Photo by Steven Brooke Designed by Machado and Silvetti Associates, the Machado-Silvetti Building combines Robert’s vision of modern with traditional architecture. Circa 1997.
didn’t produce any healthy urban effect. They wouldn’t affect society in a positive way. The prospect of, instead, creating traditional communities where our plans could actually make someone’s daily life better really excited me. Krier introduced me to the idea of looking at people first and to the power that physical design can have on changing the social life of a community. And so, in a year or so, my wife and I left the firm and went off to do something very different.”
Robert’s experience with designing and building Serendipity and Apogee, the tours of small Italian towns with Daryl, and the delightful simplicity of the Cracker cottage they called home, all led him to wonder whether they couldn’t do something really interesting with a parcel of land in the
Florida Panhandle.
With their home at Apogee sold, Robert and Daryl decided to embark on a tour to Italy, spending several months studying and learning about Italian towns. Upon their return to Coconut Grove, they found a Florida Cracker cottage for sale in the Grove and promptly purchased it—not letting a little thing like the lack of air-conditioning in southern Florida deter them. “We learned a lot from that Cracker house,” Robert said. “It followed the modernist mantra of ‘form follows function’ in every way. And, you know, we didn’t mind that it wasn’t air-conditioned.” Robert’s experience with designing and building Serendipity and Apogee, the tours of small Italian towns with Daryl, and the delightful simplicity of the Cracker cottage they called home, all led him to wonder whether they couldn’t do something really interesting with a parcel of land in the Florida Panhandle. He had spent summers vacationing in nearby Sunnyside Beach as a youth, his family renting simple little beachfront cottages with screened-in porches. He wondered whether one could successfully combine 86
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traditional and modern architecture and create a town in which people were excited to live. Andrés and Elizabeth began planning Seaside, drawing on Léon for his expertise and insight (it was Léon’s idea to create sand footpaths throughout the town). Then Robert approached Rodolfo Machado and Jorge Silvetti of Machado and Silvetti Associates and Steven Holl to design two buildings in downtown Seaside (dubbed the Machado and Holl Buildings). “The Machado was much more successful in the effort,” Robert explained. Now home to retail and office space with condos above, the blue and gray buildings are ubiquitous to Seaside. Commissioning these architects at such an early stage in Seaside’s development exemplifies Robert and Daryl’s faith in the project and their appreciation of fine architecture. Years later, Time magazine would declare Steven Holl “America’s best architect,” while Machado and Silvetti Associates