This past week concluded with incredible energy on campus with the Inaugural Terence Riley Curators Summit. As we move into this week, preparations for finals are underway, and we enter the final weeks to submit to the PhD in Architecture Open Call. This moment is always significant for the School: an invitation for emerging researchers to join GSAPP’s expanding ecosystem of inquiry and contribute to the questions, methods, and collective experiments that animate our doctoral community.

The PhD in Architecture Symposia invites doctoral students form across disciplines to submit proposals for the April 2–3, 2026 edition, titled On the Edge of Legibility: Architecture and Its Peripheries, that seeks to investigate and reflect on the histories of the built environment. The deadline for abstract submission is December 15, 2025.

This year’s Symposia builds on ongoing research by GSAPP’s PhD cohort — including Ashraf Abdalla, Jude Abdelqader, Óskar Arnórsson, Ultan Byrne, Charlette Caldwell, Irina Chernyakova, Iván-Nicholas Cisneros-Rangel, Pedro Correa Fernández, Maur Dessauvage, Nicolay Duque-Robayo, Samuel Fox, Lucia Galaretto, James Heard, Kian Hosseinnia, Nur Jabarin, Alireza Karbasioun, Elena M’Bouroukounda, Lasse Rau, Malcolm Rio, Mahdi Sabbagh, Yara Saqfalhait, Beril Sarisakal, Javairia Shahid, Samuel Stewart-Halevy, Zachary Torres, Ife Vanable, and Benjamin Weisgall — whose work engages the shifting boundaries of architectural history and theory.

GSAPP’s Inaugural Terence Riley Curators Summit, a convening that brought together the world’s leading architecture and built environment curators from major museums and cultural institutions, took place last week in Avery 114,

The Summit honored Terrence Riley ’82 MSAUD, whose career began at GSAPP’s Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery, and it activated important reflections on the responsibilities, methodologies, and futures of curatorial practice in architecture.

Conversations were structured around four methodological questions: how to create new publics across disciplines; how to build collections today; how to curate processes and temporalities; and how to position the built environment within larger intellectual and curatorial frameworks.

Conceived as a convening of architectural curators from around the world, the Summit brought together those whose work is transforming how the built environment is critically mobilized, debated, challenged, and intervened upon. Participants included: Noura Al-Sayegh Holtop (BACA); Renata Anelli (São Paulo Architecture Biennial); Paola Antonelli (MoMA); Charles Aubin (Centre Pompidou x Jersey City); Omar Berrada (Pan-African Biennale); Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher (SFMOMA); José Esparza Chong Cuy (Storefront for Art and Architecture); Silvia Franceschini (CIVA); Beatrice Galilee (The World Around); Shelley Hayreh (Avery Archives); Jean Im (GSAPP); Andrés Jaque (GSAPP); Justin McGuirk (Design Museum); Ewan McEoin (National Gallery of Victoria Melbourne); Manuela Moscoso (CARA); Maria Nicanor (Cooper Hewitt); Bart-Jan Polman (GSAPP); Florencia Rodriguez (Chicago Architecture Biennial); Raymund Ryan (Carnegie Museum); Felicity Scott (GSAPP); Martino Stierli (MoMA); Irene Sunwoo (Art Institute of Chicago); Abraham Thomas (The Metropolitan Museum of Art); Ikko Yokoyama (M+); Stéphanie Quentin-Biancalani (Centre Pompidou).

The Summit is generously supported by Elise Jaffe and Jeffrey Brown.