Rice School of Architecture

The Rice School of Architecture is hiring an Events & Engagement Specialist. Apply now to join our team!

The Events & Engagement Specialist serves as the operational cornerstone for the school’s public programs, community activities, and internal events. This role oversees the end-to-end planning, logistics, promotion, and technical ex*****on of events while developing written updates and announcements that keep the school and university community informed and engaged. Working closely with the communications team, faculty, staff, and external partners, the Specialist helps produce events and engagement initiatives that reflect the school’s standards of design excellence.

Applications are due on August 14, 2026.

See link in bio for more information.

The Rice School of Architecture is hiring a Fabrication Specialist. Apply now to join our team!

The Fabrication Specialist serves as the operational cornerstone for the school’s workshop, fabrication spaces, and advanced equipment in William T. Cannady Hall. This role oversees daily workshop operations, equipment maintenance, safety management, and the use of traditional and digital fabrication tools. Working closely with students, faculty, and staff, the Specialist leads technical training, supports design and research projects, and helps maintain a safe, organized, and innovative environment for hands-on making.

Applications are due on August 7, 2026.

See link in bio for more information.

Images from the culminating thesis degree project “This Is Not a Building*” by Nathan Ehrlich Nathan Ehrlich (M.Arch. ’26).

“This Is Not a Building* advocates for direct making over sleek, optimized workflows of contemporary architectural production. This thesis reframes the ‘outbuilding’ not as a fixed typology, but as an open-ended system of construction. Grounded in the bricolage of ready-made goods and improvisational building practices, architecture is treated as a process rather than a product, with making as the primary site of design agency. In a polycrisis of ecological precarity and economic instability, this work calls for a critical reassessment of informal structures as a vehicle for architectural immediacy, producing a localized building culture that remains provisional, accessible, and deliberately unresolved.”

Faculty advisor: Assistant Professor Georgina Baronian

Announcing PLAT 14: Resolution. Pick up a copy today!

From the editorial team:

“To resolve is to determine, even if for a moment, what counts and what remains peripheral. When understood as determination rather than representation or conclusion, resolution shifts architecture away from photogenic coherence and toward experiential and tectonic negotiation, where agency can begin to register. Resolution thus emerges not as a final synthesis but as a strategic pause—a temporary alignment that resists merely looking by keeping architecture open to seeing again. In this issue of PLAT, contributors move across these unresolved conditions surrounding resolution, attending to the built and the perceived, the material and the mediated, and reasserting the agency of perception itself.”

PLAT 14: Resolution is edited by Max Stith (Max) and Chuanjie Yan (Jayden Yan) and features contributions by Brendon Carlin (), Eric Kyle Cheung (Eric kyle cheung), Jono Coles, Lulu Crouzet (), Jyah Flam (Jyah Flam), Carrie Gammell (carrie gammell), Joseph Hsu (Joseph Hsu), Namhi Kwun (Nami), Sophia Haewon Lee (sophiahaewonlee), Andrea Machado Romero (Andrea Machado Romero), Filipe Magalhaes (fala), Motomi Matsubara (Motomi Matsubara), Samantha Ong (samantha ong), Maria Paez Gonzalez (), Clara Rummer (), Mingxuan Wei (銘瑄), Bryan Honting Wong (HONMI), Juchen Zhang (Juchen Zhang), and Ezabel Zhou (Ezabel).

Founded in 2009, PLAT is an independent architecture journal published by the students of the Rice School of Architecture.

Managing Editor
Abby Chen (abby)

Design Director
Deniz Kantar (Denise Kantar)

Designers
Tianai Duan ()
Yousif Giyo (Yousif Giyo)
Musab Salah (مُصعب)
Ghazal Torkamaniha (ghazaltorkaman)
Sophie Valbrune (Sophie Valbrune)
Zhan (Michael) Zhong (Michael Zhong)

Lead Copy Editor
Mingru Han (monday_lasagna_)

Copy Editors
Prea Davis (.com_)
William Yiming Liu (刘一鸣 william YM liu)
Osvaldo Salgado (Osvaldo A. Salgado)
Whitney Walden (WHITNEY)
Moxuan (Grace) Xu (Xu Moxuan Grace)

Social Media
Kirstie Qian (kirstie)

The Rice School of Architecture is hiring a Web and Graphics Specialist. Apply now to join our team!

The Web and Graphics Specialist is an integral member of the communications team serving the Rice School of Architecture. This role is responsible for multimedia content creation and management across multiple platforms—from the school’s website and social media channels to email campaigns—and for graphic design for external and internal audiences within an established visual language. This role coordinates the workflow and production schedule for a wide range of marketing and communications materials across digital and print platforms.

Applications are due on June 10, 2026.

See link in bio for more information.

The Rice School of Architecture is proud to announce that TEN (), operating between Belgrade and Zurich, has been selected as the recipient of the 2026 Spotlight Award. Please join us on Monday, April 13 for the award presentation and a lecture by TEN.

Redefining traditional practice, TEN operates at the intersection of innovation and exploration, positioning research and collaboration as core drivers of the design process. Their output spans building prototypes, urban propositions, algorithmic design investigations, and material research in collaboration with a broad network of partners, institutions, and clients.

🗓️ Monday, April 13
🕕 6:00 pm
📍 Farish Gallery, MD Anderson Hall

All spring 2026 events are free and open to the public.

The Spotlight Award honors architects who demonstrate extraordinary design curiosity and excellence within the first fifteen years of their practice. This program is made possible through the generous support of the Betty R. and George F. Pierce Jr., FAIA, Fund; the William B. Coleman Jr. Colloquium Fund for Architecture; and the Wm. W. Caudill Lecture Series Fund.

Project credits: [1] Avala House, Serbia, 2020; [2] 500 Year Tower, Switzerland, 2021; [3] IPZ Innovation Center Zürich, Switzerland, 2023; [4] Chiesi Gardens, Italy, 2026, with 51N4E; [5-6] House for Five Women, Bosnia, 2021; [7] “Nobody Leave the Party”/Recypark Jette, Belgium, 2025, with Babini Geysen.

Join Dean Igor Marjanović and Rusty Bienvenue for a gallery talk with Peter Merwin and Carlos Jiménez this Saturday, April 11, presented in conjunction with the exhibition “The Order of Place: A Collaborative Process.”

Co-organized with AIA Houston (), the conversation considers how architectural ideas are formed and carried forward across time. Exploring design as an act of inquiry, they will reflect on the relationship between process and product, timeliness and timelessness.

🗓️ Saturday, April 11
🕒 1:00 pm
📍 Exhibitions at Rice, Cannady Hall

All spring 2026 events are free and open to the public.

Rice Design Chats, a public program of the Rice School of Architecture, are dedicated to fostering dialogue around the ideas, challenges, and opportunities shaping architecture and design today. Targeting the community of architecture and design practitioners while inviting broader participation, Rice Design Chats connect the school’s events, research, and exhibitions to the local Houston community and beyond.

The Order of Place: A Collaborative Process

Exhibition Dates: February 27–May 30, 2026
Gallery Hours: Monday-Saturday 11:00 am–5:00 pm
Location: Exhibitions at Rice, Casbarian-Appel Gallery & Hines Family Gallery, William T. Cannady Hall, Rice School of Architecture
Curated By: Harry K. & Albert K. Smith Professor John Casbarian and former Professor in the Practice Danny Samuels, Taft Architects

Images from the ARCH 301 project “Floating, Flowing” by current B.Arch. student Grace Xu.

“This project introduces a public swimming pool to the city of Houston. By consolidating enclosed, indoor programs into a single bar, the design maximizes efficiency and minimizes ground coverage, preserving the majority of the site as an active public realm. Setbacks from the street create buffer zones that mediate between the urban context and the pool, while a shade-providing roof cantilevers across the site, extending shelter and forming inhabitable, shaded zones both inside and outside. The solid service bar is punctured by triple-height skylit corridors that act as gateways between locker rooms, storage spaces, and administrative offices.”

“Floating, Flowing” was developed in ARCH 301 (Comprehension I - Structure) taught by Assistant Professor Georgina Baronian () and focuses on the design of a 30,000sf public aquatic center in the city of Houston. In this first comprehensive studio, students are introduced to contemporary design methods that incorporate structural and material principles from the early stages of the design process. Digital and physical tools are engaged to test quantitative and qualitative design aspects at the intersection between architecture, engineering, and the sciences.

TEN wins 2026 Spotlight Award - Announcements - e-flux TEN wins 2026 Spotlight Award at Rice School of Architecture.

Paul Vantieghem and Raha Talebi of Vantieghem Talebi () will lecture on Monday, March 30 as part of the Rice School of Architecture’s Graduate Open House.

The work of Vantieghem Talebi is dedicated to things of beauty and to the betterment of design environments of all sizes. The firm’s ongoing, international projects span various programs and scales, ranging from exhibitions, private residences and industrial developments to large scale headquarters and urban masterplans. The practice operates from Venice Beach, California and Basel, Switzerland.

📆 Monday, March 30
🕔 12:00-1:00 pm
📍Faculty Atelier, Cannady Hall

All spring 2026 events are free and open to the public.

Project credits: [1-2] Sporthalle Seefeld, Zürich; [3] House of Cards, Koksijde; [4] Masterplan, Nicaragua.