A few days later,Marty Taplin is calling from
the Berkshires,talking about the Sagamore gestalt. 1
"I wouldn't call myself a hotel operator,although I
was one of the original investors in the t,:
Fontainebleau wren Steve Muss took it over.Mostly
I'm a developer.My dad,Sol Taplin,had the old
Chateau Motel in Sunny Isles and Harbour House
a
in Bat Harbour.right down the street from Marty
Margulies'Kenilworth.Malty got us into art about
15 years ago,and we spent the last three curating '' Yi.*its. tr,+w i
the art for the hotel.Cricket did most of the work "lama,.sar'a i,sv•. *a ,
»w.••«.s 4d.t+r tsar anent
"The art world really appreciates the hotel, 1111k aszh addle harrnar+s.
and of course,people who come to South Beach - movie Slaves of New York and Harm's Way at La
photographers,moviemakers,models—are also aR- MaMa Experimental Theatre.He's a man with a
fists in their own right,and can enjoy the collection. 4i.
We mixed it up with a little hit of everything—we 1'h o"o tt)g ral)ll e 1's• keen sense of theater—sometimes very grand the-
even have some family in there,my former step- ater--and those talents played out well in the Sag-
mother Sheila Elias Everyone seems to love the . _ amore:
art in the hotel:The other day,we had a famous
1�T { ���c1 `' "I'd known Marty and Cricket for some time
rapper staying there,and he looked around the lobby before they acquired the Sagamore property,they
and said,'Man,this place is in a zone by itself'" E 11 odi,'I s a n d the needed someone to bring a focus to what the hotel
In the meantime,Kennedy is in his offices off was,a core,and simply to get the project moving.
Lincoln Road, the former headquarters of theart ‘vorld really It turned out to be a great working relationship,
pioneering art deco-era architect L.Murray Dixon. . with lots of free rein and trust,a way for them to
He's juggling a few upcoming projects—the `ij �'4 �i�} the define themselves and the hotel itself: One day,
Simone on lower Collins Avenue,a block of epic- +F 1 lMarty looked at me and said, `I was a needle in
sized lofts in downtown Miami—while touchingj 4 `� search of a haystack.'And I understood exactly
on the past here and there:His credits include the t1()Ce' wlsit he was talking about,strange as it might seem.
20 3
The Sagamore Hotel-Ocean Drive Magazine Article
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"It's really a new kind of venue, a property that demands intellectual
participation rather that being just another hedonistic playground."
•J.s.sky kot..: . New York is called that now—and the contents
''..,..:L.,-,,,-._'4?-';')IlikH
really fill a local need for books on art.If South
Beach is going to be a center of art,a place that
generates both artists and money,this library is a
place to begin.
"The idea of mixing an art gallery with a
hotel,creating a background that is sympathetic
to art,was a difficult thing to nail.But we didn't
do anything obvious—we enlarged the columns
3 ,i,., in the lobby,exaggerated their effect,rather than
making them smaller.Off the bar,a garden room
# is going to be full of orchids,with a film of pale-
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violet glass and spotlights,so the petals look like
shooting stars---it'll be more of a diorama than a
room.Amusing things like that,and the saddles
at the bar,are part of hotel life and smart market-
ing,too—even people who don't get the art can
"To have clients who understand art so well few seconds they're looking at the ceiling and understand a room of orchids. .
was,of course,a great thing:The decor had to be whole layout of the Iobby,figuring out what role "An older space was harder to adapt to con-
created with integrity,so that anything could be put they're going to play on this stage.A good hotel is temporary art.And of course,the simplest things
in there.A hotel is a commercial space in the broad- a setting of a play people are paying to put them- are always more difficult to make.If less is more,
est sense,attracting all kinds of people,but the Sag- selves in—they want to be part of something they you also see those few things more if they're not
amore brings the one-on-one approach of a gallery can't get at home,live out their fantasies in a place surrounded by clutter.Everything is seen,which
to a hotel setting.You want people to love the art,be that still has a sense of humanness." gives the hotel such an honesty.It's really a new
educated in the act of looking at it,but you also don't For Kennedy,the art also has elements of kind of venue,a property that demands intellec-
want too much distance from the hotel experience— function over form,enabling the Sagamore to en- tual participation rather than being just another
which is really more about theater. If you watch ter the realm of the entirely useful:"To me,the hedonistic playground.The Sagamore is still a
people walk into the front door of a hotel,within a most innovative room is the library--a hotel in place to have a drink,have sex,and all that.but
704
The Sagamore Hotel-Ocean Drive Magazine Article
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t.• ¢ the art plays with your mind as well.
‘i "The moms are more concerned with clean
iruseful theater,comfort without showy objects:We
used a lot of built-ins,and ideas like making the �_"
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kitchen resemble a bar,experimenting with the idea
" of home.A really successful project is timeless
in an almost invisible way,and they're usually
spaces that are minus the ego of the designer.The
r=• Astor was done right the first time,and very little , .
has been done to the hotel since. You want to gtit
keep people excited about the property,get them
to participate in a new way,but not do something
`:fit,: . mi4 4s44. ganew just for the sake of being new.When it's a
tamyain lin 1 o„,404 - trend,then it might just as well be a nightclub."t
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The Sagamore Hotel-Ocean Drive Magazine Article
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