FDC 2027 Speakers
Carl Abbott, FAIA
The designs of Florida / Caribbean Architect Carl Abbott have a timeless modern quality. He is strongly influenced by his experiences of the sacred Architecture of the ancient Egyptians and Maya – the manner in which their designs respond to the land and to the movement of the sun and stars. He feels strongly that Architecture and Nature shape our lives.
Carl designs buildings which are informed by the land — view lines, natural light, breezes, courtyards, topical vegetation, and often, the infinite horizons of the sea. Walking through an Abbott building, one experiences a rich spatial journey infused with nature. Buildings freely respond to the site to create experiences of light and land in a continuing play of movement. As with a seashell, there is often a solid, protective side and a side which is open wide to the beauty of the Earth.
Abbott is very much an American, however his outlook is truly international and remarkably well informed – having worked and studied in Europe, the Caribbean, and the Pacific Islands. He received his Master’s degree under Paul Rudolph at Yale then worked in Hawaii, in New York with I.M. Pei, and in London with Yale classmates Richard Rogers and Norman Foster. In the late ‘60s he opened his firm in Sarasota, becoming a part of the recognized Sarasota School of Architecture. He continues to keep his firm small to allow for close personal involvement in each project.
Carol Ross Barney, FAIA
HASLA, Founding PartnerRoss Barney Architects is a Chicago-based architecture, urban design, and landscape architecture studio. The practice has developed a reputation for creating innovative, environmentally responsible, user focused architecture and civic space that stands the test of time. This work has often centered on over overlooked and forgotten buildings and places that form the backdrop to urban life: train stations, power plants, government offices, schools, parks, and fast-food restaurants. The studio’s portfolio is distinguished by an ability to navigate complex histories, tight budgets, and bureaucracy. Challenges and constraints are recast as opportunities; elevating the mundane into memorable and inspiring experiences. By operating on the principle that the design process must examine the broadest range of options to create excellence, the studio has adopted an extraordinarily collaborative and holistic approach, engaging the client, user, and community. This goes beyond aesthetics to allow a project to grow out of its place, history, and function.
As the architecture industry investigates its role in systemic systems, Ross Barney Architects has continued to be at the forefront of inclusive design. With a methodology that is based on equity, observation, listening, and learning before solutions are developed; the studio has been a model for firms of all sizes. This process of co-creation strengthens design solutions and more importantly nurtures a sense of ownership and pride by the community served.
Design Excellence is a right, not a privilege.
Carol Ross Barney, FAIA, HASLA, is the recipient of the 2023 American Institute of Architects Gold Medal, and has been in the vanguard of civic space design since founding Ross Barney Architects in 1981. With a career that spans nearly 50 years, Carol has made significant contributions to the built environment, the profession, and architectural education. From the early days in the United States Peace Corps planning National Parks in Costa Rica to recent collaborations with City Governments, Carol has relentlessly advocated that excellent design is a right, not a privilege.
David Benjamin
Principal, The Living, Autodesk Researcher, Assistant Professor Columbia UniversityThe Living explores the architecture of the future through building it today, bringing new technologies to life in the built environment with a passion for integrating design innovation, sustainability, and the public realm. Benjamin believes that cities and buildings are living, breathing organisms, and in the context of rapid change and new urban challenges, proposes that design should be a living, breathing ecosystem. Within this design ecosystem, The Living works on multiple scales simultaneously; anticipates and welcomes rapid change; and embraces design with uncertainty, design with rules rather than fixed forms, and design with shifting and unknowable forces. Clients include the City of New York, Airbus, 3M, Quantified Self, and Miami Science
Museum. Recent projects include the Princeton Architecture Laboratory, Hy-Fi (a branching tower in the courtyard of MoMA PS1 created with almost no waste, energy, or carbon emissions), Pier 35 EcoPark (a 200-foot floating pier in the East River that changes color according to water quality), and Architecture Bio-Synthesis (a new process of bio-computation and bio-manufacturing to produce high-performance, sustainable materials through synthetic biology).
David Benjamin is Founding Principal of The Living and Associate Professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. His work applies biology and computation to an expanded and actionable framework of environmental sustainability. By considering buildings as dynamic systems rather than static objects, he finds opportunities to design levers of decarbonization that scale up.
Marlon Blackwell, FAIA and Ati Blackwell, FAIA
Founding Partner + Design Director / Partner + Creative Director
Our studio takes a flexible approach to each project, allowing the surroundings to shape its identity rather than imposing a style. We operate at the forefront of methods, prioritizing architecture’s ability to champion healthy people and environments. Using practical applications, our team works to leverage resources to create icons on every scale.
Marlon Blackwell has practiced architecture in Fayetteville, Arkansas, for over thirty years and is the founding principal of Marlon Blackwell Architects. Until the conclusion of the 2024–2025 academic year, he served as the E. Fay Jones Distinguished Professor at the Fay Jones School of Architecture + Design at the University of Arkansas, where he taught for more than three decades and helped shape generations of architects through a rigorous, place-centered approach to design.
Meryati serves as a Principal and Director of Interiors for each project MBA undertakes. Her sensitivity as a designer and knowledge of materials and details enriches the development of the facility. By leveraging Meryati’s knowledge of local and sustainable materials, the project team will ensure an elegant, yet resilient and environmentally responsible design. With every project, she works closely with Marlon, the client and the project consultants to deliver a interior design that is thoughtful and warm, yet robust and resilient. As a design leader, Ati will ensure a singular expression of the project, seamlessly tying the interior and exterior together.
Damien Blumetti, AIA
Founder, Principal, Damien Blumetti Architect
Raised on Florida’s Gulf Coast, Damien Blumetti grew up surrounded by the quiet clarity of subtropical light, barrier islands, and modernist homes that bridged indoors and out. Blumetti earned his Bachelor of Design degree in 2007 and his Master of Architecture degree in 2009— both from the University of Florida, where he later returned as an adjunct professor, helping guide the next generation of architects.
Early in his career, he joined the studio of world-renowned modernist architect Guy Peterson, whose practice profoundly shaped Blumetti’s aesthetic and approach to the discipline. Working under Peterson solidified his commitment to clarity, precision, and the enduring value of regional modernism. In 2017, Blumetti founded his own firm, Damien Blumetti Architect.
Blumetti’s professional contributions extend beyond the studio. In 2023, he served as the President of the AIA Florida Gulf Coast Chapter, working to strengthen regional networks through advocacy, programming, and mentorship. Through both practice and leadership, he continues to uphold and reinterpret the principles of regional modernism for a new generation. He resides in Sarasota with his wife, Erin, and two daughters, Ila and Etta.
Alison Brooks, FRIBA, FAIA, FRSA, RDI
Principal and Creative Director
Alison Brooks Architects is recognised as one of the UK’s most influential and internationally acclaimed design practices. Founded by Canadian Alison Brooks in 1996, this London-based studio employs cultural research as both catalyst for community engagement and for new forms of architectural expression. The practice’s built works demonstrate commitment to generous, inclusive city-building supported by a uniquely sculptural design language evident across their large scale masterplans and mixed-use developments, higher education buildings, private houses and public buildings for the arts.
Alison Brooks, Founder and Creative Director of Alison Brooks Architects, is one of the UK’s most highly awarded and internationally acclaimed architects. A native of Ontario, Canada she moved to London in 1988 and established her practice in 1996. With built works encompassing urban design and housing, private houses, installations, public buildings for the arts and higher education, she is the only architect to have received the profession’s three most prestigious UK awards: the RIBA Stirling Prize, Manser Medal (twice), and the Stephen Lawrence Prize.
Her work reflects a commitment to generous, inclusive city-building and a uniquely sculptural design language inspired by place-memory, culture and nature. Her approach is beautifully demonstrated in her recently completed Cohen Quadrangle for Exeter College, Oxford and Cadence, her mixed-use courtyard tower in King’s Cross. Current landmark projects include Quayside Toronto masterplan, the revitalisation of the University of Toronto Faculty of Information and a new entrance building for Homerton College, Cambridge. Private houses continue to serve as a focussed platform for the practice’s design research, from the much-celebrated 2001 VXO House to the 2021 RIBA House of the Year, Windward House.
Gabriella Carrillo
Architect, Founder
Gabriela Carrillo started her eponymous Studio in 2019, as a collaborative and interdisciplinary space for architectural work. She is a co-founder of the c733 collective, dedicated to developing public projects in Mexico. Previously, she was a partner at Taller Rocha Carrillo for over nine years. With over twenty years of experience, she has received numerous accolades, including the Emerging Voices Award in 2014, the Federico Mariscal Chair, the highest recognition for professional practice by the Faculty of Architecture at UNAM, and the Médaille d'OR from the French Academy of Architecture. She was named "Architect of the Year" by Architectural Review in London in 2017 and by Architectural Digest Mexico in 2020. Gabriela has also been a member of the National System of Art Creators and since 2021, an academic member of the Academy of Architecture of Mexico, Mexico City chapter.
Adib Cure and Carie Penabad
Founding Principals
Founding principals Adib Cúre and Carie Penabad have insisted on the importance of architecture and the design of the city as a singular investigation where inquiry and realization, poetry and practicality, history and invention are inextricably linked. The work of the firm brings together 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 Graduate School of Design. The Miami-based firm of CÚRE & PENABAD Architecture and Urban Design has received numerous awards including over 30 American Institute of Architects awards, state and local preservation awards, finalists for the distinguished Marcus Prize, and most recently the firm received the prestigious Emerging Voices award from the Architectural League of New York, a competition that recognizes individuals with a distinct design voice and a significant body of realized work.
Parallel to their design practice, Cúre and Penabad have engaged in teaching, writing, and research. They are currently Professors at the University of Miami School of Architecture and have taught at Northeastern University, Boston Architectural Center, and, most recently, Yale University as both the William Henry Bishop Visiting Professors (2024) and the Louis I. Kahn Visiting Assistant Professors of Architectural Design. Their publications include Marion Manley: Miami’s First Women Architect (University of Georgia Press, 2010); Call to Order: Sustaining Simplicity in Architecture (ORO Publishers, 2018), and the forthcoming book: Made in Miami/Hecho en Miami (ACTAR Publishers, 2026)
Allan Shulman, FAIA
Founding Principal
At S+A we are committed to the creation of site-specific designs based on multidisciplinary research, the exploration of ideas, and the fostering of strong relationships. We see the city, landscape, culture, and building program as laboratories for our contemporary design practice. We synthesize the distinct circumstances of each project into designs that are relevant and transformative.
Allan Shulman is an architect, author, editor and curator. He also serves as a Professor at the University of Miami School of Architecture. Allan's research focuses on themes of modernism, tropicality and urbanism. Published works include Building Bacardi: Architecture, Art and Identity, Miami Modern Metropolis: Paradise and Paradox in Midcentury Architecture and Planning; The Discipline of Nature: Architect Alfred Browning Parker in Florida; and as a co-author, The Making of Miami Beach: 1933-1942: The Architecture of Lawrence Murray Dixon; and Miami Architecture: An AIA Guide.
Under Allan's design leadership, S+A projects have been widely recognized, with 90 design awards and publication internationally. Elevated to Fellowship in the AIA in 2008, Allan was awarded the AIA Miami Silver Medal for Design in 2010 and the AIA Florida Gold Medal in 2017.
Marion Weiss, FAIA and Michael Manfredi, FAIA
Partners and Cofounders
For us the territory of architecture should concern itself with the whole of the built environment. We seek to broaden the definition of architecture and search for opportunities to consider, both in physical and disciplinary terms, a larger territory for expression.
Traditional disciplinary distinctions between architecture, art, ecology, landscape architecture, engineering, and urban planning marginalize the status of the architectural project and preclude new paradigms for contemporary settings. We regard the existing site as an architectural condition already rich in possibilities. Superimposing new programs on a site can bring into focus that which is unseen, creating opportunities for invention, transformation, and use.
We design to clarify the physical and cultural identity of each project, opportunistically integrating multiple disciplines and alternative methodologies to create meaningful settings. Movement, light, and materiality heighten perception and experience, and are envisioned as active participants in shaping architecture. These convictions have been important provocations in our work. Each project, regardless of scale, is a fertile site to test the capacity of a broader definition of design, envisioning a critical practice that is an active instrument in shaping contemporary culture.