The annual Gil Oberfield Memorial Lecture was founded in honor of Gil Oberfield, AIA, former member and chair of the AIANY Interiors Committee. The lecture brings to the podium speakers whose work excels in the field of interior architecture. This year’s lecture will feature Peterson Rich Office (PRO), an architecture and design practice recognized for cultural and publicly engaged projects at multiple scales.
Since establishing their firm in 2014, principals Miriam Peterson, AIA, and Nathan Rich, AIA, have led a diverse team in realizing projects for leading clients in the cultural, residential, retail, and public sectors. The firm has developed a significant body of work around adaptive reuse, especially with projects that introduce new elements into structures of historic significance. Through this work, PRO has developed an architectural vocabulary that embraces context and finds richness in it as a point of departure for creating something new, rather than something to be smoothed over or erased entirely.
In May 2026, the Metropolitan Museum of Art will unveil PRO’s design for the new 12,000-square-foot Condé M. Nast Galleries, adjacent to the Great Hall. The galleries will serve as the new home for the Costume Institute’s annual spring exhibition, along with presentations from other departments. PRO is also designing the galleries’ inaugural show, Costume Art, exploring fashion as a connected, embodied form. Phase II of the project re-envisions the ground-level public concourse, including new dining and retail spaces and a new 83rd Street entrance, marking the museum’s first major investment in public spaces in more than 30 years.
PRO’s collaboration with the Met reflects the studio’s broader role across New York’s cultural landscape, including at the Brooklyn Museum where PRO will design new permanent galleries for its renowned Arts of Africa collection, set to open in fall 2027. Other recent projects of note include the MoMA Design Store in Soho, The Shepherd Gallery & Arts Center in Detroit, the Pruzan Art Gallery at Wesleyan University, and artist studios for Nina Chanel Abney and Mickalene Thomas. Through an ongoing multiyear partnership that started in 2014, PRO works with the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) on inclusive community design initiatives that inform improvements to the nation’s largest public housing system and advance design excellence across renovations in all five boroughs
