Architectural Details at Night in Miami Beach

I really enjoyed walking around Miami Beach at night and noticing how the architecture takes on dramatic appearances everywhere with the lighting and the effects of shadows on the buildings. Sometimes I noticed architectural details that felt like abstract art works in their own right when captured in some of these photographs. Check out this collection of architectural photography at night in Miami Beach.

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Check out this picture of the hotel "W South Beach" (owned by Marriott) as seen at night - along with a detailed view of the angled private balconies, which become kind of an abstracted geometric art. The angled direction of the balconies have a functional purpose in addition to looking really cool - they are angled so that guests in each room get a view of the ocean, even those back closer to Collins Avenue as opposed to the rooms closer to the beach. Form and function combine here to dramatic effect, especially at night.

Colored lighting also plays a strong role in the visual appearance of Miami Beach at night. Check out the blue lighting with white lights wrapped around palm tree trunks at the ESPN Studio building on Ocean Drive in South Beach, below left. The purple lighting, below right, is on the exterior of the Clevelander South Beach, a hotel next door at 1020 Ocean Drive.

Here's a pair of photographs of Miami Beach at night that take on more of an abstract art feel. Below left is a detail on the Akoya Luxury Condos building on Collins Avenue in Miami Beach; I like how the L-shaped beam has palm tree shadows on it but also creates its own interesting shadows on the part of the building to the right. Below right is a look upwards at the Mar del Plata condo building next door, also on Collins Avenue. I like how the vertical row of blue lights reminds me of a stack of Donald Judd sculptures, such as the Untitled," 1990 work by Judd on view at the Tate in the UK.

As I walked around Miami Beach - especially in the streets near my hotel in "Mid Beach," so many of the buildings were tall and one felt like one was walking through a canyon of architecture. But it's a totally different feel and vantage point when one simply walks over to the beach at night - I'll wrap up this feature on architecture in Miami Beach with this view of Mid Beach from the beach. The orange lighting with palm tree silhouettes makes for a nice contrast with the milky clouds above.

See more of our arts adventures in Miami here.