Issue link: https://www.balharbourdigital.com/i/262375
76 BAL HARBOUR A KOONS WITH A VIEW Developer and art collector Eduardo Costantini brings together two of his passions at his newest v enture, Oceana Bal Harbour. BY LINDA LEE A rendering of Oceana Bal Harbour, featuring two works to be installed there: Jeff Koons' Pluto and Proserpina and Ballerina Is there a connection between putting up an artful building and building an art collection? Aby Rosen combined both in New York with Lever House and in Miami Beach with his W hotel. Alan Faena— the man behind the starchitect megaproject Faena House (formerly the Saxony Hotel)—opened his own arts center in Buenos Aires in 2011, and promises a Faena Arts Center in Miami Beach designed by Rem Koolhaas will open later this year. And now another Argentine enters into the Miami developer-collector scene, this time in Bal Harbour. In 2011, when Eduardo Costantini saw that the Beach Club was for sale, he became determined to own what he called "the best land in Miami." After the papers were signed a year later, he began envisioning a luxury building that would take advantage of the five-and-a-half acres of oceanfront and be noted for, among other things, two large and very expensive sculptures. More than a decade ago, in his native Buenos Aires, Costantini founded Malba, a modern and contemporary art not-for-profit institution filled with more than 500 works he had collected: an iconic Frida Kahlo self-portrait and works by noted Latin American artists including León Ferrari, Roberto Matta, José Bedia, Tarsila do Amaral, Fernando Botero, Joaquín Torres-García and Guillermo Kuitca. Then he kept on buying ar t and building. In 2012, Mr. Costantini bought two giant Jeff Koons works—Pluto and Proserpina and Ballerina— to sit on the west and east axis of the 28-story Oceana Bal Harbour. "We thought at first we couldn't afford it," he says. But his other project in the U.S., Oceana Key Biscayne, was selling briskly. He could tell the real estate market had revived. And so he plunked down $14 million for the two sculptures. Pluto and Proserpina, one of an edition of three, is going to the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York for the Jeff Koons solo retrospective in June. Both Oceanas are designed by Arquitectonica to align with the ocean. And to break up the "perception of a wall," as Costantini refers to it, the buildings have a central inset with a breezeway punched out in the base, which will line up with the marina on the bay side of Collins; a landscape by the Swiss maestro Enzo Enea will emphasize the axis. The building is set 300 feet back from the street, as were the previous buildings. Costantini is donating green space along Collins Avenue to the Bal Harbour Village, and completion is scheduled for 2016. That means Mr. Costantini has plenty of time to purchase more art for the Oceana projects. "We still need to buy eight to 10 canvases for both lobbies—at least seven by seven feet," he said. And he will, of course, continue to buy for his own collection as well.