Risk: What Is It Worth In Architecture?

What is risk worth? Architecture is inseparable from uncertainty—sometimes embraced, sometimes resisted, but always present. We invent bold forms that may fail. We propose brighter futures that may falter. To practice architecture is to take on risk—with capital, with reputation, with the city, with the lives shaped inside it. For the innovator, risk is agency, progress, recognition, and the chance to improve lives. For those who mitigate risk, it’s value is inseparable from the scaffold that protects progress from catastrophe. For those outside the conventional practice, such as architect-developers, design-builders, and others, risk is currency, the price of control. Each stance reveals a different measure of what risk means and what makes it worth taking. These tensions will enliven the conversations at the heart of this event.

Panel One: Inside Conventional Practice
How do architects, lawyers, and insurers value risk? For architects, it may be the price of innovation, recognition, and influence. For lawyers and insurers, it is exposure—something to be managed and contained. Contracts shift liability, insurance absorbs damage, and more than reputations rise and fall in the process. This panel will showcase the tension among these perspectives: when does innovation become a liability, and who decides?

Panel Two: Beyond Conventional Practice
Outside the profession’s boundaries, risk proliferates. The architect-developer wagers capital for vision, profit, and legacy. The design-builder takes on liability for control and craft. The architect driven primarily by values and ethics may be politically and economically vulnerable. Here, risk is not hedged but embraced—as the condition for autonomy, for agency, for meaning. The question remains: are these viable alternatives to conventional practice, or simply new forms of exposure?

Speakers:

Introduction:
Rion Willard, Director of Consulting and Business Transformation, Business of Architecture; Host, Business of Architecture Podcast

Panel 1:
Gregg Garmisa, J.D., Principal, General Counsel at Studio Gang
Daniel Sundlin, Partner at BIG, Bjarke Ingels Group
Joshua Ramus, FAIA, Founding Principal, REX
Kim Yao, FAIA, Principal at ARO, Architecture Research Office
Moderator:
Robert Young, AIA, Principal at RYA, Robert Young Architects

Panel 2:
Jennifer H. Grosso, AIA, Director of Architecture, Alloy Development
John Hunt, esq, Partner, Robinson + Cole
Charlie Kaplan, LEED AP, Principal, GLUCK+ Architecture
Sebastian Medez, Founder, Tankhouse
Shay Sellars, Founder and Managing Director, The Emerge Group
Andrew Staniforth, Cofounder and CEO, Assembly OSM
Moderator:
Andre Soluri, AIA, Principal, Soluri Architecture