History, poetry, and public art
come to life.
Discover how augmented reality connects Coral Gables' stories with its streets, landmarks, and public sculptures.
A new way to encounter the city.
For the Coral Gables Centennial and the Dear Human Project, AR Miami developed a connected set of augmented reality experiences that turned streets, sculptures, and historical locations into interactive storytelling spaces. Rather than asking visitors to browse an app detached from their surroundings, each encounter was anchored directly to the physical place connected to its story.
Developed in collaboration with the City of Coral Gables Art in Public Places program and the GIS Innovation Department, the initiative combined historical archives, poetry, human presence, and spatial technology to create a self-guided journey across downtown Miracle Mile and surrounding civic spaces.
The past, present in the streets.
Along Miracle Mile, street corners transformed into portals to local history. Each stop featured a physical information station displaying archival photographs, historical context, and a waist-height activation sphere. When visitors engaged the sphere, holographic narrators appeared in the open air to reveal the story of that specific location.
Street-Corner Portals
Designed for everyday pedestrians, each station provided immediate physical context with historical imagery before inviting passersby into the spatial digital experience.
Intuitive Interaction
A consistent interaction pattern allowed visitors to understand every stop immediately: read the historical context, tap the prompt, and watch the story unfold in the surrounding streetscape.
Centennial Heritage
Stops explored defining landmarks including City Hall, the Biltmore Hotel, the city’s lush tree canopy, and the historic Miracle Theatre, alongside foundational moments from Coral Gables’ first century. At City Hall, a hologram introduces visitors to the building’s historical significance.
Archival photographs displayed on physical stations represent verified historical records. Holographic narrators and interpretive reenactments provide creative and educational storytelling, clearly distinguished from original archival documentation.
Poetry beside public art.
For the citywide Dear Human Project, AR Miami designed an augmented reality experience pairing poetry, public sculpture, and spatial presence. Visitors encountered lifelike holograms of celebrated poet and educator Mia Leonin performing alongside prominent public artworks.
Her filmed presence introduced an authentic human voice, personal, emotive, and grounded in lived experience, into the civic environment. The scale, positioning, and timing of each holographic recital were carefully calibrated to harmonize with the physical sculpture and its public surroundings.
Human Presence & Poetic Voice
Filmed performances by poet Mia Leonin bring human warmth, literary reflection, and emotional depth to Coral Gables' public artworks, inviting viewers to pause and reflect.
Sculptural Interpretation
Complementary AI-generated avatars offer contextual history and background about the sculptor and artistic meaning. The experience maintains a clear distinction between human poetic performance and interpretive AI avatars.
Civic Collaboration on Location
Testing and refining spatial experiences in active public spaces requires close collaboration with municipal partners. On-location evaluations with the City of Coral Gables Art in Public Places team ensured that digital activations respected pedestrian flow, landmark visibility, and accessibility standards.
Stories connected by place.
Rather than treating augmented reality as isolated one-off demonstrations, the Coral Gables project demonstrated how a city can weave individual historical landmarks, public art installations, and civic narratives into a unified public walk.
Dual-Layer Access
To accommodate diverse visitors, experiences were structured for both native mobile AR and quick WebAR access. Passersby could scan an on-site QR code for instant access or engage deeper spatial features through the AR Miami mobile platform.
A Repeatable Civic Framework
The project established a reusable methodology for municipalities: connecting GIS coordinates, municipal art inventories, and archival collections into accessible outdoor storytelling that enriches public spaces.
The Coral Gables Centennial and Dear Human activations were developed in collaboration with the City of Coral Gables Art in Public Places program and the GIS Innovation Department. This project highlights civic storytelling applications supported by the AR Miami platform and does not constitute a municipal endorsement of third-party commercial services.
What stories could your city reveal?
Connect historical archives, civic poetry, public art, and neighborhood destinations with the physical places where they belong.
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