Craig Borum, FAIA, and Jen Maigret are among the Architectural League’s 2021 Emerging Voices honorees for their design firm, PLY+. Both are members of the Taubman College architecture faculty; Borum is a professor and Maigret is an associate professor.

Sponsored for more than 30 years by the Architectural League of New York, Emerging Voices is an annual invited competition for North American firms and individuals with distinct design voices and significant bodies of realized work, and who have the potential to influence their field.

Founded in 1999 as PLY and reimagined under the new partnership of Borum and Maigret in 2016, Ann Arbor-based PLY+ situates its work, geographically and culturally, in the Great Lakes Basin. The firm responds to the urban patterns shaped by the natural features of this immense watershed, as well as to the area’s industrial tradition, which the partners describe as “a gritty ethos of making.”

PLY+ emphasizes the integral role of design research in its work, “simultaneously broadening and deepening our understanding of possibilities and opportunities across programmatic, technical, and material considerations.”

Projects include:

• Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Detroit, MI
• Michigan Animal Rescue League, Pontiac, MI
• St. Mary Chapel, Livonia, MI

The firm’s recent design awards include a Faith and Form International Design Award; Editor’s Selection, Best of Design Awards, Architect’s Newspaper

Borum and Maigret will join fellow Emerging Voices award winners CÚRE & PENABAD