Not so many years ago, the Washington, DC-based architect David M. Schwarz decided that Miami would be the perfect place to retire — eventually. He found and bought a sprawling North Bay Road home, a classic 1920s Mediterranean style structure — “you’d probably call it a Mediterranean Pile,” he jokes — that had undergone a number of renovations and changes over the years.
The most recent owner, a German industrialist, turned it into a multi-family compound of sorts, complete with private quarters and separate entrances. “He divided the house up to share it with different families, so you couldn’t get from one part to another without going outside. It made the house enormously confusing because nobody could figure out where they were,” he says. “I changed all the circulation so that it became one house again.”
Schwarz also enlarged windows and doorways to take full advantage of the property’s spectacular views of Biscayne Bay and mainland Miami. His primary goal, however, was to bring a sense of order and even intimacy to the 12,000-plus square feet of house. He wanted a series of thoughtful spaces that could accommodate both formal and informal entertaining and at the same time show off his amazing assemblage of furniture, decorative objects and industrial design focused primarily on the period from the 1950s to the present. Downstairs, the rooms open one onto the next and they all — including the living room, sitting room, library and dining room —pay homage to the clean-lined and clear-thinking aesthetic of modernist designers and craftsmen with a flair for the eccentric and the experimental. Upstairs, he added a corridor connecting the home’s north and south ends, and each of the 11 bedrooms is furnished with key period pieces as well.
Today the house showcases Schwarz’s considerable collection that includes chairs by George Nakashima, Hans Wegner and Sigurdur Gustafsson; a bar by Gio Ponti; Tejo Remy’s Chest of Drawers for Droog Design; side tables by Frank Lloyd Wright and George Nelson; pottery by Berndt Friberg and Wilhelm Kage; and lighting by Ingo Maurer and Miami’s Luis Pons, whose line of furniture is also on view.
“It’s pretty representative of the time periods that it covers,” Schwarz says of his collection. “They’re all things that were designed and conceived by people to somehow enrich living. That’s pretty much the theme of the collection, and most of it, I think everything was geared to be at the avant-garde of design at the time.”
Adds Cathy Leff, the director of the Wolfsonian-FIU Museum, of which Schwarz is a board member: “David has an incredibly discerning eye for design, and as focused as he is about his own architectural practice, he’s that focused in the things he puts in his domestic environment. Museums are really interested in cultivating relationships with people who collect.”
Schwarz enlisted his close friend, the aforementioned Pons, to assist with developing the collection. It was a process that began shortly after they met in 2003 — Schwarz’s previous Miami Beach residence was on Palm Island — when the two began scouring design galleries and showrooms in Miami and New York to find treasures that expressed ideas and provoked thought. Still other pieces — such as the extensive collection of tiny Scandinavian pottery pieces (many bought through the New York dealer, Antik) — were selected on the basis of pure aesthetics. “I was inspired by my mother who had a gallery in Venezuela in the 1950s of Scandinavian furniture and pottery,” Pons says. “We found these little pieces of pottery that reminded me of my mother’s collection and he fell in love with that. And that’s how we started — it’s been a wonderful collaboration.”
Of course, Schwarz knows a thing or two about revamping a home’s layout — to say the least. Reared in California and educated at St. John’s College in Annapolis and the Yale University School of Architecture, he founded David M. Schwarz Architects more than 30 years ago and built it into a force in architecture and urban planning. From its beginnings the firm was at the forefront of the historic preservation movement in Washington, D.C. Its first major project, a new office building at 1718 Connecticut Avenue was lauded for its compatibility within the newly designated Dupont Circle Historic District; from there the practice evolved to include major civic structures as concert halls and professional sports facilities. Among them: Bass Performance Hall (Fort Worth); American Airlines Center (Dallas); Schermerhorn Symphony Center (Nashville) and the renovation of Severance Hall (for the Cleveland Orchestra). The latest commission is the Smith Center for the Performing Arts in Las Vegas, scheduled for completion in 2011.
It was in the early 1980s when Schwarz was introduced to the billionaire developer Robert Bass, who had opposed an elevated freeway project planned for downtown Fort Worth, Texas. At the time, Fort Worth was suffering from urban blight and a continuing exodus of businesses and residents to the suburbs. Schwarz agreed to be an expert witness in the historic case, which Bass ultimately won. The alliance proved to be a pivotal turning point in the young architect’s career. Soon thereafter, Schwarz began working closely with the Bass family and municipal leaders in restoring and remaking Fort Worth’s urban fabric, an ongoing effort that has also led to numerous new building projects throughout the region.
“The work that they’ve done in Fort Worth, not only the Bass Performance Hall, but the various infill buildings and the transformation of the library and all, I think that adds up to something that’s really very significant,” says the architect Robert A.M. Stern, who is dean of the Yale School of Architecture. “I think that David’s accomplishment of helping to create, to save a downtown and really make it into something new, to transform it, is a very important piece of work.”
Schwarz’s populist ideals and commitment to civic responsibility have been the foundation of the firm’s success. “I call myself a neo eclectic. Architecture too frequently is really geared towards getting recognition in the press and not towards providing a service to the public and the client,” he says. “My view is that architecture is the only art that people are required to participate in. You can’t walk down the street and refuse to look at a building. It is a public art that as such I think has a public responsibility. I firmly believe that architecture should consider the passive as well as the active users as you design buildings and make places.”
With his connection to Miami being personal, not professional, Schwarz’s notion of acquiring a house a good decade-and-a-half before he reached retirement age was based on his desire to make friends and establish roots in the community well in advance. “I give a brunch during Art Basel every year. It started out being very small, like 12 friends,” he says. “I’m not quite sure how it got out of hand, but it’s become a much larger and more attended event.”
At other times of the year, he’s mostly content with spending quality time with those he cares for most. “This house brings me a great deal of joy. It’s a place of refuge as well as one that allows me to bring together my normally far-flung group of friends and family,” Schwarz says. “It’s really about gathering the people I love and enjoying the comforts of home. Most evenings we cook together in the kitchen, eat outside and catch up on each other’s lives.”
See more photos from Schwarz's home in our photo gallery.
