Developer Elad National Properties wants to bring architect Daniel Libeskind to Boca Raton in a big, big way, with four luxury condo towers replacing the city's Mizner on the Green rental complex. (Think his Singapore towers, but stouter.) To help warm the Boca Raton city council up to the idea of inviting a quartet of 22-to-29-story Libeskind shards into their lives, despite the fact that they would soar far above the site's height limit of 100 feet, Elad sponsored a symposium on Tuesday called "The Language of Architecture" for a crowd of roughly 300 donors to the Boca Raton Museum of Art. While he was in town, Libeskind also met with Boca Raton Magazine's Randy Schultz to try and convince him that his design would "raise the bar of Boca Raton."
Leaving aside the irony of the fact that the Mizner on the Green rental complex is named for the society architect who helped establish Florida's tradition of Mediterranean and Spanish Colonial Revival architecture, Libeskind believes that the New Mizner on the Green would "connect with the spirit of the place, to connect with the past era," and be a "confident expression" with a "certain kind of boldness." (As bold as a giant Norelco Beard Trimmer?) Libeskind asserts that he and Elan "are not just building something. We want to create a skyline and add to the beauty of Boca Raton," which Boca Raton residents should get behind, because theirs is "not a provincial town."
In classic Libeskind form, he laid out at least one very rich metaphor:
"Early in the last century, Picasso painted the novelist and poet whose Paris salon attracted all manner of literary figures, such as Ernest Hemingway. When Picasso showed Stein the portrait, Libeskind said, she told him, 'It doesn't look like me.' To which Picasso said, 'It will.'"
One day, if he has his way, people might think that Daniel Libeskind defined the look of Boca Raton.
· Starchitect in Boca and other matters of note [Boca Raton Magazine]
· All Daniel Libeskind coverage [Curbed National]
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