Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company

DPZ is a group of individuals who have committed themselves to the innovation and practice of bettering the built environment and maintaining the surrounding natural environment in a balanced condition. Our Network of like-minded, highly qualified professionals allows us to assemble multi-disciplinary teams to address all scales and topics related to the built environment, resilient regions and sustainable settlement practices. DPZ has trained and collaborated with hundreds of professionals in the concepts of an evolved design tradition. Our Lexicon, analytical process and design approach are commonly recognized terms and practices in the realms of planning and design.

Our principals, Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, are leaders and innovators who have made significant progress in transitioning single-use, auto-centric America to a more resilient and sustainable pattern. Through the rigorous study of urban planning and design traditions, DPZ has developed a new approach, modernizing traditional techniques in planning, urban design and architecture. Founding members of the Congress for the New Urbanism, our principals, partners and staff continually collaborates with like-minded professionals around the world, enriching our practice and the New Urbanism movement. The Charter of the New Urbanism encapsulates many details our philosophy, evidenced by our built work.

DPZ has contributed valuable Techniques to the fields of planning, urban design and architecture, through both innovation and publication. Among the most recognized contributions are: The Lexicon of the New Urbanism, cataloging the vocabulary of planning and urban design; The SmartCode, an open-source model form-based code; Sprawl Repair, techniques and process for addressing the suburban condition; Light Imprint, a methodology for managing storm-water through natural, in-situ techniques which help to restore watersheds and reduce the need for costly infrastructure.

Our approach to working supports our design ideals by breaking barriers of professional silos and addressing difficult issues head-on. The term charrette has morphed since DPZ began using it over 20 years ago. Our charrette approach is a concentrated working session, assembling multi-disciplinary professionals, decision makers and our team, where designs and solutions are rapidly prototyped. All options can be weighed equally and decisions confidently made in a matter of days. The charrette serves to organize the ongoing work of even the most complex teams, saving many months of complex coordination.

DPZ has several qualities that differentiates us from other firms:

• Our breadth of built work and lessons learned;
• Our continual pursuit of innovative solutions;
• Our approach, the DPZ charrette and rapid prototyping;
• Our decision to maintain a small footprint and foster collaboration with others;
• Our principals, highly active and engaged in the firm and the field.

Duany and Plater-Zyberk began their practice as architectural firm working with the small individual commissions of every start up firm. In 1977, together with Bernardo Fort-Brescia, Laurinda Spear and Hervin Romney, Duany and Plater-Zyberk formed Arquitectonica, a high tech modern firm responsible for the design of some of Miami’s most iconic towers, including the Atlantis Condominium prominently featured in Miami Vice.

In 1979, Duany and Plater-Zyberk's master planning work was born of an architectural design commission that expanded in scope and ambition to become the town of Seaside. The firm Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company was incorporated the following year. The lessons learned in creating a small town plan informed an approach based on the inherent sustainability of traditional neighborhood design. Seaside was accompanied by a form-based code, providing a comprehensive planning method that not only provided a developer with a plan, but a predictable and binding way to ensure its realization.

DPZ's work for infill sites within single-use contexts, revitalizing existing downtowns, creating new stand-alone villages, and drafting growth guidelines for counties and regional agencies all still share the same guiding principles. At the heart of these plans is a celebration of compact, walkable, mixed-use, interconnected, and vibrant urbanism. In the first years of their practice, the legal and financing structures in place, as well as the acceptance of the single use zoning required an enormous amount of effort in training the public at large of the societal consqeuences to the quality of life born out of auto-centric planning and zoning.

In order to get things done and with public support, Duany and Plater-Zyberk began lecturing extensively and designing in a format that allowed an immediate feedback loop for designers, the charrette. While the term has recently been adopted by many and somewhat contaminated to mean a public process, the charrette originally was an intensive 7-10 days studio design session, informed by key stakeholders continuously providing The result of a plan and code developed during a charrette that could go immediately into construction drawings and permitting.

DPZs methods have been emulated by numerous practitioners who follow our work, by national organizations, such as SmartGrowth America, by environmental groups, such as LEED and by Mayors, Governors, and others, including Prince Charles, who see the tremendous benefits to our methods of planning, coding and design. Entering its third decade, DPZ looks back to the many hurdles and achievements of the past decades, our built projects and the lessons learned from them, and forward to new challenges, innovations, and realizations of the future.