1. Morris Lapidus was an architect, primarily known for his Neo-baroque "Miami Modern" hotels constructed in the 1950s and 60s, which have since come to define that era's resort-hotel style, synonymous with Miami and Miami Beach.
16 Facts About Morris Lapidus
1. 2.
Morris Lapidus worked for the prominent Beaux Arts firm of Warren and Wetmore.
3.
Morris Lapidus's design incorporated Mercury, the god of Speed, into a modern sculpture.
4.
The hotels were an immediate popular success and Morris Lapidus began to push the boundaries of the hotel experience further.
5.
In effect, Morris Lapidus had out-palaced the palace and the modern era of the Miami Beach and her resort hotels began: everyone had to go.
6.
In 1955, Morris Lapidus designed the Ponce de Leon Shopping Center near the plaza in St Augustine, Florida.
7.
Morris Lapidus later worked with Igor Polevitsky on the addition to the Shellborne Hotel where as with earlier hotels, of the big eight.
8.
Morris Lapidus's curving walls caught the prevailing ocean breezes in the era before central air-conditioning, and the sequence of his interior spaces was the result of careful attention to user experience: Lapidis heard complaints of endless featureless hotel corridors and when possible curved his hallways to avoid that effect.
9.
From 1993-until 2001, in the period before his death, Morris Lapidus' style came back into focus.
10.
Morris Lapidus first came into contact with Lapidus when she was the marketing director for Arquitectonica in 1993.
11.
Desilets and Morris Lapidus were a team and this collaboration continued until his untimely death.
12.
In 2001, Morris Lapidus died from heart failure at the age of 98 at his Miami Beach apartment.
13.
Morris Lapidus tried to ignore the critical panning, but it had an effect on his career and reputation.
14.
Morris Lapidus burned 50 years' worth of his drawings when he retired in 1984 and remained personally bitter about some aspects of his career.
15.
Several unbuilt Morris Lapidus hotels were donated to Desilets' by Don Seidler, who was Morris Lapidus's production man for more than thirty years.
16.
Morris Lapidus was rediscovered in his autobiography Too Much is Never Enough, 1996, which is an answer to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's dictum 'Less is more.