From Boxy to Tropical Triumph, This Miami House's Maximalist Pool Cabana Was Designed to Do a Whole Home's Job

The relationship between a client and the interior designers they pick is always personal, but in the case of this project in Miami's North Beach, it's particularly significant. Novelist, journalist, and columnist Asha Elias has known — and worked with — duo MONIOMI Design for over 13 years, more or less as long as the Floridian studio has been operating.

The pair's designs have marked many of her family's milestones — from creating her daughter's nursery when she was born to transforming it as she grew into a teen. So it makes sense she entrusted them with this latest, symbolic task: the decor of her new modern home at a significant juncture in her life, following a divorce.

The idea was to create a space that felt representative of her individual identity — something that, by now, the designers have an instinctive understanding of, and that they feel aligns closely with their own style, marked by a maximalist sense of color, pattern and contrast.

Latest Videos From

Watch full video here:

"This whole time, we've learned who she is. We know what she likes," says MONIOMI Design's co-founder Monica Santayana, who runs the studio with her husband Ronald Alvarez. The two encouraged her to express her unmitigated preferences. "She said: I want it to be feminine, to be comfortable but also artistic, fun, and energetic," continues the designer.

Another important requirement was to have a space to both relax with her children and entertain. A boxy structure by the pool area, nestled at the back of the 1930s Spanish-style villa, lent itself to that naturally. Santayana and Alvarez set about turning it into an enticing multi-functional cabana.

While the main body of the house is all pinks, mauves, and burgundies, this is a triumph of tropical greens and rattan. "It's detached from the main home, very much amidst the foliage and fauna of her backyard, so she definitely did want a different vibe here," Santayana says of the cabana's irreverent island aesthetic. A graphic, patterned ceiling wallpaper by Pierre Frey, picturing luxuriant leaves, helps accentuate the connection between outside and in.

"It was supposed to be really warm, inviting, comfortable — but again, it reflects her (and our) playful style side," explains Santayana. Out of this compact, rectangular space, the studio was able to create a wide sofa seating area, a music room that's currently home to her son's drum kit, a small bathroom, and a fully stocked bar complete with a terrazzo counter by concrete collaborative.

"As a place to entertain, it needed to hold its own weight — somewhere she could do everything and not feel like she needed to go back and forth into the main home," explains Alvarez. "It's a self-sufficient space. The sense was this would become the family’s retreat."

The limited footprint did force the duo into smart space-saving measures: as the room featured an "intrusive column right smack in the middle, where the sofa needed to be", MONIOMI Design dressed it in mirrors so it almost disappeared. They also built a table at its foot, fitting perfectly in between the modules of the CB2 sofa that extends around it.

"We 'ate' the column — it was a fun solution!" laughs Santayana. "We were really tight on space, so it was about maximizing efficiency and tricking the eye to make it feel like it's ample." The lesson is clear: "Sometimes challenges create really beautiful opportunities," the designer adds. "You just have to take advantage of that."

Custom millwork helps integrate the TV into the room; it's also mirrored around the custom-built home bar to tie the space together and frame the deep-green zellige tiles by Zia Tile.

"The bar has a sink, a back bar, a front bar and stools: it's really what activates the space and supports it with its function," Santayana says. "I actually think our spaces are mostly functional — and then we happen to be able to do a pretty good job at making them beautiful. What's important for us is that they are efficient in however they need to perform."

Though MONIOMI Design has its own furniture range (on display at the duo's brand-new Miami concept store and showroom, La Sala, where they also stock pieces by artists they have collaborated with), many of the pieces in the cabana were sourced from brands they love in a process driven by color palette and texture.

Woven rattan stools by Lyk Carpet, hand-knotted in Nepal and topped by green plush cushions, are matched by a light applique by GIOBAGNARA and a pendant by Schoolhouse — and everything is enveloped by the walls' Portola lime green wash.

"We really love playing with materiality — that's our innate design language," Santayana explains, adding that the goal is to continuously "push its boundaries."

Their signature style isn't for the faint-hearted: "we love color, we love pattern, we love geometry — we like to pair the graphic and the organic. But it's the unexpected, the sense of surprise in our spaces, we really value."

MONIOMI Design's joyful quirkiness carries an appeal of its own, but it also echoes the architectural history of Miami — and beyond. "Being in Miami, we're obviously deco-inspired. But again, it's not in-your-face deco. It's soft inspiration," says Santayana, pointing to Art Nouveau and Memphis as two more of their stylistic references.

The studio strives to incorporate the three into every space — the geometric essence of Memphis, Art Nouveau's organic and flowery schemes, and the linear-meets-curved silhouettes of Deco.

More than anything else, though, their practice "is a beautiful compilation of memories, history, and culture", just like the spirited pool cabana and home they imagined for Elias, where family life gets to thrive.

Dreaming of a Floridian summer? Explore Miami with Jen Roberts' insider guide to the city, filling you in on everything from the most coveted Miami design hotels to must-know restaurants and coffee shops.

Subscribe to the Livingetc newsletter now for a full immersion in the very best of design, culture, and lifestyle.