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"The Sets of Magic City\nA behind-the-scenes look at the design of the new Starz series Magic City, which meticulously re-creates late-1950s Miami Beach.\nFor the fictional Miramar Playa hotel, the Magic City design team constructed an actual two-story entrance and driveway, and the remaining floors were added digitally, as seen here in an image of the curving Collins Avenue fa\u00E7ade.\nThe hotel lobby was built inside a warehouse, which the designers \"opened up to the parking lot outside and created a lush drive complete with a rotunda, a porte cochere, covered walkways, and full tropical landscaping,\" says production designer Carlos Barbosa, who also practices as an architect. \"It was vital to see our guests pull up to the valet in their fantastic '50s automobiles, get out of their cars, and walk into the lobby without our having to make a cut.\"\nThe gleaming hotel lobby is the show's centerpiece and hub of the action. The white marble terrazzo floor with black onyx accents was chosen to reflect the Florida sunlight and provide a contrast to the rich gold and black palette. \"The lobby was designed to be opulent, with a sense of luxury and excitement,\" says set decorator Scott Jacobson. \"We used various gold tones, along with neutrals, set off by black outlines, as well as antique brass-and-marble French Proven\u00E7al side tables\u2014all of which echoed what elite Miami Beach hotels looked like at that time.\" Jacobson says he visited some of Miami Beach's \"larger-than-life hotels\" as a child with his grandparents.\nThe interiors of the Miramar Playa were greatly influenced by the work of Morris Lapidus, who designed some of the most glamorous Miami modern (MiMo) hotels in the '50s and '60s. Lapidus's designs for the original 1954 Fontainebleu hotel included a staircase that led to a coatroom\u2014\"a staircase to nowhere\"\u2014so that guests could make a grand entrance. Taking a cue from the master, Barbosa designed just such a set of stairs, covered in glittering tiles, for the hotel lobby. \"It was all about making an entrance back then,\" says Barbosa. \"Women took their time to get their hair and makeup done, and they put on spectacular dresses, jewelry, and furs. Then they'd take the elevator from their rooms down to the mezzanine level and walk down the stairs to the lobby, making a fabulous splash.\"\nAn arcade was an essential element of '60s hospitality design. In the Miramar Playa, distinctive circular gold sconces dot the walls of passageways leading to retail spaces that include the Sea Breeze lingerie shop, featuring a wraparound amber-glass display window.\nAdjacent to the hotel pool, the Riviera restaurant is a combination of styles, mixing midcentury modern curves, Doric columns, and Tuscan landscape murals. Vivid turquoise, a popular color of the period, accents the walls near the curving counter. Textured fabrics from Robert Allen and Kravet were used for the custom banquettes, chairs, and barstools.\nThe hotel's beauty salon, Atelier Meurice, offers a window onto the salons of the era with its Turbanator bonnet hair dryers and other accoutrements. The soft rose wall color and cream French Proven\u00E7al stylist stations, contrast with the ceiling's streamlined circular motif, the checkerboard flooring, and the rippled-glass wall dividers.\nManaged by Evans's son Stevie (Steven Strait), the Atlantis Lounge becomes the spot where the CIA and the Mafia plot to invade Cuba over highballs and martinis. The subterranean bar's unique feature is a serpentine wall with glass portholes that offer views of swimming mermaids. \"The Atlantis Lounge had to feel like a smoky tobacco environment bathed in the blue light filtered through the pool's round windows,\" Barbosa says. \"We took the windows-into-the-pool rage of the fifties and sixties a step further by incorporating the round windows into the design of the abstract mural behind the bar.\"\nThe\u00A0Atlantis Lounge's interior also features leatherette-upholstered stools and banquettes, dark woods, and brass accents. \"The lounge would not be complete,\" Jacobson notes, \"without the Rock-Ola and Scopitone jukeboxs.\"\nThe hotel's administrative area, outside Ike's office, is decorated in a gold and cognac palette, with a wall paneled in strikingly rippled wood. The midcentury-modern furnishings visible here include a Stow Davis low credenza, a George Nelson clock, and a green Dazor desk lamp\u2014all vintage pieces. Jacobson says the vinyl floor pattern was inspired by a 1950s advertisement for plastics that he found in a flea market.\nA curving, geometric-patterned marble hallway in the hotel's penthouse suite\u2014where Ike and his second wife, former showgirl Vera (Olga Kurylenko), live with their three children\u2014leads from the private elevator foyer to a wrap terrace. In the gold-leafed alcoves, recessed lighting casts a glow on sculptures mounted on high marble pedestals.\nThe penthouse is described as the jewel in the hotel's crown, its decor \"a fusion of midcentury modern and Art Deco, with accents of Asian influence,\" says Jacobson. The dining room, separated from the hallway by a divider with Lucite panels (which Jacobson salvaged from a penthouse in the Saxony hotel on Collins Avenue), features a smoked-glass ceiling mirror and a cerise-red wall decorated with panels from a painted Japanese screen. A vintage nine-foot glass table supported by Lucite pedestals is surrounded by Mastercraft brass dining chairs with Robert Allen fabric seats. The period console and two rare Tommi Parzinger '50s urn table lamps that Jacobson inherited from his mother complete the look.\nVera and Ike's bedroom is a mix of design styles. The bed is Hollywood Regency (with Natori sheets), while a Dorothy Draper\u2013inspired oval side table holds a vintage Murano-glass table lamp. \"The eclectic combination of styles was something that Morris Lapidus masterfully did in his work during that period,\" notes Barbosa. \"Without copying him, we created our own original look, while keeping his design philosophy in mind.\"\nFor the scenes on the Miramar Playa's pool deck, with its rows of chaise longues and fringed umbrellas, the designers went to great lengths to accurately portray vacation life in Miami Beach in 1959. Barbosa's research for the production design came from a variety of sources, as he notes: \"We collected a massive number of photos, short films, and magazines from the period. It was fun to browse through everything from Sears catalogues to Time and Life magazines.\""^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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