Miami is getting ready to host Art Week, excitement is rising and traffic is intensifying, all the way down to the ocean floor. Yes, that’s right: for a few days now, off the coast of Miami, there has been a traffic jam of cars 6 meters underwater. Nothing catastrophic—it’s Concrete Coral, the new installation by Leandro Erlich that inaugurates ReefLine.
Presented five years ago, ReefLine is a project conceived by Argentine cultural entrepreneur and environmental activist Ximena Caminos and developed in collaboration with the OMA studio. It aims to build an underwater park that helps repopulate the coastline with various marine species as well as corals. It is no coincidence that Florida was chosen for the project, as it has lost nearly 90% of its coral cover over the past hundred years.
The more than 7 miles of this park will consist of art installations made from materials designed to stimulate marine repopulation, and the first one bears the signature of Leandro Erlich.
For his installation, the Argentine artist imagined a line of life-sized cars, modeled with 3D molds and cast in low-emission marine concrete. This “congestion,” an urban and environmental symbol, becomes the foundation for a biological process: in the coming months, the sculptures will be seeded with thousands of native corals grown at the Miami Native Coral Lab, using Coral Lok™, a technology that enables fast and safe coral transplantation.
The concept is clear: what once caused movement and pollution becomes a support for life. A poetic reversal that speaks to the climate crisis while offering the possibility of imagining more generative infrastructures.
Concrete Coral is not an installation designed only for marine life—it can also become a reference point for swimmers, scuba divers, paddleboarders and canoeists. For the first time, an art installation can become a symbol of coexistence between humans and marine species, as art puts itself fully at the service of nature.
