Miami Modern architecture, known as MiMo, is a regional architectural style that developed in South Florida during the postwar period, taking shape between 1945 and 1960 as car ownership spread, commercial air travel became affordable, and a surge of tourists reached Miami, prompting hotels, motels and vacation apartments to be built quickly to meet demand. Its roots trace to the 1930s, when local architects blended elements of the International Style, Streamline Moderne and Art Deco into a distinctly regional approach; by the late 1940s modernist design gradually replaced the Art Deco that had dominated Miami Beach. Morris Lapidus designed the style's best known landmarks, including the Fontainebleau Hotel and the Eden Roc, while Norman Giller designed the Carillon Hotel and the Thunderbird Motel. MiMo buildings are marked by decorative breeze blocks, smooth corners, flat roofs, extensive glass, boomerang and trapezoidal shapes, circular cutouts, interior gardens and open-air walkways, and the style survives most visibly today along Collins Avenue in Miami Beach and the Biscayne Boulevard corridor.
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