About this Event
Join us for a conversation with authors Cathleen McGuigan and Peter MacKeith to celebrate the launch of their new book, a stunning, yet critical survey of 50 major architectural firms across America's regional cities and small towns. The book is published by Merrell Publishers and set to release June 6th 2026. They will be in conversation with Ian Volner, followed by a signing.
PLEASE NOTE: RSVPs are encouraged but not required. Seating is limited and will be first come, first served. Doors open at 5:30 pm.
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Out There is the first critical survey of key contemporary architects across America's regional cities and small towns. These 50 practices operate at various scales and design different building types, weaving a rich architectural tapestry that reflects the breadth and diversity of the American landscape.
Each day, architects across the United States are busy planning and constructing individual homes, public buildings, and civic spaces rooted in local culture and context. Yet, to many, the perception prevails that American architecture is driven largely by the traditional centers of power on the East and West coasts. Out There challenges that notion, spotlighting practices throughout the whole of the US that are deeply grounded in place and community. What unites the firms featured in this volume is a commitment to architecture’s civic, social, and environmental responsibilities, as well as design excellence. Many prioritize sustainability, adaptive reuse, housing, and social justice. Even in an increasingly homogenized, hyper-connected world, these architects remain locally focused.
The book begins with a foreword by Marlon Blackwell, recipient of the 2020 Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architects, and an introduction by Robert Ivy, former editor-in-chief of Architectural Record. Essays by Cathleen McGuigan, also a former chief editor of Architectural Record, and Peter MacKeith, Dean of the Fay Jones School of Architecture in Fayetteville, AR, consider, respectively, key figures in the rise of architectural regionalism in the United States over recent decades, and contemporary regional architecture in other countries. The book’s main section profiles 50 US practices and 170 projects, including Observation Studio (Oregon), Modus Studio (Arkansas), Rand Elliott Architects (Oklahoma), Renée del Gaudio Architecture (Colorado), Salmela Architect (Minnesota), and Duvall Decker (Mississippi), recipient of the 2026 AIA Architecture Firm Award. The texts explore the ethos and design philosophy of each firm, as well as selected projects from the last ten years. Out There presents a varied, vibrant picture of architectural excellence anchored in local culture, geography, and community needs all across the US. It affirms a timeless truth: where we work profoundly influences what we create. Ultimately, architecture remains inseparable from place.
Critic and editor Cathleen McGuigan is the former Editor-in-chief of Architectural Record magazine, which won numerous editorial awards under her leadership. Prior to that, she was a longtime cultural writer and the arts editor at Newsweek. Besides Newsweek and Record, her articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Smithsonian, and Rolling Stone, among other publications. A graduate of Brown University, she spent a year at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design as a Loeb Fellow. She has been honored as a Poynter Fellow at Yale University and by the New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects with the Architecture in Media award. She sits on Sag Harbor’s Board of Historic Preservation and Architectural Review, as well as the boards of the New York Review of Architecture and the Skyscraper Museum.
Peter MacKeith is Dean and Professor of Architecture at the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the University of Arkansas, and a nationally recognized design educator and administrator. He is an ACSA Distinguished Professor, a Senior Fellow of the Design Futures Council, and a Knight, First Class, of the Order of the Lion of Finland. He is the author or editor of 14 books, most recently Radical Practice: The Work of Marlon Blackwell Architects (2022), and has served as editor of Perspecta: The Yale Architectural Journal and SOM Journal. MacKeith has led, organized, and curated exhibitions of the vitality of contemporary architecture in the Nordic region and the American South, including A South Forty: Contemporary Architecture in the American South, an ongoing project that presents and supports emerging and accomplished practices across the region, currently on view at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. He was the co-commissioner of the US Pavilion at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale.
Ian Volner has contributed articles on architecture, design, and urbanism to the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, and Harper’s among other publications, and is a contributing editor at Architecture Today (UK). He is the author of numerous books and monographs, including Arquitectonica: Living (Rizzoli, 2026), Jorge Pardo: Public Projects and Commissions (with Hans Ulrich Obrist; Petzel, 2021), and Philip Johnson: A Visual Biography (Phaidon, 2020).
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Rizzoli Bookstore, 1133 Broadway, New York, United States
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