Setting Down Roots: Inside the Art Program at Upland Park, Terra's Miami Development
The amenity floors at Upland Park are unhurried in a way that multifamily interiors rarely are.
VStarr Interiors built them around a disciplined palette and a clear preference for organic form. Travertine and warm stone underfoot. Sage green upholstery against light oak and walnut. Curved seating, rounded planters, glass partitions, greenery worked into the architecture rather than placed in front of it. Nothing in these rooms is raising its voice, and the restraint is what makes them feel expensive.
That kind of interior is a privilege to work inside and a genuine test to work against. Rooms considered do not accept simple art for decoration. They accept artwork that has been thought about as carefully as they were.
Terra commissioned that level of care on a site where a developer would have been forgiven for doing less. Upland Park is a garden style community of upscale residences in West Miami-Dade, built around green space, tree lined paths, and a two story clubhouse, and marketed on a promise Terra states plainly: “Where Everyday Living Feels Natural.” Behind that consumer brand is a $1 billion, 47 acre development delivered with Miami-Dade County and understood as the largest transit oriented development to come out of a public and private partnership in the County's history. Phase One is now complete, 578 residences with leasing underway and residents moving in.
V Starr Interiors brought us in to answer their vision. Working alongside their creative team and Terra's interior design group led by Christian Fortuno, Art Firm designed, curated, fabricated, and installed the art across every amenity space in phase 1 over approximately one year.
The brief, and what it asked of us
The direction was consistent from the first conversation. Organic form, and work that belonged to this specific piece of ground.
Our view is that the story of a place is better carried quietly, present in every room and announced in none of them, so that a resident who never looks closely still feels the building is coherent and a resident who does look closely finds something waiting.
Satisfying that meant the work did not yet exist. Nearly every piece at Upland Park is original and one of a kind, painted as Studio Art Firm contract art under the direction of Juliana Roslin and artist Daniela Valcarcel, then fabricated and framed through our Ready2HangArt facility.
Research came before the brush. The wetlands an hour west. The mangrove systems that hold the coastline. The transit geometry beneath the property. The theatres that built the city's cultural life. Each became a source, and each was abstracted until it read first as composition and only afterward as subject. Judging that distance is a fresh problem in every room, and it is the reason a program like this takes a year rather than a season.
Upland Park Apts: Leasing offices
Two works hang in each leasing office, both drawn from the Everglades.
The first reads the wetlands from above. Pale water threading between drifting islands of green, the channels braiding and separating, the palette held to sage, bone, and a faint wash of sand. The second is the sunset that glistens across that water at the end of the day, the same forms warmed through.
Seen quickly they are fields of soft color. It takes a second reading for the aerial geography to resolve. Both are layered mixed media on watercolor paper, torn to a deckled edge and set into shadow box frames so the paper edge remains visible and the sheet sits slightly proud of the glass. The frame holds the work rather than cropping it, and the piece behaves like an object.
This is the first room a prospective resident sits down in, the room where a tour of the upscale residences at Upland Park either becomes a lease or does not. It seemed right to tell them where they are without saying so.
Upland Park Apts: The lobby
Three soft moss green forms hang in the lobby, teal moving through them like water under moss. They sit in custom acrylic frames, and from the entry they read as almost frameless, three quiet fields of color floating on the wall.
At close range the acrylic catches the light and the surfaces turn. The pieces stop reading as paintings and begin reading as sculpture.
The two stage effect was deliberate. A lobby is crossed quickly by most people and stood still in by a few, and the work should have something to offer both.
Upland Park Apts: The theater lounge
VStarr designed the theater as the moodiest and most enveloping room in the building. Walnut wallcovering, blackout drapery, black quartz, a deep sage sectional, and a single band of cove light warming the ceiling. It is a room built for a blanket and a long evening.
Dark rooms absorb artwork. The pieces here are elemental and watercolor light, soft washes of stone grey, olive, and pale blush that lift off the walnut instead of sinking into it. Their softness is doing structural work. A room that is enveloping needs something to breathe against, and the art is what opens it back up.
Upland Park Apts: The management offices
Two modern abstract egrets greet you at the management office entry, long necks and folded wings reduced to a few confident strokes of umber and rose on a warm ground. They are printed on textile with the edges left frayed and raw, so the pieces carry a soft physical presence that a photograph flattens.
That was an accepted trade. This is a room people stand in and wait in, and it earns more from proximity than from documentation.
Past reception, a series of organic forms draws its palette directly from the carpet and the furnishings, and carries the landscaping beyond the glass into the room.
Upland Park Apts: The fitness center
Four paintings run the long wall of the fitness center. They read as composition, soft greens and slate blue crossing a pale ground, a black wedge anchoring each panel, a few long lines carrying the eye between them.
Their source is the property land itself. Our team worked from the transit plan the building sits on and the aerial photograph of the site that ran in the press when the development was announced, drawing the geometry outward until it became an abstraction. Residents pass the shape of their own commute each morning, and almost none of them will know it. The work is complete either way.
One further panel hangs nearby, a field of white line worked edge to edge across deep green. Miami theatre landmarks are drawn into the tangle, available to anyone who stands still long enough to find them.
Art in a fitness center is looked at more often, and for longer, than art almost anywhere else in a residential building. It should hold up to the fortieth reading.
Upland Park Apts: The kids room
The kids room takes the same instinct into a brighter register. Four playful surrealist figures in orange, deep green, and cobalt on a warm bone ground, hung low and scaled for the people actually looking at them.
The room also carries an oversized Lego wall and a tiered quad palm, the one direct nod to Miami anywhere in the building, kept graphic and clean rather than scenic.
Upland Park Apts: Co-Working
The business center was the most demanding space in the program, and the most rewarding. It sits inside the two story clubhouse alongside the coworking areas, and VStarr filled it with shape, glass partitions, curved seating, a moss wall, and soft blush and sage walls against travertine. The art had to move alongside all of it without competing.
The sequence opens gently, with a layered floral work at the threshold. Moving past the private business suites, the walls give way to the series that anchors the building.
Raíces, “Terrenas y Acuáticas.” Earthbound and aquatic.
The series comes from the Florida mangroves and is composed around the line the water makes. Above that line, the pale architecture of root and branch in bone and driftwood grey. Below it, the same structure descending into sand and shallow water, banded in teal and deep green. The pieces are sculptural rather than framed, cut to organic silhouettes, and they carry a slow rhythm down the corridor. At the turn, a group of freestanding forms in lighter tones closes the sequence.
Raíces is an interpretation of the roots we plant in each home and each place we live in with Terra. It is an homage to the developer, and to what multifamily development does when it is done with this much care, which is to give people somewhere to set down roots.
The mangrove is the accurate image for that rather than a sentimental one. Mangroves are the structure that holds a coastline in place.
What this means for multifamily in South Florida
Multifamily in this market now competes directly with boutique hospitality on aesthetic. Prospective residents tour several buildings in a weekend and remember the one that felt considered.
Art is usually among the first line items reduced and among the last defended, and the reduction never shows on a spreadsheet. It shows on the tour. A program assembled from stock retail reads as adequate, which is the least useful outcome available to a building of this quality. An art program developed with intention, specific to its site and installed as part of the design rather than after it, gives the amenity spaces a coherence a competing property cannot reproduce.
Upland Park is what happens when a developer, an interior design firm, and an art consultancy all hold the same standard.
Scope and delivery
Art Firm's scope covered art design, curation, custom fabrication, framing, logistics, and installation, delivered as a single turn key program under one contract.
That vertical integration, from the studio easel through our Ready2HangArt production facility to our own installers on site, is what allows a fully original program to hold a developer's schedule.
Frequently asked questions
Where is Upland Park?
Upland Park is a garden style community of upscale residences in West Miami-Dade, at 1455 NW 121 Avenue, Miami, developed by Terra. Phase One delivered 578 residences and is now leasing.
Who curated and installed the art at Upland Park?
Art Firm, a women-owned art consultancy, designed, curated, fabricated, and installed the full art program across Upland Park's amenity spaces, working within the vision of VStarr Interiors and in collaboration with Terra's interior design group.
Was the artwork custom or sourced?
Nearly all of it is original and one of a kind, painted as Studio Art Firm contract art.
What does a turn key art program include?
Art design and curation, custom fabrication and framing, logistics, and professional installation, managed under one contract by one firm. Art Firm handles every stage.
How long did the Upland Park art program take?
Approximately one year from engagement through final installation.
Does Art Firm work outside of Miami?
Yes. Art Firm serves hospitality, multifamily, healthcare, senior living, student housing, and commercial interiors nationwide, with active work across the Caribbean and Latin America. Design offices are in Jupiter, Florida and Mexico City, with domestic production in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
How do we begin an art program for our community?
Reach us at info@artfirm.com to begin a curation conversation.
Project Details
Project: Upland Park
Scope: Art design, curation, custom fabrication, and installation
Location: West Miami-Dade, Florida
Developer: Terra
Interior Design: V Starr Interiors
Interior Design, Terra: Christian Fortuno
Procurement: The Preferred Procurement Group
Art Team: Juliana Roslin, Paola Ramirez, and Daniela Valcarcel.
Featured Series: Raíces, “Terrenas y Acuáticas”
WBENC certified. NMSDC certified. Latina owned.
We do art seamlessly. ✨
Art Firm
Juliana Roslin, Founding Principal, Art Firm