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In the years following World War II, Miami grew in spasms. As new highways and increasingly affordable air travel drew people to South Florida, the question soon became where to put them. A new generation of sun-seeking architects and designers—including Morris Lapidus, Alfred Browning Parker, George Farkas, Kay Pancoast, and Fran Williams—provided the answer. Combining a love of glamour with elements of Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie Style (merging indoor and outdoor spaces and using overhangs and louvered windows to cool interiors naturally), they forged a subtropical modernism unique to Miami's climate and lifestyle.

Their fruits are at the heart of Promises of Paradise: Staging Mid-Century Miami, which opens on December 5 at the city's Bass Museum of Art (just in time for Art Basel Miami Beach), and the accompanying lavish book, Miami Modern Metropolis, by co-curator Allan Shulman, principal of the local architecture firm Shulman + Associates. Together they chronicle a remarkable 20th-century metamorphosis, when designers, as Shulman puts it, "were exploring how to transform Miami from a resort destination to a year-round, full-service American city."

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