To say that we design "for people" seems like a fundamental premise of architecture. Yet, this assertion presents a problem: people are not a homogeneous category.

Urbanism for what? Professional practice in an expanded field

Program Overview:
As North Texas continues to grow, its cultural landscape is evolving as well. In addition to meeting the needs of a new generation of North Texans, the museums of Dallas and Fort Worth are welcoming new directors who are ushering in a different kind of museum visitor, one who sees the world through a rapidly shifting cultural lens and, perhaps, through a reconsidered architectural lens as well. Whether leading a capital building project or rethinking what it means to engage with a museum collection in a revered space, this panel discussion will explore insights from the three newest museum directors in North Texas and how their perspectives are shaping the arts and experiences of 21st-century museum visitors. Moderated by Kate Aoki, AIA, NOMA of Golden Egg Creative, our Panelists are Carlos Basualdo, Director of the Nasher Sculpture Center, Brian Ferriso, Director of the Dallas Museum of Art, and Halona NORTON WESTBROOK, PhD, Director of the Modern Art Museum Fort Worth in this intriguing, enlightening and unique program. Free, open to the public, no reservations needed.
Program Participants:
Carlos Basualdo is the Director of the Nasher Sculpture Center. From 2022 to 2025, Basualdo served as Marion Boulton (Kippy) Stroud Deputy Director and Chief Curator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Some of his Philadelphia exhibitions include Bruce Nauman: Topological Gardens, which represented the United States at the 2009 Venice Biennale and received the Golden Lion for Best National Participation; Dancing Around the Bride; Barbara Chase-Riboud: The Malcolm X Series; and Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror. He has also curated Tropicália: A Revolution in Brazilian Culture and served as a co-curator of Documenta11 and a member of the curatorial team of the 50th Venice Biennale, where he organized The Structure of Survival.
Basualdo has held curatorial positions at MAXXI in Rome and the Wexner Center for the Arts and has taught at IUAV University of Venice and Penn Design at the University of Pennsylvania. He was a 2013 Fellow of the Center for Curatorial Leadership in New York City. As Director of the Nasher Sculpture Center, he oversees one of the finest collections of modern and contemporary sculptures in the world, the Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection, featuring more than 300 masterpieces by Calder, de Kooning, di Suvero, Giacometti, Hepworth, Kelly, Matisse, Miró, Moore, Picasso, Rodin, Serra and more. The Nasher Sculpture Center presents rotating exhibitions of works from the Nasher family collection as well as special exhibitions drawn from other museums and private collections. The Center also presents The Nasher Prize, an award dedicated to excellence in contemporary sculpture, honoring a living artist whose work has had an extraordinary impact on the medium.
Brian Ferriso is The Eugene McDermott Director of the Dallas Museum of Art, a role he assumed in December 2025 after nearly two decades as Director of the Portland Art Museum (PAM). With almost 30 years of museum leadership experience, Ferriso has demonstrated success in advancing ambitious capital projects, strengthening collections, and expanding community access. During his tenure, he more than doubled the museum's curatorial staff and increased the endowment by $40 million Under his leadership, PAM served as the co-presenting institution for the space in which to place me (2024), Jeffrey Gibson's exhibition for the U.S. Pavilion at the Venice Biennale—the first solo presentation by an Indigenous artist for the U.S. Pavilion. Ferriso also oversaw a $140 million campus expansion, which added nearly 100,000 square feet of public and gallery space to the PAM campus. He championed acquisitions by women and artists of color and expanded Native American representation in the museum's collection and leadership. Prior to his role at PAM, Ferriso was the Executive Director and CEO of the Philbrook Museum of Art, and earlier in his career, he held leadership roles at the Milwaukee Art Museum and the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago. He holds a bachelor's degree in economics from Bowdoin College, a master's degree in arts administration from New York University, and a master's degree in art history from the University of Chicago.
The DMA is an inclusive, welcoming space for everyone to see its global collection of more than 25,000 works spanning 5,000 years of history and a range of world cultures. It is one of the largest art museums in the United States. The DMA provides educational programming for all ages, from exhibitions and lectures to concerts, literary events, and dramatic performances. Under Ferriso's leadership, the DMA is advancing a transformative building project that will reimagine the Museum's campus, enhance the visitor experience, and strengthen its connection to the surrounding Arts District. The project represents a significant investment in the DMA's future, positioning the Museum to better serve its growing audiences and the Dallas community for generations to come.
Halona Norton-Westbrook, Ph.D., began her tenure as Director of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in July 2025. She served as the Director and CEO of the Honolulu Museum of Art from 2020–25, and prior to that was Director of Curatorial Affairs and Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio. Norton-Westbrook is a visionary museum leader with a proven track record of institutional transformation and audience expansion. At the Honolulu Museum of Art, she doubled annual attendance from pre-2020 levels, secured millions of dollars in gifts to the museum's endowment and significantly expanded the institution's fundraising efforts. Managing a staff of 150 employees, she led the museum through a successful American Alliance of Museums reaccreditation, developed its first comprehensive strategic plan, and guided a restoration and expansion of its historic art school.
Norton-Westbrook is a passionate advocate for museums and the vital role that they play in providing access to the arts, fostering greater empathy, connection, and creativity in the lives of individuals and communities as a whole. She has extensive expertise in modern and contemporary art as well as the formation, history, and evolution of museum collections in the twentieth century. Raised in the San Francisco Bay area, Norton-Westbrook earned a BA in American History and Studio Art from Mills College in Oakland, California, an MA in Art History from Courtauld Institute of Art in London, and a Ph.D. in Museology from the University of Manchester.
Moderator:
Kate Aoki, AIA, NOMA, is an architect and founding partner of experience and exhibition design firm Golden Egg Creative. With degrees in textile design and architecture, Kate is fortunate to practice in a profession that satisfies both her passion for fine art and the design of space. After spending more than a decade working in the architecture field, Kate shifted to a position as the Head of Exhibition Design at the Dallas Museum of Art where she developed a deeper appreciation for inclusion and public spaces. As Director of Design for Golden Egg Creative, Kate designs connective spaces in ways that engage visitors while inviting them to learn more about objects they experience and the communities in which they thrive.
Kate has dedicated much of her time to participating on art and architectural committees as well as teaching design studios as an adjunct professor for architecture at the University of Texas at Arlington's CAPPA. She has a longstanding relationship with the Dallas chapter of the AIA, where she served as President in 2023, and the Texas Society of Architects as a member of the Government Affairs Steering Committee. Kate is a member of the Board of Directors of The Dallas Architecture Forum, where she founded the Design Society. Now as a resident of Santa Fe, New Mexico, Kate is excited to be learning more about the rich cultural history and practices of the Southwest.

The architecture biennial exhibition Time Space Existence returns for its 8th edition with more than 200 participants, from established global firms to emerging studios and academic institutions. Their work will be presented across three historic venues in Venice: Palazzo Mora, Palazzo Bembo and the Marinaressa Gardens. Many have already been confirmed, and the curatorial team is finalising the line-up.

Building on the previous edition's focus on Repair, Regenerate, and Reuse, the 2027 edition explores architecture as a practice that embraces change rather than resisting it. It lives in the space between what has been built, what is changing, and what remains to be understood.

We are excited to announce the AIA International Conference 2026, in collaboration with AIA Middle East, will be hosted in Cairo, Egypt this year! This year’s AIA Middle East Year-End Conference will be part of the AIA International Conference 2026, creating a unique opportunity to connect with the global AIA community.

Outdoor kitchens are no longer just an exclusive accessory; they have become a natural extension of the home. Gardens, terraces, and porches are transforming into spaces where cooking and, above all, entertaining can take place without having to step inside. In addition to offering convenience, this solution increases property value and responds to a lifestyle that is increasingly connected to the outdoors.

Recreating the modern villas that shaped Hong Kong from the 1930s to the 1980s, this book offers a glimpse into the architecture and lifestyles of high society, tracing how these homes helped shape the city’s neighbourhoods and urban history.

This issue brings together, across 326 pages, forty years of work by the Barcelona-based studio GCA Architects, founded in 1986 by Josep Juanpere and Antonio Puig, through a selection of nineteen works —most from the past decade and a half— spanning its practice in corporate, hospitality and residential architecture. An architecture that integrates building and interior design within a single project, attentive to materiality and detail, and a trajectory that grew with the Barcelona that emerged from the Olympic years to become a benchmark practice.

The institutional history, With and Without Walls, reveals the origins and progress of the influential Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) through the 1970s and 1980s. After separating from the California State Polytechnic University, Pomona in 1972 amidst feelings of bureaucratic and ideological oppression, Ray Kappe, a Los Angeles-based architect and professor, proposed the formation of SCI-Arc and was the school’s first director. Focusing on its early years under Kappe’s leadership and the context of the social, cultural, and ecological idealism of the 1960s, the culture of the emerging school became an alternative model for training architects. Building off of the school’s founding premise, that in providing freedom through self-study it would be possible to produce both architects and architecture, the book shows how SCI-Arc utilized the “college without walls concept,” a variation on a pedagogical approach popular in the 1970s, “school without walls,” in the specific context of an architecture school. SCI-Arc’s institutional culture adjusted over time, and it increasingly relied on the versatility of the institutional framework to forge its pedagogy. The principles engendered by the college without walls concept created challenges over the operation of the school and provided opportunities for the creative resolution of those challenges by empowering experimentation. In this way, SCI-Arc was, in itself, both a design problem and a solution in the field of architectural education.

Could you design something that gives children in London high-quality play experiences?

Mugak/ is seeking cultural projects and initiatives for its upcoming edition, with a total budget of €150,000. The call is open to applicants worldwide until 25 November 2026.

Fondazione A.N.M.I.G. - Genova, in collaboration with Associazione Culturale Giano and under the patronage of Regione Liguria and Ordine degli Architetti - Genova, presents the exhibition “Eugenio Fuselli. What Is a House? Architecture of Care and Shelter”: a journey through drawings, documents, sculptures, paintings and photographs aimed at discovering the characteristics of one of the masterpieces of Rationalist architecture in Liguria, Casa del Mutilato in Genoa. Built between 1937 and 1938, the building — originally created to provide a place of assistance and reintegration for disabled veterans of the First World War — paradoxically stands facing the new conflict that would devastate Europe as early as the following year, with Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland.

Include Enable Connect captures hcma's evolving framework for maximizing social impact through design.
It represents a body of work developed by hcma over many years, and draws on the thinking and experience of our leadership group and project teams, conversations with collaborators and communities, and a wide field of academic research.
Written for architects, project teams, and building operators, it offers a structured way to move from intention to action so we can think more clearly about the social role of the places we create.
At its heart, it's about using design as a tool to support connection, wellbeing, and lasting civic life.

Videos

AI has become a consumer product faster than it has become a discipline. Each week brings new models and more information than anyone can absorb, and the easy response is uncritical consumption. Architecture needs a different strategy, built on criticism and method. AI is now acquiring spatial intelligence, the capacity to understand how physical space behaves, and architects can test a project against its environment while they design it. Used with judgment, AI can bring architects closer to nature and its complexity, and make them better builders. We simulate the world to learn how to inhabit it.

Direct contact with a material allows one to appreciate textures, compare finishes, and observe how its appearance changes under different lighting conditions. At an exhibition, these possibilities are complemented by exchanges with manufacturers and professionals, helping to understand applications and resolve questions about their use. This relationship between material exploration and architectural practice was one of the central pillars of the seventh edition of Obra Blanca, which drew more than 23,000 professionals to Expo Santa Fe in Mexico City.

Between 1860 and 1940, Cairo and other large cities in Egypt witnessed a major construction boom that gave birth to extraordinary palaces and lavish buildings. These incorporated a mix of architectural styles, such as Beaux-Arts and Art Deco, with local design influences and materials. Today, many lie empty and neglected, rapidly succumbing to time, a real-estate frenzy, and an ongoing population crisis.

METAMORPHOSIS: From Lines to Space | ARCHFEST 2026

The Tycoon's Last Desire
The Client, the House and the Architecture of Power