For one collecting couple in Miami Beach with a taste for the resolutely modern, a passion for mid-century-and-beyond furnishings neatly dovetailed with the purchase of a neglected 1958 gem designed by Miami’s Modernist master, the late Morris Lapidus. As it happens, Lapidus, who was responsible for such landmarks as the Fontainebleau, the Eden Roc and the Americana, designed very few residential projects, preferring the grander canvas of resort hotels. According to legend, this particular waterfront house came to be only because of Lapidus’ dentist, who jokingly insisted that he would keep drilling until Lapidus agreed to design him a house. Whatever the truth may be, Lapidus, always ahead of his time, created both a perfect Florida home and—as it turns out—an ideal stage set for some very advanced furniture.

The pedigree of the house, which its current owners—a couple with a taste for the edgy—bought in 1993, is announced by the front entrance, akin to a mini-Fontainebleau with its assortment of trademark Lapidus touches: “woggles” or curves, evident in the sweep of the front step; “cheese holes,” a series of holes punched in concrete walls that recall Swiss cheese; and “bean poles,” slender pillars supporting overhangs. Inside the foyer, with the 1,200-square-foot living room stretching out to an expansive view of Biscayne Bay through a bank of curved windows, the house unfolds as a riot of color and highly designed objects. Immediately, visitors take in a 1991 Gaetano Pesce glass piece on the wall, “Caravaggio” (an abstract side view of the 17th-century painter’s face rendered in pieces of glass), with a Pesce table and vase underneath. To the left is a 1982 Ettore Sottsass “Malabar” sideboard from the first Memphis collection. The work of the pioneering Italian design collective still looks as fresh as it was back in the 1980s, and it’s no surprise that Memphis is enjoying a resurgence in interest. Fittingly, the top of the Sottsass cabinet serves as a display area for a variety of Sottsass glass and ceramic pieces from the 1960s to the 1980s.

To the right, in the den, a Pesce rubber carpet is accented by Memphis lamps and a Sottsass television cabinet. The couple’s fondness for Pesce is evident in their stories about a 1998 one-of-a-kind resin “Kim Chair” and an epic 1995 bookcase, “Miami Sound,” both of which are in their living room. To the husband, pursuing a designer’s work over the years has both its pleasures and travails: “For a decade or so, I was Pesce’s biggest, well, pesce—the fish he could always count on reeling in with a new design or an idea. The chair was a prototype that he ultimately decided was too expensive to produce; unlike someone like Michael Graves, he does very limited editions of his pieces. The bookcase was something I commissioned. It’s made of Styrofoam covered in resin. But after a while, the surface started to bubble, which I wasn’t happy about. He told me just to drill a hole in the bubbles, to let the air escape. Then, when he came to visit one day and I showed him the bookcase, the only thing he said was how great it was that his art piece was changing.”

To round out the Pesce-above-all theme in the living room, a red 1998 “Self-Portrait Vase”—bearing Pesce’s face, of course—is complemented by a large wall-mounted cabinet, “Pictures in an Exhibition, 1996–97,” with each cabinet door resembling a picture frame and adorned with an homage to famous paintings by Picasso, van Gogh and other Modern masters. Along with Pesce’s work, the living room also features a 1986 Sottsass desk, Alessandro Mendini’s “Proust” desk chair from 1979 and a note of pure fun and whimsy from 1990 that would have appealed to Lapidus—“The Welders” by Yonel Lebovici, two welding tanks transformed into standing lamps, complete with lampshades made from welder’s masks.

In the sunroom, close to a bank of windows overlooking Biscayne Bay, is the couple’s pride and joy—a 1968 “Safari Sofa” in leopard-skin print, designed by Archizoom. When closed, the piece is a neat 8-foot by 8-foot square block of white laminated plastic. Unfolded, like the petals of a flower, it is a masterpiece of high-1960s, terminally Austin Powers glamour, the perfect lobby furniture for, say, the Eden Roc in its heyday. The piece is paired with a mobile 1969 bar made by Sergio Mazza for Artemide, also in white laminated plastic. The couple found this particular treasure at the Lincoln Road Flea Market, held twice a month on Miami Beach.