The Architecture of Duany Plater-Zyberk and Company

By Joanna Lombard Rizzoli, 2005, 176 pp., hardcover $49.95. Considering the enormous impact Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk have made on town planning and urban design, it’s curious that so little has been said about the architecture that’s come out of their office. Many people have written about DPZ’s plans and codes and about the more than 250 neighborhoods and communities for which they’ve conducted charrettes. But not until this book, which contains an introduction by Miami architecture critic Beth Dunlop and an essay by University of Miami architecture professor Joanna Lombard, has there been a volume dedicated to DPZ’s own buildings — ranging from a 1977 house for Plater-Zyberk relatives in Pennsylvania, to churches, restaurants, offices, and dwellings in Florida, to houses in a new development in Turkey. One reason for this neglect is that Duany and Plater-Zyberk have swum against the tide. While other Princeton- and Yale-educated designers focused on creating one-of-a-kind architectural statements that often have little to do with the character of their locales, the Miami-based husband and wife set about producing coherent urban environments. Aiming for coherence doesn’t leave much room for willfulness — a key ingredient in the work of many designers celebrated in the architectural press and the mass media. Architects working in the DPZ studio in Little Havana, Dunlop points out, “shared a general conviction that every project should be accountable to its urban context, either as a response or a proposition.” Emphasizing the setting DPZ’s emphasis on organizing buildings around sociable and dignified public settings found its initial reflection in Charleston Place, in Boca Raton, where rhythmic rows of townhouses face small lawns and narrow streets — congenial places for encountering neighbors. When I first met Duany in the mid-1980s, he admitted that he didn’t like some elements of the Charleston Place houses — the fake shutters decorating the windows, for instance. But as Lombard points out, one of the things that has distinguished DPZ has been a willingness to work on projects meant for “customers” (consumers whom the architect never gets to meet before they move in) rather than for “clients” and “patrons” — the kind of people that top-flight architects usually serve. When designing for anonymous customers, an architect has less control over the final product and usually a less generous budget as well. Many buildings by DPZ are made of block covered with stucco, a common south Florida form of construction. This encourages a certain discipline in the sizing and placement of openings; you can’t deploy windows and doors as willy-nilly as in wood-frame construction. Even in wood, however, DPZ has shown a penchant for symmetry or balance. In 1981, on Florida’s Sanibel Island, the Clary House — tall and long, but displaying exemplary discipline in its wood exterior — “set a precedent for later DPZ buildings that contain internal complexity within an outwardly simplified volume,” Lombard says. Symmetry accentuates the buildings’ aesthetic power. DPZ has consistently drawn on certain “types” for its designs. Lombard identifies four house models frequently employed by the firm: “the house of second story loggias, the porch house, the courtyard house, and the house as tower.” One of the most striking dwellings in this book, the Westover House in Fort Worth, Texas, features masonry walls and columns whose thickness imbues them with weight and dignity — a feeling enhanced by the use of simple classical forms. Duany and Plater-Zyberk seem to have soaked up the stripped classicism that once figured prominently in Western architecture. Since the 1970s, the couple has lived in Coral Gables, a 1920s garden suburb whose buildings offer, says Lombard, a “synthesis of classical form, local materials, and vernacular details.” That combination — classicism, local materials, and details from ordinary buildings — has appeared again and again in communities shaped by DPZ. Another especially appealing residence by DPZ is Windsor House, in Windsor, a DPZ-designed resort community in Vero Beach, Florida. With creamy stucco walls and traditional multipane windows, real shutters, and a generous balcony, Windsor House proves that a building doesn’t need lavish materials or wild gyrations to make a stunning impression. The rooms in DPZ buildings are mostly fairly simple rectangles, which offer comfortable, often peaceful spaces. An architect friend of mine, after looking through this book, said he felt each room offered an atmosphere of calm, a sense of having been designed so that the occupant would enjoy sitting in it. Not all the buildings are so successful. Good Shepherd Catholic Church in Miami has a handsome, abstracted tower, but the interior appears designed for quick assembly and departure, not for serene contemplation and for worship. Williams Apartments in Miami is shaped well enough, but the sun makes its surfaces resemble wavy cardboard. The book’s 200 color photos and illustrations convey the character of DPZ’s buildings but often do not reveal much about the surrounding area, an unfortunate flaw, considering how insistently the firm preaches the importance of context. Lombard is probably not in a position to be too tough on DPZ buildings, working as she does for an architecture school where Plater-Zyberk is dean. Yet the writing is generally clear and insightful. It enables readers, whether trained in architecture or not, to understand how Duany and Plater-Zyberk arrived at their principles, how their buildings come into being, and what the buildings do well. The book is substantial enough that Rizzoli should have included an index — essential in any serious volume.