FLOATING
INFLATABLE VILLA

2005

Fabricated from inflated plastic and illuminated from within, Floating Inflatable Villa floated on a barge in Biscayne Bay during Art Basel Miami 2005. This 30 x 30 x 20-foot installation was Luis Pons’ reaction to Miami’s real estate boom. Its overblown, cartoonish profile mimicked the grotesque pseudo-Palladian McMansions of the housing bubble era – the inflated architecture embedded in a property value system equally inflated by ambitious realtors.

While Miami’s architecture has always been about fantasy, pseudo-Palladian Mc Mansions – characterized by their predictable use of columns, capitals, pilasters, arches, keystones, fountains, and statues – fail to engage, and instead become aggressively unattractive symbols of our architecturally inflated and environmentally impoverished age.