How Light Becomes Material in the Parking Garages of Miami Beach

"Parking garages are among the most unloved and unobserved structures in architecture. They keep our environments functioning and our lives moving, but we don’t expect them to deliver joy or enlightenment. In Miami Beach, however, architects have used light to highlight space, surface, and movement in these utilitarian spaces, creating the very best kind of architecture—functional and ennobling."

"In these garages, for which the city has become known, architects have engaged with the very form and function of the structures, wielding light as a building material—manipulating its color and character to define space and create an experience that responds to the beach’s unique strata. There is hardly a more dead mass than a parking garage, but animated under tropical light, mass becomes driven energy."