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A good knowledge of television helped PLY Architecture + Design, a firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to win a competition to design a Case Study House in Cleveland. The competition provided two hypothetical clients, but the four architects who make up PLY decided that their house should be more flexible, so they basically designed it for every type of client they could think of. TV came into the picture when the architects began to explain their ideas.

previous image | next image Case Study House Competition Cleveland, 2002 PLY Architecture + Design. In the winning entry for this competition, PLY designed a prefabricated upper-floor structure that could sit in various configurations atop a customized ground floor. House on the Huron River Ann Arbor, Mich., 2002 PLY Architecture + Design. This renovation and addition to an existing house takes advantage of the site’s commanding views of the river in the house’s backyard. Horton Kuwada Residence Ann Arbor, Mich., 2002 PLY Architecture + Design. Designed for a couple who teach at the University of Michigan, this house emphasizes traditional Japanese ways of moving through a house. Mountain Retreat Wears Valley, Tenn., 2002 PLY Architecture + Design. This cabin was built by wedding guests as a gift for the bride and groom. The Pilgrimage Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe Midford, Ind., 2001 PLY Architecture + Design. A prefabricated "Butler" building forms the core of this church, which was designed to be built by parishoners. Competition Entry for Chicago Public Schools Chicago, Ill., 2001 Ground Design/PLY Architecture + Design. This competition entry for a public school centers around a series of courtyards, and has skylights that are determined by the spaces between prefabricated concrete planks. Interior Renovation Ann Arbor, Mich., 2001 PLY Architecture + Design. Color defines space in this kitchen that the architects designed and built on-site. Photography and renderings courtesy PLY Architecture + Design

“In the exhibition, we tried to show the flexibility of this house, so we laid out the furniture for four different families,” said Craig Borum, one of the four principals (left). “To try to make it accessible and understandable, we chose pretty well known families: We chose the Cosbys; we chose the Cunninghams from Happy Days; we chose Jack, Chrissy, and Janet from Three’s Company; and then we chose The Andy Griffith Show. So we had a single parent. We had three adults sharing a dwelling. We had a full nuclear family with a home office—the Cosbys. And then we had a kind of traditional family with Fonzie living over the garage, which is exactly where Fonzie would live in our house.”

The Cleveland Case Study House was designed as a series of premanufactured loft spaces that can be placed on top of a custom base. The upper floor can be used as bedrooms, home offices, or rental space. The ground floor is equally flexible. “The only thing that’s defined on the ground floor is the kitchen,” said Karl Daubmann, another one of the principals (top right). “Everything else is just a large room or a small room or a medium-size room.”

Daubmann and Borum met in 1999 at the University of Michigan, where they were both teaching. The other two principals in the firm, John Comazzi (top left) and Gretchen Wilkins, also teach at Michigan. Being attached to a university has been an entirely positive experience for these architects. “The university respects our time, and our colleagues are a good source of ideas,” Borum said. “It wouldn’t be the same sort of practice if we didn’t have a place to talk about what we’re doing in a critical way.”

The firm was loose at first, with a shifting group of collaborators working on various projects and competitions. But after almost winning a competition to design a public school in Chicago, PLY took the jury’s reaction to heart. “I think they sensed that we weren’t a real firm,” Daubmann said, “and they wouldn’t give us this $20 million school to do if we were just four professors showing up. One of the things that this forced us to do was to be more regimented about our idea of the office.”

The four partners have since realized that each has something unique to bring to the drafting table, and their recent projects, which include several residences, an office building, and a retrofit of a local sushi restaurant, reflect the mingled personalities and design philosophies of the principals.

“We each tend to take on a project and guide it through,” Borum said, explaining the firm’s work process. “When one person is the lead on a project, the rest of us take on the role of critic. But we’re all working on every project; we’re all drawing. Being together as a firm has given us the chance to do something more than any one of us could do at a given moment.”

by Kevin Lerner