New York has the High Line, Miami has the Underline and,in the next few years, Miami Beach will have the ReefLine — a monumental public work featuring an art-studded underwater sculpture park, a carbon-sequestering artificial reef and a seven-mile snorkel trail running from Fourth Street in South Beach to Bal Harbour.
Ximena Caminos, an art curator, cultural placemaker (one who uses planning, art and design for community development) and founder of the ocean-centric nonprofit BlueLab Preservation Society, spearheaded this cross-disciplinary project in collaboration with the Miami-based art studio Coral Morphologic. Other partners include the City of Miami Beach, the Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), which is responsible for the 15-acre master plan, and players in the blockchain universe like Aorist, a digital art platform, and Decentraland, a 3-D virtual world.
The city recently approved a $5 million bond issue to help finance the ReefLine (ranking it on par with Miami Beach’s most significant cultural institutions, like the New World Symphony and Bass Museum), and the first and second phases of the project are supposed to start construction in early 2023.
“The ReefLine is a manifestation of all the spheres I care most about,” Ms. Caminos said. “It’s art as a tool for change. It’s sustainable. It’s informed by science and technology. And above all, it’s participatory, free and open to the public.”
Ms. Caminos shared the concept behind the ReefLine, how technology and art can come together, and what has kept her pushing forward. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
How did the ReefLine come about?
The idea grew out of a conversation I had with the marine biologist Colin Foord, the founder of Coral Morphologic, about how artificial reefs could be used to restore and protect Miami Beach’s marine ecosystem, which is disappearing along with the area’s natural coral reefs. It got me thinking about how we could unite art and science to create sustainable change. Colin and I ended up putting together a grant proposal for the Knight Foundation Arts Challenge Award, which looks for really out-of-the-box ideas, and we won. That gave us the seed money to start bringing the idea to life.
What is the ReefLine supposed to do?
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