Archtober returns next month with an action-packed hybrid festival of talks, tours, and much more
The days are getting shorter, there’s a slight nip in the air, and inboxes are filling up with an enticing barrage of invites for design- and architecture-related events across New York City. This, of course, could only mean one thing: Archtober is upon us.
The 2022 edition of Archtober marks the 12th edition of the month-long festival organized by the Center for Architecture. Like last year and the year before that, the 2022 event is a hybrid affair with its action-packed slate of programming including both virtual and in-person offerings—with a renewed emphasis on the latter—including exhibitions, lectures, building tours, and a diverse range of special events and activities. More than 100 partners and sponsors are taking place in this year’s festivities including The Architectural League of New York, the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, the Museum of Modern Art, Van Alen Foundation, Green-Wood Cemetery, Design Trust for Public Space, Judd Foundation, and the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Museum of Design to name just a few.
Archtober’s popular Building of the Day series, which will be fully presented in-person this year, is also returning. Held each day of the month with two engagements on Saturdays, the architect-led tours provide attendees with an intimate look at an eclectic selection of noteworthy in-progress and recently completed projects across all five boroughs, including many projects featured by AN.
Just a few Building of the Day projects included on the Archtober 2022 calendar include The Brooklyn Tower (SHoP Architects), Manhattan’s Pier 57 (Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Handel Architects, and !melk), the Peninsula in the Bronx (WXY and Elizabeth Kennedy Landscape Architect), the renovated Steinway Branch of Queens Public Library (Mario Gooden Studio), and a Circle Line cruise–based excursion to SCAPE’s Living Breakwaters Project in Staten Island, hosted in conjunction with Open House New York. The series concludes on October 31 with a tour of the revamped and reimagined David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center, a project helmed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects and Toronto-based Diamond Schmitt.
AN is also hosting two major Big Apple events for AEC and design professionals that coincide with Archtober: the annual Tech+ conference, an in-person/virtual hybrid event on October 21 keynoted by Carlo Ratti, and the fall 2022 edition of AN Interior’s Design District Showroom Crawl on the evening of October 13. Registration information for those events can be found here and here.
Much like Archtobers past, the festivities will extend beyond the five boroughs with partnering organizations such as ‘T’ Space (Rhinebeck, New York), the Glass House (New Canaan, Connecticut), and Art Omi (Ghent, New York) offering day-trip-worthy events, exhibitions, and special installations. Toward the end of the month, the festivities take a turn for the eerie as select participating organizations like the Merchant House Museum, New York Botanical Garden, and Lewis Lattimer House Museum host family-friendly, Halloween-themed goings-on. On October 28, the Center for Architecture will also revive its annual Pumpkitecture design competition to showcase superlative decorative gourd design.
With school back in full swing, it’s worth noting that a multitude of academic institutions are among this year’s partners including, among others, the Bard Graduate Center, Columbia GSAPP, the Cooper Union’s Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture, the New Jersey Institute of Technology, Pratt School of Architecture, the New York School of Interior Design, and the Spitzer School of Architecture at the City College of New York, which will present its fall 2022 Sciame Lecture Series, “Border Crossings: Architecture and Migration in the Americas,” in a hybrid format.
New this year is the Archtober Guide, which was developed in partnership with Bloomberg Connects, a free arts and cultural app created by Bloomberg Philanthropies. While no doubt a handy resource for this year’s action-packed event, the app is also meant as a year-round guide that enables users to explore a range of sites and buildings featured during past Building of the Day tours as well as Archtober partners including the Museum of the City of New York, New York Public Library, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
You can start plotting out your month by viewing the full Archtober slate of programming here.
