Founding principals of CÚRE & PENABAD Architecture and Urban Design, Adib Cúre and Carie Penabad, have insisted on the importance of the city and the search for architecture able to restore associations with the world around. The work of the firm engages architecture and the design of the city as a singular investigation where inquiry and realization, poetry and practicality, history and invention are inextricably linked. Their designs bring together - in a single vision- the experience and cultures of three different countries: Colombia, where Cúre was born; Cuba where Penabad’s ancestors are from; and the United States, where the couple studied at the University of Miami and Harvard, settling in Miami to establish their architectural practice.A typological, historical, contextual, and climatological understanding informs the work. Projects engage contemporary building practices, and are interested in maintaining continuity with the past without being historicist. There is also a pre-occupation with a range of incidental themes such as the importance of perspective and the “visual” in the choreography of space; thus the transfiguration of the commonplace through architecturally staged phenomena has been a consistent goal of the work.
Carie Penabad is Associate Dean and Director of the Bachelor of Architecture program in the School of Architecture at the University of Miami, Florida. 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.
Adib Cúre is an Associate Professor in Practice in the School of Architecture at the University of Miami in Florida.
Their firm was established in 2001.
