The Discipline of Nature: Architect Alfred Browning Parker explores his work over his legendary 60-year career in Florida
MIAMI – HistoryMiami Museum is proud to announce its upcoming exhibition, The Discipline of Nature: Architect Alfred Browning Parker, which will examine the 60-year career of the famed Miami architect whose organic tropicalist designs made him a regional leader and a national icon.
Opening on the 100th anniversary of the architect’s birth, The Discipline of Nature will celebrate Parker’s rich and prolific life. Featuring original drawings, archival photographs, and models and furnishings, the exhibition will illustrate Parker’s evolving designs and illuminate his use of natural principles, forms, and materials to create an organic structure for his work.
The exhibition, running from September 24, 2016 – February 26, 2017, brings new relevance to Parker as the activist architect, writer, speaker, teacher and philosopher of Miami.
“Parker has a remarkable legacy in Miami. He was an original thinker who emphasized environmentally friendly design and sustainability longer before the “green movement” even existed,” said Stuart Chase, President and CEO of HistoryMiami. “This exhibition not only celebrates his remarkable designs, but highlights the ecological and environmental basis to his work.”
Parker designed more than 500 projects in his 60-year career, many of which were award-winning designs, and was the recipient of the American Institute of Architects Florida Association’s inaugural Award of Honor in 1967.
“As an architect deeply rooted in Florida, Parker designed and built singular works directed by a coherent system of values that directly address issues of place,” said co-Curator Allan Shulman. “Central to his ethos was respect for the earth and its resources, and moral and aesthetic interest in the power of nature.”
HistoryMiami Museum will host a Grand Opening party for The Discipline of Nature on September 24th with a special conversation with curators Randolph C. Henning and Allan Shulman that will bring to light the indelible impact Parker had on Florida’s built landscape.
“Without question Alfred Browning Parker is Florida’s most renowned and celebrated architect,” Curator Randolph C. Henning said. “What better day to open this exhibition, a celebration of his passionate creative energy and commitment to living in harmony with the environment, than on the day marking the centennial anniversary of his birth.”
For more information visit www.historymiami.org. Tickets to see the exhibition cost $10 for adults, $8 for seniors and students, $5 for children, and free for children under 6 years old.
About HistoryMiami Museum
HistoryMiami Museum, a Smithsonian Affiliate, is the premier cultural institution committed to gathering, organizing, preserving and celebrating Miami’s history as the unique crossroads of the Americas. We accomplish this through education, collections, research, exhibitions, publications and city tours. Located in the heart of downtown Miami, HistoryMiami Museum is a 70,000 square foot facility and home to more than one million historic images and 30,000 three-dimensional artifacts, including a 1920’s trolley car, artifacts from Pan American World Airways, and rafts that brought refugees to Miami. For more information, call 305-375-1492 or visit historymiami.org.
