Duany Plater Zyberk & Company

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Duany Plater Zyberk & Company (DPZ) is an architecture and town planning firm founded in 1980 by the husband-and-wife team of Andrés Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk. It is one of the dominant firms specializing in new urbanist town planning in the United States and other countries, having completed designs for over 250 new and existing communities.

Areas of practice include regional and downtown plans, new towns, urban infill, villages and resort villages, transit-oriented development, suburban retrofits, campuses, housing, affordable housing and civic buildings. The firm is headquartered in Miami, Florida, and has offices in Gaithersburg, Maryland and Charlotte, North Carolina.

DPZ’s projects have received numerous awards, including two National AIA Awards, the Thomas Jefferson Award, the Vincent Scully Prize and two Governor’s Urban Design Awards for Excellence. The firm’s early project of Seaside, Florida, was the first authentic new town to be built successfully in the United States in over fifty years. In 1989, Time Magazine selected Seaside as one of the 10 “Best of the Decade” achievements in the field of design. Other well-known DPZ-designed communities include Kentlands, Gaithersburg, Maryland; Rosemary Beach, FL; and Prospect New Town.

A significant aspect of DPZ’s work is its innovative use of planning regulations which accompany each design. Tailored to the individual project, the codes address the manner in which buildings are formed and located to ensure that they create useful and distinctive public spaces. Local architectural traditions and building techniques are also codified within the regulations. In the last five years, DPZ has also been continually developing a new model zoning code called the SmartCode. This is based on an analytical tool called the Transect, which classifies degrees of urbanism within a continuum from urban center to rural wilderness, and promotes a system of zoning according to that structure. The growing acceptance of traditional neighborhood development and of form-based regulation has inspired many municipalities across the country to adopt the SmartCode.

The firm’s method of integrating master plans with project-specific design codes and regulations is currently being applied to sites ranging from 10 to 10,000 acres throughout the United States. Abroad, DPZ projects are underway in Scotland, Canada, Germany, Belgium, Australia, the Philippines, Mexico, India and Turkey. Urban redevelopment plans for existing communities include: Baton Rouge, Louisiana; West Palm Beach, Naples, Sarasota, and Fort Myers, Florida; and Providence, Rhode Island. In addition, the firm is rewriting the entire City of Miami zoning code through the Miami 21 project.

DPZ has also taken a leading role in the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast after hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Working with both with the Mississippi Governor’s Commission on Recovery, Rebuilding and Renewal, and the Louisiana Recovery Authority, DPZ’s designers generated plans for rebuilding at the regional, local and neighborhood scales, as well as guidelines for individual homeowners looking to rebuild. Notably, DPZ organized and led the Mississippi Renewal Forum, which generated plans for all eleven municipalites along the Mississippi Coast, and participated in the Unified New Orleans Plan as neighborhood planners in the French Quarter, Central Business District and Gentilly.

Duany and Plater-Zyberk’s book, Suburban Nation, written with Jeff Speck, was hailed as “an essential text for our time,” and “a major literary event,” in the national media. The New Civic Art, written with Robert Alminana, was also recently published to wide acclaim.

In 2005, DPZ Director Demetri Baches and Project Manager Mallory Baches founded DPZ Pacific, the company's first affiliate office and its first international office. They were joined by Kamal Zaharin and Ludwig Fontalvo-Abello, senior DPZ Project Managers, who established DPZ Pacific's office in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The new firm focuses exclusively on work in Asia, India, The Middle East, Southeast Asia and Oceania using the principles and techniques pioneered by Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk.