How Does a City Known for Art and Design Turn Itself Into a Tech Hub?

MIAMI – Danny LaFuente offers a bottle of water that is also an art piece. "égalité," the label says in script perfectly mimicking the mineral-water brand of Evian. If you weren’t paying attention, you could down the whole thing as a parched visitor – it is 80 degrees in Miami this week – without ever catching the sly artist’s statement.

Inside the coworking space LaFuente and Wifredo Fernandez recently opened in Miami, a mural of the same mock-Evian label takes up one massive wall near the windows onto Northwest 26th Street (the installation comes with pallets of the actual, drinkable water bottles). With time, that art will rotate out of the 10,000 square-foot office space, as will the two-story neon sign out front broadcasting that “Jesus Saves.” Art is inseparable from the whole space, called The LAB Miami, which occupies a former warehouse in the middle of the city’s upstart Wynwood arts district.