Rice School of Architecture

The Rice School of Architecture is proud to announce that TEN (@ten_studio ), 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 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. #RiceArch #SpotlightAward #Innovation #DesignProcess

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 (@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 #TheOrderofPlace #TaftArchitects #RiceDesignChats #RiceArch

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 (@clovisbaronian ) 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. #RiceArch #Architecture #PublicSpace #SwimmingLessons

Paul Vantieghem and Raha Talebi of Vantieghem Talebi (@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.

Join us this Wednesday, March 25 for a lecture by Kersten Geers and David Van Severen on the work of their Brussels-based practice OFFICE (@office ). Geers and Van Severen will present key projects illustrating their long-standing interest in the contemporary city. The lecture will highlight projects that navigate the scale of the evenly dispersed and decentralized “Large City,” including the Radio Télévision Suisse (RTS) headquarters in Lausanne and the Vlaamse Radio- en Televisieomroeporganisatie (VRT) headquarters in Brussels, currently under construction. 📆 Wednesday, March 25 🕔 6:00–7:30pm 📍Farish Gallery, MD Anderson Hall All spring 2026 events are free and open to the public. All photographs by Bas Princen. Project credits: [1] Solo house, Matarraña; [2] Dar Al Jinaa Cultural Center, Muharraq; [3] Crematorium, Ostend; [4] Footbridge, Brussels; [5] Public Library, Sint-Martens-Latem; [6] Brewery for Brussels Beer Project, Brussels. #RiceArch #TheLargeCity #OfficeKGDVS

Thank you to everyone who joined us for the opening of The Order of Place: A Collaborative Process! Our current exhibition highlights fifty years of architecture and design work from Taft Architects. The practice of Taft Architects is the result of a unique collaboration, initially of the three partners, John J. Casbarian, Danny Samuels, and Robert H. Timme, who founded the firm in Houston in 1973, then of Casbarian and Samuels after Timme’s departure in 1995. The current exhibition places the firm’s archive on display, featuring original pen and ink drawings, hand sketches, physical models, publications, ephemera, and presentation material in a variety of media. This exhibition is free and open to the public. 🗓️ 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 Exhibition documentation by Ege Ozruna and Zoe Lu. As the curatorial program of the Rice School of Architecture, Exhibitions at Rice uses the lens of design research to look at the world differently. Mobilizing a full spectrum of architectural representation this program weaves together scholarly inquiry, visual experimentation, and public engagement. #TheOrderofPlace #TaftArchitects #ExhibitionsAtRice #RiceArch

The Order of Place: A Collaborative Process brings the work of Taft Architects to Rice School of Architecture, offering an in-depth look at a practice shaped by exploration, iteration, and collaboration. Curated by John Casbarian and Danny Samuels, the exhibition traces the firm’s evolution—from its founding with Robert H. Timme in 1973 to its continued impact today. At the core of Taft’s work is a rigorous yet open-ended design process—one that generates multiple “pure” schemes, tests their potential, and synthesizes their strengths into layered, complex architectural systems. Rooted in context, history, and the realities of building, each project reflects a deep engagement with place and possibility. Presented by Exhibitions at Rice, this show invites audiences to experience architecture as both a cultural practice and a mode of inquiry. 📍 Cannady Hall, Rice University 📅 Feb. 27 – May 30, 2026 🕒 Mon–Sat, 11 AM–5 PM (Closed Sundays)

Images from the ARCH601 project “Biodiversity Research Center” by current M.Arch. student Fatima Castro (@fatineux ). “The Biodiversity Research Center situates itself within Costa Rica’s history of extraction and regeneration, asking how architecture can align with a landscape where forest takes precedence over infrastructure. The project adopts teak as its primary structure, sourcing onsite hardwoods and recycled material from nearby Samara to extend existing lifecycles and avoid new clear-cutting. Elevated lightly above the ground, two bars frame a courtyard anchored by an aviary and nursery that reintegrates species into habitat. A detached canopy moderates climate through shade and ventilation, consolidating the campus as a porous extension of forest systems rather than an imposed object.” This project was developed in an advanced ARCH601 option studio taught by Professor Carlos Jiménez in the fall of 2025. The studio focused on the landscape and ecology of the Peninsula of Nicoya, Costa Rica’s largest peninsula straddling two provinces that face the Pacific Ocean: Guanacaste and Puntarenas. Each student was asked to formulate a thesis centered around the studio’s central question: how can architecture deploy, mediate, and integrate a distinctive contribution within a fragile ecosystem? #RiceArch #Architecture #Sustainability #CostaRica

Images from the ARCH601 project “Under One Roof” by current M.Arch. student Hanan Traiba (@htraiba ). “Under One Roof aims to provide stealth density within historically single-family neighborhoods as a quadplex infill. The design of the project’s form and floor plan allows for an interlocking and stepping of units, along which apartment amenities are placed. The single, gabled roof pays homage to the neighboring single-family homes, though to break up the massing, several skylights and a lightwell are introduced into each unit. Simple Type V construction allows for these spatial complexities without significantly increasing construction costs. Prioritizing the incorporation of two ADA units allows the possibility of partnering with non-profits to provide subsidized housing. Through simple construction methods, the project offers a new housing typology in which design enhances the neighborhood while remaining accessible and cost-effective.” This project was developed in the ARCH601 studio “Affordable Housing Lab” taught by Associate Professor Jesús Vassallo (@jesus_vassallo ) in the fall of 2025. The studio focused on multi-unit residential development standards (MUR), a new type of development introduced by the City of Houston to incentivize a greater range of naturally occurring affordable housing options, encourage more small-scale multi-unit housing, and promote more compact development patterns and friendlier streets for pedestrians. #RiceArch #Architecture #AffordableHousing #Houston

Join us for the 2026 Rice Architecture Dissertation Colloquium, taking place over two days on March 6 and 7. As political boundaries shift and national identities evolve, as economic dependencies grow more volatile, as the scale of globalization expands in concert with ever more intensive resource extraction and planetary warming, reference frames within architectural history are also shifting and, with them, the discipline’s approaches to methodology, epistemology, and practice. The colloquium will address these pressing issues by presenting new research in architectural history—in its broadest sense—while also rethinking the field’s narratives, periodization, geographic reach, and methods for collecting historical evidence. A highlight of this two-day event, which aims to address and further strengthen the position of architectural history as an amalgamating force in inter- and intra-university humanistic research, is the public keynote lecture, “Control and Communication: Architecture, Industry, and Spatial Autarchy,” by renowned architectural historian Clarie Zimmerman. 📍Location: Farish Gallery, MD Anderson Hall Friday, March 6, 6:00 pm Public Keynote Lecture by Claire Zimmerman, University of Toronto Saturday, March 7, 9:30 am - 5:00 pm Presentations by international doctoral students: Alican Taylan, Cornell University Devin Jernigan, Yale University Jolanda Devalle, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne Soetje Marie Beermann, Berlin University of the Arts Jared Miguel Fantasia, Universidade do Porto Piergianna Mazzocca, Cornell University The 2026 Rice Architecture Dissertation Colloquium is convened by Associate Professor Reto Geiser. The event is free and open to the public. Link in bio for the full schedule. 🔗 Image: Gollmar Bros. Circus entrance and midway, date unknown (1891–1916). Image courtesy of Devin Jernigan. #RiceArchitecture #DissertationColloquium #ArchitecturalHistory #DesignTheory

On Friday, February 27 join us for a talk by Harry K. & Albert K. Smith Professor John Casbarian and former Professor in the Practice Danny Samuels, cofounders of Taft Architects, followed by the opening reception of The Order of Place: A Collaborative Process at the Rice School of Architecture. Lecture, 5:00 p.m. MD Anderson Hall Exhibition Opening and Reception, 6:00-8:00 p.m. Cannady Hall The Order of Place: A Collaborative Process reflects on fifty years of design work by Taft Architects. The exhibition is designed in two parts. The first is a formal documentation of fifteen projects grouped into three specific ordering systems or typologies: centroidal; planar/field; and hybrid aggregation. The second part is loosely structured around the design process and the historical evolution of the practice. This event is free and open to the public. 🗓️Exhibition Dates: February 27–May 30, 2026 📍Location: Exhibitions at Rice, Casbarian-Appel Gallery & Hines Family Gallery, William T. Cannady Hall, Rice School of Architecture 📐Curated By: John Casbarian and Danny Samuels, Taft Architects Image 2: Stanfied House, Houston, Texas 1992. Image 3: The Rice School / La Estela Rice, Houston Texas, 1992. Image 4-5: YWCA Masterson Branch & Metropolitan Office Building, 1979. Image 6: Jaral, Houston, Texas, 1994. As the curatorial program of the Rice School of Architecture, Exhibitions at Rice uses the lens of design research to look at the world differently. Mobilizing a full spectrum of architectural representation this program weaves together scholarly inquiry, visual experimentation, and public engagement. #TheOrderofPlace #ExhibitionsAtRice #RiceSchoolofArchitecture

“When I began thinking about graduate school, I knew I wanted a prestigious education; even if that meant giving up track and field.” For Barbora Malikova, choosing a graduate program wasn’t just about academics or athletics; it was about finding a place where both could thrive. She thought pushing her limits in architecture and Division I track and field might be impossible. Then she visited Rice. At Rice, she didn’t have to choose. She found a university that challenges her in the studio and supports her on the track, proving that ambition doesn’t have to be divided. For student-athletes who want a world-class education without stepping away from competition, this is what redefining elite looks like. Full story in our bio. #RiceUniversity #RiceGradLife #StudentAthlete #Architecture #NCAATrackAndField #GraduateSchool