The PLY+ team. All images courtesy of PLY+.

For this week's Studio Snapshot, Archinect connected with Craig Borum and Jen Maigret, the two principals of Ann Arbor-based collaborative architecture practice PLY+. The team was recently recognized as leading new practitioners by The Architectural League of New York, receiving one of this year's coveted Emerging Voices Awards.

Borum and Maigret shared with us how their faculty positions at Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning create dual demands of practice and teaching, how the team had to adapt to working remotely during the pandemic, and when it is time to say no to potential projects.

Can you tell us how PLY+ was founded?

PLY+ was originally founded by Craig Borum in 1999 as PLY and was reimagined under the new partnership of Craig Borum and Jen Maigret in 2016.

How many people are currently employed? How is your office structured?

We are 9 architects and design professionals who work closely together in teams assigned by project. We structure team formation to provide strong continuity of key members throughout the design, construction documentation, and construction administration of each project. This ensures that our clients are able to develop a strong relationship with the key team members which strengthens communication and advocacy on behalf of the design goals of the project. Also, because of the small scale of our firm, team formation facilitates mentorship within the office as well. We try to match people with projects that will benefit from their strengths as well as provide opportunities for ongoing professional growth.

This collaborative structure is also very much influenced by our commitment to design excellence and interest in opportunities to translate design research into practice. Our two principals are also full-time faculty at the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, and value the exchange of ideas between practice and teaching. The combination of continuity by project and creative invention strongly shape our office structure and is highly valued by our clients who typically seek our expertise in open-ended design research that provides a unique service to individuals and organizations seeking to express their identity and to extend their mission through architecture.

Would you like to scale up and grow your team? What do you consider the ideal size for your practice?

If exciting opportunities emerge, then scaling up to meet those needs would be a direction we pursue. Our current size of 9 has been working very well across a range of project types and scales. It’s always a balancing act to maintain the quality of work needed to sustain our size with opportunities for design innovation and the level of quality we bring to every project. Scaling up would also mean transitioning to new leadership structures and business models which could also open up additional opportunities within our office structure in addition to potentially enabling us to compete for projects that, to date, we have teamed up to compete for. All in all, our first priority is design excellence and if this leads us down a path where scaling up is the best way to achieve this, then we’re all in!

What have been the biggest challenges starting and running your own practice?

There are many. Some of the challenges stem from the dual demands of practice and teaching for Craig and Jen which, by extension, place additional responsibilities on the rest of the team. In large part, the split between practice and teaching generates time management challenges which is why having such a strong office team and clear communication is essential. Additionally, as anyone running a small business will relate to, there are many operational challenges including business development, marketing, and the everyday logistics necessary to keep things running. Perhaps the largest challenge, however, is learning when and how to say "no" to potential projects.

Our current size of 9 has been working very well across a range of project types and scales.

Every project is rich with opportunity, even when structured by many constraints. However, predicting whether or not the project’s circumstances will foster or hinder its potential is difficult to do. Often, this has more to do with the team of people that will be coming together to work on the project and the structure for decision-making throughout the project rather than the project type, site, or budget. Ultimately, we believe opportunities are created through collaboration and communication so the challenge lies in recognizing the projects that will produce great partnerships.

What challenges have you faced during the past pandemic months? Are you sensing a return to 'business as usual' soon?

All of us have felt the challenges associated with working in relative isolation when compared with the open studio model we enjoyed when we were in the office together. Working "remotely" (from home) also puts a tremendous strain on any separation between working hours and home life exacerbated by the loss of access to childcare and technological challenges to accommodate the workflows of shared home offices. On top of all of this is the fact that we completed a labor-intensive move into a new office just two weeks prior to the shut down so we haven’t even had a chance to 'break in' the new space yet!

Over the past year, we have missed the moments of serendipitous inspiration that come from looking over each other’s shoulders, pulling books from the office library, and sharing the informal moments of connection like Friday happy hours and midday coffee. In spite of all of this, we have adapted and, in the process, discovered collaboration tools that will stay with us after we are able to all be in the same physical space together again. We are cautiously optimistic that soon we will be able to return to something closer to 'business as usual' and are very much looking forward to finally hosting an open house to celebrate our new space and being back together again.

Describe your work. How do you define your own unique style and approach?

Each project in our firm has its own unique complexity, but most stand out for their spatial and experiential qualities. At the forefront of every project is also experimentation. Whether that is through fabrication, materiality, or programming, our work undergoes numerous iterations informed by research. The result is architecture that creates meaningful relationships between the material and functional aspects of its uses. Because of this approach, collaboration also becomes imperative in how we execute a project; bringing different multidisciplinary expertise together to inform design decisions and working with fabricators and builders to leverage their knowledge into economical solutions.

What do you want your firm to be known for?

The impact that our work makes. We work on this intentionally across three considerations: that of our clients, our contribution to the discipline, and our impact on one another as collaborators. We’ve already described how important our relationship with our clients is. This extends to the importance of understanding their needs and ambitions to help us recognize the opportunities that can enliven the everyday experiences of the spaces we design. In this way, we understand that one of our primary responsibilities is to produce architecture that improves the mission and life of our clients.

Perhaps the largest challenge, however, is learning when and how to say "no" to potential projects.

Secondly, through our experimentation, we strive to have a positive impact on the practice of architecture more broadly as active participants in the evolution of our discipline. Finally, by working on these goals in close collaborations, we bring a multiplicity of strengths and vantage points to everything we do. Learning from one another and fostering a positive work environment allows us all to do our best work and to actively empower the next generation to build on past successes with fresh visions and values.

Where do you see PLY+ in 5 years?

Our collaboration as PLY+ started 5 years ago, so looking forward to the next five years prompts us to think about how the firm’s transformation will continue. One notable aspect of the past five years has been an increased continuity in employees, and by extension, an overall increase in the breadth and depth of expertise in the office. Hopefully, our expanded expertise paired with an increase in the visibility of our work sets us up for some new, exciting opportunities in the next five years. We expect that the work will continue to be broad in project type yet be extensions of the work we’ve done to date as the lessons learned from previous projects influence the way we approach new projects.

Do you have a favorite project? Completed or in progress.

Selecting a single, favorite project is challenging because they each have individual successes that are specific to the project but difficult to compare side by side. For example, we are incredibly proud of the brickwork achieved at the St. Mary Chapel, which was a design idea with origins in earlier work accomplished at the office but transformed by the scale and complexity of the chapel. The power of these ideas would not have attained the impact that they did, however, if we hadn’t been fortunate enough to work with some absolutely amazing masons from Davenport Masonry. This is just one example of many that have played out across each of our projects. In this way, each project has contributed to growth of the next projects in both direct and indirect ways.

If you could describe your work/practice in three words, what would they be?

Collaboration, research, implementation.