February 3, 2025
The Center for Architecture, a leading cultural venue for architecture, design, and urbanism in New York City, is excited to announce its exhibition schedule for 2025–2026. This year’s premiere exhibition, Fantasizing Design: Phyllis Birkby Builds Lesbian Feminist Architecture, opens May 8 at 6:00 PM, alongside AIANY Design Awards 2025 and New Practices New York: Voice. On October 3, we will introduce new ways of engaging with public space, sustainability, and urban design with Searching for Superpublics and Making Energy Visible (working title).
“The Center for Architecture’s commitment to presenting innovative work remains central to our mission of expanding architectural discourse in ways that inspire both the profession and our broader society,” says Jesse Lazar, Assoc. AIA, Executive Director, AIA New York | Center for Architecture. “We are proud to build on last year’s initiatives to continue to showcase compelling, thought-provoking content such as Fantasizing Design: Phyllis Birkby Builds Lesbian Feminist Architecture, which challenges traditional ways of thinking about space and community.”
“Our upcoming exhibitions like New Practices New York: Voice and Searching for Superpublics offer an opportunity to spotlight the forward-thinking ideas that create lasting impacts on the city and society at large,” adds Lazar. “By foregrounding projects that demonstrate the power of architecture to shape society and policy, we hope to spark important conversations about the future of the built environment and its role in advancing social change.”
“As we continue to celebrate and elevate the work emerging from New York City’s architectural community, I am reminded of the profound responsibility we have as architects and designers to engage with and shape the world around us,” says Peter Robinson, Board Chair of the Center for Architecture. “Through fostering bold conversations and embracing new approaches, we are ensuring that architecture remains a catalyst for meaningful and positive change. We look forward to continuing this important dialogue and welcoming you in 2025!”
Opening in 2025
(Images and additional details to be shared with the press in advance of each opening)
Fantasizing Design: Phyllis Birkby Builds Lesbian Feminist Architecture
May 8, 2025–September 2, 2025
Fantasizing Design: Phyllis Birkby Builds Lesbian Feminist Architecture traces the life, work, and networks of lesbian feminist architect Phyllis Birkby (1932–1994), who pushed design professionals and the public to imagine a built environment beyond the confines of existing male-dominated forms. Inspired by the women’s movement and gay liberation, she joined one of the first lesbian feminist consciousness-raising groups, staged a feminist building occupation, and co-founded the Women’s School of Planning and Architecture. Her most groundbreaking intervention, however, was a series of workshops that encouraged women to imagine and draw their “fantasy environments”—the home and community spaces they would like to inhabit. Fantasizing Design explores Birkby and her circle of friends, lovers, and collaborators as a lens on the broader ways feminists and lesbian feminists have worked to remake architectural practice, domestic space, and the built environment. The exhibition also includes works by invited architects and artists, extending Birkby’s fantasy project to LGBTQ+ communities today.
Curators: Stephen Vider and M.C. Overholt
Graphic Designer: Marissa Martonyi
This exhibition is supported by a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.
New Practices New York 2025: Voice
May 8, 2025–September 2, 2025
New Practices New York 2025: Voice will showcase the winners of the latest New Practices New York competition, organized by the AIANY New Practices Committee since 2006. The competition’s goal is to recognize and promote architecture and design firms founded in New York City within the last 12 years. Through juried portfolio review, we’ll honor unique and innovative strategies to establish VOICE through practice and projects. Winners to be announced from 6–8pm on February 11, 2025, during a reception and juror discussion at Lladro’s New York showroom.
The 2025 New Practices New York Jury comprises Alice Grandoit-Šutka, Co-founder and Editor in Chief, Deem Journal; Kim Yao, FAIA, Principal, Architecture Research Office; Chris Leong, Co-founder, Leong Leong; Jaffer Kolb, Co-founder, New Affiliates; Beatrice Galilee, Co-founder and Executive Director, The World Around
Graphic Designer: New Information
AIANY Design Awards 2025
May 8, 2025–September 2, 2025
The AIANY Design Awards 2025 features Honor, Merit, and Citation recipients in the categories of Architecture, Interiors, Projects, and Urban Design. The selected projects and the architecture firms that designed them represent the exceptional work by AIA New York members and architects practicing in New York City. All 23 winning projects were chosen for their design quality, response to context and community, program resolution, innovation, thoughtfulness, and technique. To be eligible, projects had to be completed by AIANY members or architects/designers practicing in New York or be New York projects designed by architects/designers based elsewhere.
AIANY’s annual awards program is juried by an international panel of esteemed practitioners, this year comprising Anna Dyson of Yale Center for Ecosystems in Architecture; Michael Guthrie, FAIA, LEED AP, of INFORM Studio; Lucas ter Hall, of Studio RAP; Stacy Passmore, PLA, AICP, of Superbloom; Brian Phillips, FAIA, of ISA; Troy Schaum, AIA, of Schaum Architects and Rice University; Melodie Yashar of ICON and ArtCenter College of Design.
Graphic Designer: Studio Lin
Searching for Superpublics
October 3, 2025–March 2026
Searching for Superpublics will showcase projects around New York City that illustrate new design approaches to large-scale civic and social spaces, as well as speculative ideas that expand the very nature of our public sphere. These projects will make visible and evident various intersections between communities, geographies, and civic values that speak to the converging crises of access, affordability, and resiliency.
Curators: Ivi Diamantopoulou and Jaffer Kolb, Co-founders, New Affiliates Architecture
Graphic Designer: Topos Graphics
Making Energy Visible (working title)
October 3, 2025–March 2026
Making Energy Visible (working title) will bring together interpretations, representations, and visualizations of energy across different mediums of architecture. The exhibition considers how energy has come to be incorporated in design, and seeks out the agency of architectural imagination in a world in transition. Along a nonlinear timeline, participants will investigate how architecture plays a role in the conversion, conservation, harvesting, distribution, and consumption of energy.
Curator: Tülay Atak
Graphic Designer: To be announced
Exhibitions at the Center for Architecture are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
About the Center for Architecture
The Center for Architecture is the premier cultural venue for architecture and the built environment in New York City, informed by the complexity of the City’s urban fabric and in dialogue with the global community. The Center for Architecture shares a home with the AIA New York Chapter and has the unique advantage of drawing upon the ideas and experiences of practicing architects to produce thought-provoking exhibitions, informative public programs, and quality design education experiences for K-12 students. It also leads New York City’s annual monthlong architecture and design festival, Archtober. The Center for Architecture’s aim is to further public knowledge about New York City architecture and architects, foster exchange and collaboration among members of the design, development, building, scholarly, and policy sectors, and inspire new ideas about the role of design in communities by presenting contemporary and practical issues in architecture and urbanism to a general audience. centerforarchitecture.org