The fair city of Interama: Flash in the Pan or unbuilt Utopia?

Interama, Miami's legendary hemispheric center, is remembered as the overly ambitious exposition that never materialized. The Pan-American world's fair designs explored over its long history were in many instances superficially conceived. In the mid-1960s, however, a team consisting of Louis Kahn and others elevated Interama into a nuanced hemispheric model; surprisingly, their design proposal remains unexplored. This essay examines how, as these architects crafted this tropical fair, they carefully resolved an imposed imperious program by envisioning their design as a model for the perfect city center. Consequently, they innovatively recast a New World discourse that had been repeatedly misappropriated.