When the largest, most expensive home in Los Angeles is finally completed at the end of this year, after five years in the making, one of its distinctive features will be an absence of books. There's a beauty salon, a cinema, a bowling alley, a nightclub, a casino, a lounge with walls constructed from tanks of jellyfish, a glass-walled library - yet, no books. Nobody really reads books, according to Nile Niami, the film producer and real estate developer behind the project (he anticipates a sale price of $500 million dollars). And so the copious rows of bookshelves will be filled with blank books: white covers, white spines, empty white sheets of paper. As though content, literature, history, have been erased from the pages. And, stylistically, this works. It’s in keeping with the monochromatic theme favoured by the architect commissioned by Niami. A Paul McClean home is composed of marble, concrete, steel and glass; retractable glazed panels erase walls; rooms are exposed to the elements, wet-edge infinity pools, and panoramic views of the Los Angeles landscape.

14 mins 57 secs read

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Day One. Months before a Miami trip was mentioned the Baxter Dury track of the same name was uppermost on my Spotify travel playlist sandwiched, oddly, between ‘Moskow Diskow' and the latest from Mr Jukes. On arrival I wondered if Dury had a point: 'Welcome to Miami now/Broken promises are here'. The city was new to me. Prada, the reason for my visit, less so. (The new store here is a break with the past and a glimpse of the future). It was January. Winter in England. In Miami it was 75°F. A semi-dry season between two moments synonymous with the neon city: Art Basel Miami Beach pulls in the rich for a week in December. Spring break attracts the young to Florida. It's aptly captured in Harmony Korine’s film ‘Spring Breakers’, in which the voice of Faith (Selena Gomez) is heard over images of drunken, drug-fuelled, sexed-up teenagers, semi-naked at beach parties: ‘I'm starting to think this is the most spiritual place I've ever been’. The designer-clad curators and gallery owners drawn to the Art Basel fair engage in their own bacchanalian excess in a city that's currently re-inventing itself. Something it's done throughout its history, and often in the aftermath of riots and hurricanes. To the fore of the transformation there's a visionary entrepreneur.

23 mins 15 secs read

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