Between exposed slabs and sharply angled columns, parked cars occupy spaces tall enough for weddings, exhibitions, and dinners. No exterior walls conceal the ramps, and no decorative facade hides the vehicles. The 1111 Lincoln Road architecture starts with a contradiction: the need to store hundreds of cars produced a recognizable entrance to Miami Beach's pedestrian promenade.
That contradiction makes the building work. Herzog & de Meuron did not disguise the garage as something more respectable. They left its concrete, circulation, cars, and structural loads exposed, then gave those ordinary elements enough height and space to accommodate other uses.
They left its concrete, circulation, cars, and structural loads exposed, then gave those ordinary elements enough height and space to accommodate other uses.
How zoning limits shaped the project's central problem
In 2005, Robert Wennett bought the 1960s SunTrust building and the adjacent surface parking lot, where Lincoln Road meets busy Alton Road. Miami Beach's zoning rules severely restricted the amount of additional enclosed floor area permitted on the site. Parking, however, was allowed in significant quantities. The least glamorous part of the development would therefore occupy much of it.
The obvious approach was to demolish the old office block and start over. Wennett refused. He wanted to incorporate the SunTrust building into a larger composition marking the western entrance to Lincoln Road, where Morris Lapidus's 1960 pedestrian promenade had previously dissolved into traffic.
After roughly 20 years working on commercially driven developments, Wennett selected Herzog & de Meuron. He did not treat the commission as an exercise in fitting cars efficiently onto parking decks. A practical requirement became an architectural question: if a parking garage had to be built, did it have to look like one?
Why 1111 Lincoln Road architecture needed extra height
Christine Binswanger and Herzog & de Meuron approached the garage as a public building, a transition where people leave private vehicles and enter Lincoln Road on foot. Rather than place that transition inside a dark box, they kept the structure almost completely open. Cars, ramps, people, concrete supports, air, light, and views remained visible.
The permitted height was roughly 50 feet short of what the architects wanted. Their request for additional height was not an attempt to add more floors or enclosed floor area. They stretched the same number of levels into a sequence ranging from 8 feet to 34 feet high. Double and triple-height floors gave the garage roughly the same presence as the retained SunTrust building.
Double and triple-height floors gave the garage roughly the same presence as the retained SunTrust building.
Those variations broke the repetition of a conventional garage. Loads travel through an irregular system of vertical, angled, and branching columns as slabs shift and spans widen. With no facade to cover the structure, the exposed cast-in-place concrete defines the building: hovering plates, supports, ramps, cars, and open sky. The nickname House of Cards makes sense, although engineers carefully calculated its apparent precariousness.
When parking floors became rooms for Miami Beach
The oversized levels held cars most of the time. Once cleared, however, they could host dinners, fashion shows, exhibitions, parties, and weddings. The extra height was not merely decorative.It created enormous outdoor rooms with long views across Miami Beach, while the absence of exterior walls admitted daylight and required almost no mechanical ventilation.
Once cleared, however, they could host dinners, fashion shows, exhibitions, parties, and weddings.
This flexibility extended across a wider mixed-use development. A glass retail cube occupied the fifth floor, while shops and restaurants continued Lincoln Road at street level. A smaller building contained a replacement bank branch with residences above, allowing storefronts to open the base of the old SunTrust building. In the project's most unusual move, Wennett placed his own home inside the garage, directly alongside its slabs, columns, and views.
Raymond Jungles worked with the architects and the city to extend the pedestrian environment to Alton Road through planting, paving, and outdoor rooms. Completed in 2010 with roughly 300 parking spaces, 1111 soon drew architects, photographers, visitors, and event guests. It received the Mies Crown Hall America's Prize in 2014. Its distinction lies in plain sight: the practical components of parking also support dinners, exhibitions, weddings, shops, restaurants, and a home.
