What is risk worth? Architecture is inseparable from uncertainty—sometimes embraced, sometimes resisted, but always present. We invent bold forms that may fail. We propose brighter futures that may falter. To practice architecture is to take on risk—with capital, with reputation, with the city, with the lives shaped inside it. For the innovator, risk is agency, progress, recognition, and the chance to improve lives. For those who mitigate risk, it’s value is inseparable from the scaffold that protects progress from catastrophe. For those outside the conventional practice, such as architect-developers, design-builders, and others, risk is currency, the price of control. Each stance reveals a different measure of what risk means and what makes it worth taking. These tensions will enliven the conversations at the heart of this event.
Panel One: Inside Conventional Practice
How do architects, lawyers, and insurers value risk? For architects, it may be the price of innovation, recognition, and influence. For lawyers and insurers, it is exposure—something to be managed and contained. Contracts shift liability, insurance absorbs damage, and more than reputations rise and fall in the process. This panel will showcase the tension among these perspectives: when does innovation become a liability, and who decides?
