A Better Public Realm

“While everyone says vernacular architecture is declining, vernacular urbanism is growing immensely,” said Carie Penabad, cofounder with Adib Cúre of the firm Cúre & Penabad, on Thursday evening. They as well as Craig Borum and Jen Maigret of PLY+ were among the eight practices that won the Architectural League’s emerging voices reward this year. The theme tying the two practice’s work together was the influence of teaching on their practice. While leading trips to India, Africa, and South America for studios for the University of Miami (where Penabad directs the undergraduate architecture program), Cúre & Penabad shifted focus: “I thought we were going to help people design better houses—the studio brief was a house—but when we arrived, we realized everyone knows how to build a house—they needed people to help them design infrastructure, and a better public realm.” For the partners of PLY+, who remade an older practice (PLY) in 2016, their Ann Arbor practice followed the curriculum’s shift in focus from theory to the shop at the architecture school where they teach,…