22RE Turns a 1925 Coconut Grove Storefront into a Coral Rock Retreat for Malbon Golf

Retail architecture has a recurring problem: it tends to shout. Brands want attention, so architects oblige with saturated color, aggressive geometry, or novelty materials that read well on social media but exhaust the body after three minutes inside. 22RE, the Los Angeles firm behind Malbon's growing chain of golf lifestyle boutiques, takes the opposite position. Their new Miami outpost, tucked into a ground-floor unit on Grand Avenue in Coconut Grove, is designed around a deliberate void at its center, a circular zone cleared of merchandise where visitors are invited to pause. The move is counterintuitive for a 1,404-square-foot shop where every inch has commercial value, but it is exactly the kind of disciplined subtraction that makes the space feel twice its size.

What makes the project genuinely interesting is the way it synthesizes a specific regional identity without resorting to pastiche. The pale green stucco walls are hand-textured to evoke the coral rock formations found on aging Art Deco buildings across South Beach, a material memory particular to southern Florida. The green itself is a custom mix, pushed toward yellow to distinguish it from the typical blue-green palette of Miami Beach hotels. Combined with stainless steel fixtures, an aluminum open-cell grid ceiling, and handmade Mexican floor tiles, the space stages a controlled collision between organic warmth and industrial precision. It feels like Miami without performing Miami.

A Center That Holds Nothing

The spatial strategy is radial. Handmade grey Mexican tiles spread outward from a circular floor plaque bearing Malbon's monogram, establishing the center of the room as a fixed point of visual gravity. All merchandise is pushed to the perimeter, where illuminated niches and stainless steel rails line the walls. The result is a retail plan that borrows more from temple architecture than from conventional shop layouts: the sacred center, empty and inviting, surrounded by a ring of curated objects.

Two heavy stainless steel benches occupy this central zone, their geometric mass grounding the otherwise airy, light-filled room. They are not afterthoughts or decorative props. They are the furniture equivalent of a design thesis statement: sit down, slow down, talk. For a brand built around golf, a sport defined by long walks and unhurried conversation, the gesture is appropriate.

Coral Rock in Custom Stucco

The textured stucco work deserves close attention. Rather than applying a smooth, gallery-grade plaster, 22RE specified a custom finish that replicates the pitted, irregular surface of Miami's native coral rock. It is a material quotation that reads as both geological and architectural, pointing simultaneously to the limestone substrate beneath the city and to the ornamental coral detailing on its oldest buildings. The stucco covers columns, beams, and walls alike, creating a monolithic envelope that dissolves the distinction between structure and surface.

Horizontal stainless steel bands interrupt the stucco at regular intervals, their machined precision a deliberate foil to the hand-applied texture around them. The contrast is productive rather than jarring. It underscores the project's central tension: a space that wants to feel ancient and contemporary in the same breath. The filleted edges where stucco meets steel are particularly well executed, softening transitions without erasing the material boundary.

Stainless Steel as a Retail Language

Wood would have been the obvious complement to textured plaster. 22RE rejected it, citing Miami's warm, humid climate as a practical concern. In its place, stainless steel does the heavy lifting: benches, sales counter, display rails, shelving, and even the doorway to the stock room are fabricated in the same cool grey metal. The choice is pragmatic but also conceptually coherent. Where the stucco walls reference the deep past of Florida's geological and architectural heritage, the steel speaks to a clean, climate-resistant modernity.

Custom details reinforce the care taken here. The door knob, for instance, echoes a travertine handle 22RE designed for Malbon's Pebble Beach location, translated into stainless steel to suit the Miami material logic. It is a small gesture, but it signals a design practice thinking about brand identity across multiple locations without defaulting to copy-paste uniformity.

Storefront as Landscape Extension

Coconut Grove is one of Miami's most densely planted neighborhoods, and the storefront responds accordingly. The window display area forgoes mannequins or product arrangements in favor of white stones and living plants, staging the threshold between Grand Avenue and the interior as a compressed garden. Natural daylight floods through, blurring the boundary between the lush street-level foliage outside and the controlled green interior.

The entry sequence is well considered. Pale green walls and built-in seating frame the approach, while polished metal elements catch and redirect incoming light. For a building originally constructed in 1925 and fully renovated in 2021, the relationship between old shell and new insertion feels resolved rather than forced. The low-rise structure provides generous ceiling height, and the aluminum grid overhead reads as a permeable canopy, filtering views of the mechanical systems above without closing the space off.

Light and Display Niches

The perimeter display strategy is simple and effective. Backlit niches set into the stucco walls create individual frames for merchandise, elevating each item into something closer to a gallery exhibit than a rack of apparel. Stainless steel shelves within the niches hold potted ferns and small product groupings, mixing commercial display with botanical ornament. The lighting is warm and even, avoiding the harsh retail spotlights that flatten color and fatigue the eye.

What strikes you in these niches is the restraint. 22RE could have maximized sellable wall space, but instead they punctuate the display rhythm with planted moments and empty recesses. The effect is a kind of visual breathing room that keeps the perimeter from feeling cluttered, even as it carries the full burden of the store's inventory.

Why This Project Matters

The Malbon Miami boutique is a quiet argument that retail design gains more from subtraction than addition. By emptying the center, pushing product to the edges, and investing in a single material palette derived from site-specific research, 22RE produces a space that functions as both a store and a respite. In a city where commercial interiors compete for the loudest possible expression, the restraint here is itself a provocation.

More broadly, the project demonstrates how a brand can develop a multi-location architectural identity without flattening regional context. The coral rock stucco, the rejection of wood in favor of steel, the green calibrated specifically to Miami's light: these are not transferable moves. They belong to this city and this storefront. That specificity, paired with the quiet confidence of 22RE's spatial strategy, is what makes the boutique worth studying long after the current season's merchandise rotates off the shelves.

Malbon Miami Boutique, designed by 22RE. Located at 3034 Grand Avenue, Coconut Grove, Miami, Florida. 1,404 square feet. Completed 2024. Photography by Erik Stackpole Undehn.

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