Dade Heritage Trust
Keyhole Building
Keyhole Building
Miami, Florida
Studio Shell started by putting together simple plans and elevations to help clean up the facade. We also did a color study on surrounding buildings from the era, as well as South Beach, to explore color schemes with the Dade Heritage Trust team. In the process, we acknowledged that we had all been referring to the building as the keyhole building (credit to Emmett Moore), which we wanted to formalize. Part of dignifying the apartments comes through the attention to signage, and like DHT’s other projects, like the Eileen, we wanted to give this building a name and title as well. We explored several font options and locations on the building best suited for the name and address.
Studio Shell helped DHT through the color exercise by painting samples on the walls and subsequently creating a color scheme for various features of the building. The stepped detail at the top gets a gradient of seashell and coral pinks. The same variations of pink were prescribed in a sort of paint-by-numbers for the “frozen fountains” or art deco concrete reliefs, which have been stripped and restored by RLA, Rosa Lowinger’s restoration team.