The Lure of the Caribbean

UM alumnus Hermes Mallea talks about the elegance of the Caribbean playgrounds of the rich and famous. By.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) - UM News CORAL GABLES, Fla. (December 03, 2014) — Hermes Mallea spent nearly an hour showcasing the Caribbean playgrounds of the rich and famous with the pace of a speed-dating encounter that took you from Bermuda and Barbados to Jamaica and Antiqua and Cuba's hedonistic heights. He showed how architects spun a web of elegance and simplicity in their work through nonstop slides and photos of properties as varied as Palm Beach's haughty Mar-a-Lago to Laurance Rockefeller's fabled RockResorts in the U.S. Virgin Islands. There were the Victorian gingerbreads and those with European influence, and the breezy haciendas sans air conditioning or door locks. Mallea, an alumnus of the University of Miami 's School of Architecture, came back to town Tuesday evening for a presentation at the Otto G. Richter Library co-sponsored by UM Libraries and Books & Books. He was here to tout his new book, Escape: The Heyday of Caribbean Glamour , and open a well-designed doorway to the "American Rivera" stretching from South Florida throughout the Caribbean.