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Alicia Romelia María Pujals y Mederos was born in La Habana, Cuba, on December 12, 1921. Her parents were Romelia Mederos y Cabañas and Francisco Pujals y Claret. She was the couple's third of four children: Francisco, Elena, Alicia, and José. Her older brother, Francisco, was an engineer (as was her father); her older sister, Elena, was also an architect; and her younger brother, José, was an agricultural engineer. Alicia enjoyed a charmed youth, surrounded by family and friends, many with whom she remained close throughout her life. She grew up in an environment grounded in strong family, moral, and ethical values, as well as a deep appreciation of nature and the arts, particularly anything related to "extraordinary" architectural and engineering designs. While growing up in Cuba, she traveled widely with her family throughout Cuba and also visited a number of places in Europe, Latin America, Canada, and the United States. This travel exposed her to different cultures as well as art and architecture throughout the ages and around the world.

Her formal education started at El Colegio Sepúlveda and continued at El Instituto de Segunda Enseñanza de La Habana. She then went on to study architecture at La Universidad de La Habana, where she met her future husband, Raúl L. Mora y Suárez Galbán. They married on December 23, 1945, and had three children (Alicia Cristina, María Elena, and Raúl Francisco). Alicia graduated from the School of Engineering and Architecture at La Universidad de La Habana, earning the title of Architect on July 15, 1946. She initiated her work as a Professional Architect at Pujals y Cia., her family's firm, and her work received acclaim with immediacy. Her achievements as an architect included industry awards and recognition in multiple professional, educational, and popular publications, including Álbum de Cuba and Vanidades. Her work was featured in exhibits at El Lyceum, Colegio de Arquitectos, and Palacio de Bellas Artes in Cuba; the Architectural League of New York; and The Florida Association of Architects Convention (held in Palm Beach, FL, in 1955).

Alicia's first home was at Malecón 40. She lived there until her parents moved their family to a new home at Quinta Avenida y 24 in Miramar. Her final home in Cuba was at the house that she and her husband (Structural Engineer Raúl L. Mora y Suárez Galbán) designed and built at Calle 24 #505 between 5a and 7a Avenida in Miramar. This house was the "crowning joy" of their professional experience. Florencia Peñate Díaz writes that these works are “characterized by their rationalist codes, the use of reinforced concrete, glass, [and] levels roofs with elements of environmental adequacy such as wide eaves and transparent shutters” (76). Unfortunately, they were only able to enjoy this home for a few years before the family deemed it necessary to leave Cuba. However, in future years they were able to collaborate in the design and construction of two other homes for themselves - the first in Dade City (Pasco County, FL) in 1980, and the second, an addition to the home they had designed for their daughter María Elena and her family in Dade City in 1970, which was completed in 2007.

In July 1960, Alicia and Raúl emigrated to the United States with their three children and two nephews. They also opened their home to Alicia’s brother and his wife’s children, Victor J., Gloria I., and Beatríz M. right through their college years, as José was a political prisoner in Cuba until 1988. Upon realizing that their stay in the United States would not be a short one, Alicia and Raúl followed the established procedures to change their immigration status from "Tourist" to "Resident," and eventually became naturalized American citizens. In addition, they applied for "Registration" as a "Professional Architect" and "Professional Engineer," respectively, so they could practice their professions in the United States. Raúl succeeded in this pursuit, but Alicia as well as her sister Elena (who had already become a renowned Architect in Cuba and abroad, as well as an esteemed Professor of Architecture at La Universidad de La Habana) were denied their requests by the Florida State Board of Architecture. The rejection from the State Board of Architecture meant that both Alicia and Elena would have to submit to a series of oral and written exams before they could be considered for Registration status. This also meant that they would not be able to practice their beloved profession in Florida.

Since both Alicia and her sister Elena were actively engaged with other professionals in similar situations, they were cognizant of the fact that a number of male Cuban architects (some of them former students of her sister Elena at La Universidad de La Habana) had been granted the "Registration" they sought, without additional exam requirements. As a
result, both Alicia and Elena were encouraged to appeal the State Board's ruling, but their appeals were denied. On the basis of previous work-based experiences, they interpreted this "final" ruling by the Board as a personal affront, perhaps influenced by the fact that they were women in a male-dominated industry and were thus unwelcome colleagues. Judging by feminist architectural scholarship such as that by Díaz, who has written about female architects in Cuba, focusing on the Pujals sisters specifically, the women were correct in their interpretations. As a result, they decided to take a stand in protest of what they believed to be a discriminatory and unjust decision by refusing to take the exams. They realized and accepted the fact that taking such a stand would limit their opportunities to practice architecture.

In spite of this major setback, however, their determination and love or architecture kept them active in the field. Elena turned to the field of Education, and Alicia found satisfying architectural work with Miller Florida Homes, Inc., a prominent developer in the state of Florida, and would maintain this working relationship for nearly 50 years. Alicia’s innovative designs gave the Millers an edge in the highly competitive South Florida residential construction market and caused their sales to increase beyond expectations. Over the years, Alicia's influence with Miller Homes, Inc., in Florida expanded to developments in Broward County (Lakeview Estates in Plantation), Palm Beach County, and Hillsborough County (Ruskin). Near the end of her career (at age 70), she received the First Place award for the design of Model 1003 Trendsetter for Miller's Florida Homes, Inc., at the Ruskin, FL, Parade of Homes. This late award came after numerous others during the course of her career; most notably she won First Place in a low budget model house competition for the Corporación Nacional de Asistencia Pública, which was built in 1948 in Cuba when she was 27 years old.

On August 11, 2008, surrounded by her husband, children, grandchildren, and extended family, Alicia passed away peacefully.

José Alfredo Gelabert Marcelo (8 March 1927, Sagua La Grande, Cuba) and Rosa Navia Castaño (10 June 1929, Havana, Cuba) were architects who jointly founded and ran the firm “Gelabert-Navia Arquitectos,” which practiced in Cuba until 1960 and later in Puerto Rico, Venezuela, and Florida. Both Gelabert and Navia graduated from the University of Havana with degrees in architecture in 1952, Navia graduating first in her class. In May of 1953, the couple married and remained together for the rest of their lives and had three children: a son, José, and daughters Ana and Cristina.

While still practicing in Cuba, the couple completed a number of projects. In 1955, they built a residence on Conill and Santa Ana in the Ensanche del Vedado, followed by another residence in 1956 - both of which utilized modern codes and climate adaptation. In 1958 under the instruction of its then director, the historian Herminio Portell Vilá, the couple also designed the building originally known as the Instituto Cultural Cubano-Norteamericano (U.S.-Cuba Cultural Institute), now known as Cuba's Advanced Institute for Foreign Relations, described by Nick Miroff as “once a mainstay of the two countries' deep and complicated ties.”

In 1959, Gelabert became the Director of Architecture, Urban Design, and Construction of the City of Havana, where he was responsible for directing a number of projects including: the José Martí Sports Complex facing the Malecón; the launching of the expansion of the city to the other side of the harbor, which came to be known as La Habana del Este; the Parque Camilo Cienfuegos; as well as a number of schools, hospitals, and child care centers across the island. He was also the last freely elected president of the Colegio de Arquitectos de Cuba - an association formed, in the words of the founders in 1916, in order to “ensure compliance with current laws and greater prestige of the profession” (Arquitectura Cuba). During this time, Navia, described by her family as a feminist who would scoff at describing herself as such, ran the company’s office in her husband’s absence and embarked on design projects of her own; for example, in 1961 she designed the Ministry of Transportation, a modern high-rise building on Avenida de Rancho Boyeros between Lombillo and Tulipán. Navia’s solo command of the business when necessary was similar to her fellow female architect Gabriela Menéndez, who also ran her and her husband’s firm while he undertook a government position. However, despite the clear capability of these female architects in terms of their roles as both designers and business people, women are consistently under- and misrepresented in narratives of Cuban architectural history, as evidenced, for example, in Patrick Calmon de Carvalho Braga’s scholarship on Arcquitectura Cuba - a periodical published by the same Colegio de Arquitectos de Cuba that Gelabert resided over as President. Braga notes, “Authorship in the journal comprises either of anonymous editorials and articles or articles authored by male architects, often publishing as sole authors” (236), which raises a problem of the absence of women in written records of architectural practice and development. Subsequently, Florencia Peñate Díaz’s feminist architectural scholarship offers an important counternarrative to that of a modern Cuban landscape designed and built exclusively by men.1

Despite the fact that they eventually left Cuba in 1961 because of their counter-revolutionary stance, Gelabert and Navia’s attitude toward the revolution was not always negative. Their son, José A. Gelabert-Navia, who is Professor and former Dean of the School of Architecture at the University of Miami, stated that his father “was very much with the revolution until he was against the revolution” (qtd. in Hurley). When the revolution began to interrupt the young couple’s plans, however, they sent their children with their grandparents to live in Spain as, despite the fact that she was born and raised in Cuba, Navia was actually of Spanish origin. The couple sought asylum in the Venezuelan embassy and then fled to Puerto Rico, where they renewed their architectural firm and practiced for seventeen years, producing over one hundred built projects in that time. In 1978 they relocated again; this time they headed to Venezuela, where their work focused primarily on a large-scale, low-income Llano Alto community built in the desert State of Apure, which borders with Brazil and Colombia. Their 1981 move to Miami was the last the couple made. They remained here and continued to stay committed to the practice of architecture until the end of their lives; for example, in conjunction with internationally acclaimed architect Charles Gwathmey of Gwathmey-Siegel, New York, they worked on the Joan Lehman Building of the (Miami) Museum of Contemporary Art in 1996. Their work featured in the recent exhibit, "Cuban Architects at Home and In Exile: The Modernist Generation." On October 17, 2017, Navia passed away in Miami, FL, surrounded by loved ones and was followed just eighteen days later by Gelabert on November 5, 2017. Their son, José, donated portfolios of their work to the Cuban Heritage Collection to safeguard their memory in Cuban architectural history.

Laura Bass
UGrow Fellow for the Department of Manuscripts and Archives Management, 2019-2020

1. See Florencia Peñate Díaz, “Significado de la obra de las arquitectas cubanas Elana y Alicia Pujals Mederos / The significance of the work of Cuban architects Elena and Alicia Pujals Mederos.” Arquitectura y Urbanismo, vol. 37, no. 1, 2016, pp. 26-36. Also, Diaz, “La obra de las arquitectas cubanas de la República entre los años 40 y fines de los 50 del siglo XX / The work of female Cuban architects of the Republic between the 1940s and the late 50s of the 20th century.” Arquitectura y Urbanismo, vol. 33, no. 1, 2012, pp. 70-82.

Denis Hector, R.A., LEED AP, is an Associate Professor in the University of Miami School of Architecture with a secondary appointment in the Department of Civil, Architectural & Environmental Engineering. He received his B.Arch. from Cornell and his Masters from Penn. As a DAAD Fellow at the Institut fur Leichte Flaechentragwerke he conducted research in the laboratory of 2015 Pritzker Prize winner, Frei Otto. He has taught architectural design and structures at the University of Bath, Parsons, Columbia, and Penn. At UM, he has served as Director of Graduate Programs, Associate Dean in the School of Architecture, and co-chair of the Abess Center Ecosystem Science and Policy Faculty Advisory Board. He initiated the first National Science Foundation Hurricane Hazard Research Conference post-Andrew, edited Hurricane Hazard Mitigation, and participated in the Mississippi Renewal Forum Charrette after Hurricane Katrina, the Mississippi AIA Mississippi Building Code Workshop, the 2010 Haiti Charrette, and subsequent work in Haiti with colleagues in Partner in Health. He currently advises on lightweight structures, hazard mitigation building codes, and community resilience.

Jacob Brillhart’s research engages the creative search through drawing, painting and design. This ongoing curiosity focuses on the ever changing relationship between design and methods of representation and visualization. His scholarly investigation of the creative search is based on Le Corbusier’s travel drawings and into his architectural theories and built work. He teaches drawing courses in the Rome program, seminars on Le Corbusier and Theory of Architecture and the Environment, plus core and upper level research studios. This scholarly study influences his own built work through his office Jacob Brillhart Architect, P.A., which seeks to establish a dynamic building vocabulary drawn from place, culture and climate. As a licensed architect and LEED AP, Brillhart is also engaged in sustainable building practices and was honored with the 2009 AIA Miami Design Merit Award for his “Mechanical House” and 2010 AIA Design Excellence Award for the “Grass House”. In 2010, he was also nominated as a finalist for the Rome Prize in Architecture.

Adib Cure received a Bachelor of Architecture degree from the University of Miami and a Masters of Architecture in Urban Design degree from Harvard University. Upon graduation he went to work for the office of Machado & Silvetti, and in 2001 he established the firm of Cure & Penabad Architecture and Urban Design in Miami. The work of the office has received numerous awards including American Institute of Architects awards, state and local preservation awards, a National Congress for New Urbanism Award, and a Silver Medal prize at the 2010 Miami Biennale. Most recently, the firm was nominated as a finalist for the prestigious Marcus Corporation Architectural Prize for emerging architectural talent.

Carie Penabad is Associate Dean and Director of the Bachelor of Architecture program. Her research focuses on the study of Latin American urbanism and architecture, particularly gaining accurate data on informal settlements and their growing role in the shaping of the contemporary city. She is also a principal of CURE & PENABAD, based in Miami. The work of the firm ranges in scale from furniture to architecture and urban design, with a focus on the cultural relevance of architecture and its relationship to history, form, craft and type. The office has received 10 American Institute of Architects awards, state and local preservation awards, and has been featured in leading publications and blogs including DOMUS, ArchDaily, KooZA/rch, and Dezeen.

Penabad has taught at a variety of institutions including the Boston Architectural Center and Northeastern University; and in 2013 was the Louis I Kahn Visiting Assistant Professor at Yale University. She co-authored the book Marion Manley: Miami’s First Women Architect with historian Catherine Lynn (University of Georgia Press, 2010) and recently edited the book Call to Order: Sustaining Simplicity in Architecture (ORO publishers, 2017). Penabad received a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Miami and a Masters of Architecture in Urban Design degree from Harvard University.

Jorge L. Hernandez, received a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Miami in 1980 and a Master of Architecture from the University of Virginia in 1985. He then worked for Eisenman Roberton Architects and taught at The University of Virginia. In 1987 he joined the faculty of the University of Miami and established his firm. His work includes The Brickell Bridge in Miami, Florida; The Williamsburg James City County Courthouse in Williamsburg, Virginia, both secured by winning entries in international competitions; and The Coral Gables Museum, a LEED certified renovation and addition to a National Register 1939 Phineas Paiste building. He has lectured in the US and Europe, taught for the Prince of Wales Institute of Architecture and participated in numerous international symposia and conferences. His work has been published internationally.

Germane Barnes’ research and design practice investigates the connection between architecture and identity. Mining architecture’s social and political agency, he examines how the built environment influences black domesticity. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor and Director of the Community Housing Identity Lab (CHIL) at the University Of Miami School Of Architecture. He is the 2021 Harvard GSD Wheelwright Prize winner, Rome Prize Fellow and winner of the Architectural League Prize. His design and research contributions have been published and exhibited in several international institutions. Most notably, The Museum of Modern Art, Pin-Up Magazine, The Graham Foundation, The New York Times, Architect Magazine, DesignMIAMI/ Art Basel, The Swiss Institute, Metropolis Magazine, Curbed, and The National Museum of African American History where he was identified as one of the future designers on the rise.

Eric Firley is of French-German nationality and was born in Düsseldorf, Germany. He studied economics, architecture and city design in Fribourg, Lausanne, Weimar and London, and started his professional career in the real estate sector in Paris. Afterwards he worked for several years in design practices in Paris and London, before dedicating himself full-time to research and writing between 2007 and 2010. In 2011 he became assistant professor at the University of Miami School of Architecture. Firley is the initiator and co-author of Wiley’s Urban Handbook Series that consists of three reference works in the field of housing, high-rise urbanism and masterplanning. He has lectured in institutions around the world, including the Skyscraper Museum and Cooper Union in NYC, the Architectural Association and Bartlett School in London, UC Berkeley, the National University of Singapore, the Parisian Planning Office (APUR), Queensland University of Technology and McGill University in Montreal.
Firley’s research has been funded by various public and private sector entities, including Grosvenor, Stanhope, the Arts Council and Design for London. His current research focuses on urban design practice, alternative models of housing production and the impact of immigration on urban form.

Edgar Sarli has been a faculty member at the University of Miami, School of Architecture since 2009. He received a Masters of Architecture in Urban Design from Harvard University in 2003 and his Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Miami in 1999. After collaborating in the office of Rafael Moneo for five years, he founded Loeb Sarli Architects. The firm’s project-based research ranges from large-scale urban interventions to a collection of portable furniture for contemporary nomadic urbanites. The office has won awards in Switzerland and Spain, and its work has been featured in AV, Domus web, and NZZ. It has been exhibited in America and Europe, including the Architecture Biennale in Venice. Mr. Sarli is a Florida Registered Architect, and teaches Building Technology, Design, and Visual Representation.

The 10th registered architect in Florida, he opened his own firm in 1911, and in 1915 opened a second office in Palm Beach. Known for Mediterranean Revival Style.

Ermina Luisa Odoardo Jähkel was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina on June 8th, 1923 to Rogelio Odoardo and Helen Jähkel. In 1930, she and her family moved to Cuba from Argentina as her father was from Cuba and his parents lived there. She began her art education early at the San Alejandro school of fine arts. She earned her Bachelor Degree in Letters and Sciences in 1940 and then a degree in architecture in 1945, both from the University of Havana. Her thesis architecture project was the development of the Gonzalo de Quesada Park in the city of Camagüey.

She and her husband Ricardo Eguilior y Perea worked together at their architecture firm, Ermina Odoardo Ricardo Eguilior Arquitectos, in Santiago de Cuba. Odoardo is known for being the first woman to practice architecture in Santiago. She was registered by the Colegio de Arquitectos de Oriente in 1948. During this time, their architectural style was mainly Rationalist, creating more than 50 buildings. Additionally, in the mid-1950’s, they were central to the urbanization and expansion of the Vista Alegre neighborhood in Santiago de Cuba, which remains to this day one of the most attractive areas of the city. Her firm constructed a condominium building there, shifting the overall aesthetic of the area. Some of the houses she created were on Calle 12 no. 206, at Avenida Manduley no. 301, at Calle 3 no. 202, at Anacaona no. 152, in the Merrimac division are the homes of Calle del Mirador, from Brooks Avenue and Rosell Street. Odoardo’s works could also be found in the Historic Center and in the districts of Development, Terrazas, Veguita de Gala and Santa Bárbara. She designed the house where she lived in Vista Alegre at Calle 19 esquina a Avenida Cebreco. In 1951, she won third prize for the Municipal Palace project. They built the Vista Alegre Tennis Club in 1953.

Odoardo and Eguilior greatly contributed to the development of modern Cuban architecture that was both modern and appropriate to the tropical climate. In 1958, their work was featured in the magazine, Arquitectura de La Habana. Her most notable projects built in Santiago de Cuba are the Bacardi Rum Company, Vista Alegre Tennis Club, Ferreiro Supermarket, Mestre and Espinoza drugstore, League Against Cancer Hospital, Office Building for Texaco, Texaco Refinery Laboratory Building, Texaco Employee Recreation Building, Pool on Siboney beach, Pool at Club Ciudamar, Merrimac Cast Planning, and the Planning of the Vista Alegre District Expansion.

Odoardo and her family left Santiago de Cuba and moved to Miami, Florida in 1960. In 1972, Odoardo and Eguilior’s firm designed the Bacardi International Limited Building in Bermuda, heavily influenced by Mies van der Rohe. Living in Miami, Odoardo also pursued painting and joined a local arts group. She passed away in 2018.

Born in 1926, Charles (Chuck) Reed Jr was a Florida architect who worked primarily in the modernist tradition. After serving in World War II, Reed enrolled in the University of Miami School of Architecture. He graduated in the second class of the newly founded school, and went on to practicing architecture. He worked for Igor Polevitzky, a South Florida architect who he greatly admired. His time with Polevitzky became the basis for his architectural foundations, as he learned more in depth about how the design buildings that respond uniquely to the sub-tropical South Florida climate. He began his own practice in the mid-1950's in Hollywood, Florida. While he did not classify his work as belonging to any category or style, his work is classified as mid-century, although he called his work organic and a reinterpretation of residential homes. He explored creative ways to address the South Florida climate and environment with whimsy, as well as being sensitive to the particulars of the landscape. He was always cognizant of hurricane design and was one of the first South Florida architects to implement reinforced masonry construction. He retried in 1997 where he relocated to North Carolina, and he passed in his home in 2022. He left behind a variety of work in South Florida, primarily in Hollywood, Florida.

Nicolás Quintana was born in 1925 in Havana, Cuba, son of prominent architect Nicolás Quintana, who was the head of the firm of Moenck & Quintana in Havana. The younger Quintana followed in his father's footsteps and enrolled in the School of Architecture at the University of Havana in 1944, where he was greatly influenced by modernist architects such as Walter Gropius and José Luis Sert.

By 1950, Quintana was the head of his father's architectural firm and began to participate in the Junta Nacional de Planificación (Board for National Planning), where he was involved with an urban planning initiative created by architect Nicolás Arroyo. One of his final projects while in Cuba was in 1958, planning for the new construction of the Banco Nacional de Cuba, but the project went unfinished due to the rising tensions during the Cuban Revolution. Following public disagreement with Cuban Revolutionary leaders, Quintana left Cuba with his family in 1960.

In exile, Quintana first lived in Venezuela and then Puerto Rico, where he continued working as an architect. In 1986 he moved permanently to Miami, Florida, where he was a professor in the School of Architecture at Florida International University (FIU) until his retirement in 2010. During his time at FIU, Quintana led the "Habana y sus paisajes" (Havana and its landscapes) project as an initiative to develop plans for saving the architectural heritage of Havana and suggesting steps towards developing urban and rural areas during future reconstruction in Cuba. Quintana died in Miami in 2011.

Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, FAIA, LEED AP, is Malcolm Matheson Distinguished Professor of Architecture and Director of the Master of Urban Design Program. She has a joint appointment in the Department of Public Health Sciences at the Miller School of Medicine. She was dean of the School of Architecture 1995-2013. She teaches courses on urban design and built environment adaptation to climate change.
Plater-Zyberk has collaborated with faculty across the University including recently with Engineering colleagues researching net-zero water management in buildings. She is a member of the UM Built Environment Behavior and Health Research Group, working with Miller School faculty on projects researching the well-being of children and elders’ relation to characteristics of the built context in which they live. As a consultant with DPZ Partners, she has worked with healthcare systems in Richmond and Chicago on the design of their campuses and community surroundings.
Plater-Zyberk is recognized as a leader of the movement called the New Urbanism, promoting walkable resilient urban design. A co-founder of the Congress for the New Urbanism in 1992, her teaching, research and consulting professional practice has ranged across new community design, community rebuilding, regional plans and zoning codes. A number of innovations in professional practice, such as the traditional neighborhood design zoning code (TND), were initiated with students in School of Architecture design studios and first implemented through community outreach in South Florida. Recent professional projects include the design of the University President’s house and the City of Miami Zoning Code, Miami 21.
Plater-Zyberk’s publications include refereed journal articles and book chapters. She is co-author of Suburban Nation: the Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream (over 85,000 sold), and The New Civic Art: Elements of Town Planning. Her work, with Andres Duany and DPZ Partners, has received numerous awards and recognitions including honorary degrees, Architectural Record’s first Women in Architecture Award, and the Richard H. Driehaus Prize for Classical Architecture. She has served on numerous review and editorial panels, including the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts.

An architect and an artist, Rocco Ceo teaches courses in design, Design/Build (with Jim Adamson), foundation courses in freehand and mechanical drawing, drawing seminars on color theory, Michelangelo, Historic American Building Survey/HABS and Historic American Landscape Survey/HALS. He has produced drawings of the elements of Florida’s landscapes as well as the documentation of seminal sites in the history of South Florida such as Vizcaya and the Marjory Stoneman Douglas home. His published work includes the award winning books, Redland: A Preservation and Tourism Plan done with Margot Ammidown and Maria Nardi and Historic Landscapes of Florida co-authored with Joanna Lombard. His architecture practice focuses on the unique relationship between architecture and landscape found in the American Tropics. His work has received awards from the Florida Trust for Historic Preservation, Progressive Architecture, and I.D. Magazine and the Miami Chapter of AIA. His interest in paradox found in the study of the natural world informs his architecture, research and painting.

Joel Lamere received his Master of Architecture degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Before joining UM’s School of Achitecture, he was Assistant Professor of Architectural Design and Homer A. Burnell Chair at MIT. Lamere’s research addresses the future of building practice through innovation in emerging means and methods. As computational design processes evolve, and digital fabrication techniques become more commonplace, our built environment promises to transform radically. Lamere explores this changing landscape through Future Objects at the School of Architecture, a laboratory dedicated to experimentation and innovation in the field of construction technology.

In addition, Lamere is investigating the design of coastal structures - a key ingredient in the struggle to overcome the effects of global climate change. The topic has an ugly history, rife with faulty solutions that reflect the incredible complexity of the problem: the vast number of variables and systemic interactions that occur along a coastline. With this complexity in mind, Lamere joined an interdisciplinary faculty team to address the question from a range of perspectives simultaneously. This team, part of the University of Miami Laboratory for Integrative Knowledge (U-LINK), is working to design the next generation of coastal structures in a way that protects communities from rising seas and the other effects of climate change without negatively affecting coastal ecosystems and the vitality of nearby communities.