A native of Miami, Ricardo Lopez has served as a member of the UM SoA faculty since 2004, teaching drawing, design, and historic preservation courses both locally and abroad. While managing a private practice with his wife, Lopez has developed the school’s Documentation of Historic Structures course by integrating new technology to traditional methodologies leading to multiple Peterson Prize winning documentations for the HABS collection at the Library of Congress. As assistant director of the Center for Urban and Community Design he has led efforts to document the urban morphology of under-served local communities including Overtown and East Little Havana. Lopez has just completed 3 terms on the Miami Beach Preservation Board, most recently as chair, and is currently a Principal at RJ Heisenbottle Architects in Coral Gables.

Paolo Sanza is a registered architect in the State of Arizona and has recently joined the architecture faculty at The University of Oklahoma after spending two decades at Oklahoma State University. His primary areas of teaching and research encompass design studio pedagogy, tectonics of architecture, and Italian modernism, for which he is the author of numerous publications. During his tenure at the OSU School of Architecture, his directed design studios, including design-build and community engagement, have been characterized by novel processes, and his students have received several national awards. 

Professor Awilda Rodríguez Carrión, originally from San Juan, Puerto Rico, is a distinguished architect with a Master of Architecture from Arizona State University. Before establishing the multidisciplinary design studio, digital extension, she gained valuable experience at Orcutt/Winslow Partnership in Phoenix, Arizona, specializing in education and health care design. Later, she contributed her design expertise to the hospitality unit of the globally recognized Fluor Corporation. The work of digital extension was showcased at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art in Arizona, and the studio garnered numerous awards, including recognition from the American Association of Museums. 

Carie Penabad is a distinguished alumna of both the University of Miami and Harvard University Graduate School of Design. She is currently a full professor at the University of Miami School of Architecture and was formerly both associate dean of research and director of the undergraduate program (2016–Summer 2021). She has taught in a variety of institutions; and in 2013 she was appointed the Louis I. Kahn visiting assistant professor at Yale University. 

Belmont Freeman, FAIA, familiarly known as Monty, is founding principal of Belmont Freeman Architects, an award-winning design firm in New York City with built work for a wide variety of public, institutional and private clients in North America, Europe, and Asia. Since establishing his practice in 1986, Monty has earned a wide reputation as an innovative designer, a progressive practitioner, and a scholar. A prolific author, his writings have appeared in Places journal, Architectural Record, The Architect’s Newspaper, and other publications. He holds a B.A. from Yale and an M.Arch degree from the University of Pennsylvania. Mr. Freeman has taught at Columbia University and is currently a visiting lecturer at Penn’s Weitzman School of Design. From 1997 to 2008 Monty was the President of Storefront for Art & Architecture, on which board he still sits. He has served on the Board of Governors of the Association of Yale Alumni and the Board of Directors of the Society of Architectural Historians. An American of Cuban descent, Monty has done extensive research, writing, and lecturing about Cuban architecture and culture, as well as leading numerous architectural tours of Cuba. He maintains a home in Havana as a base for professional and family activities.