Book Talk: Out There: New Architecture Across America

Join co-authors Cathleen McGuigan and Peter MacKeith, along with AIA Gold Medalist Marlon Blackwell, and moderator Matt Shaw, as they discuss the highly-praised new book, Out There: New Architecture Across America. Written with Robert Ivy, with a Foreword by Blackwell, the book is the first critical survey of 50 key contemporary architecture firms across America’s regional cities and small towns. These practices operate at varied scales, on different building types, weaving an architectural tapestry that reflects the breadth and diversity of the American landscape. What unites the featured firms is a commitment to architecture's civic, social, and environmental responsibilities. Many prioritize sustainability, adaptive reuse, housing, and social justice. Even in an increasingly homogenized, hyper-connected world, these architects remain locally-focused.

The book includes an introduction by Ivy, and essays by McGuigan and MacKeith that consider key figures in the rise of architectural regionalism in the United States over recent decades, and contemporary regional architecture in other countries. The profiles of the 50 practices—from Observation Studio (Oregon) to Modus Studio (Arkansas) to Salmela Architect (Minnesota) to Duvall Decker (Mississippi), recipient of the 2026 AIA Architecture Firm Award—are illustrated with a total of 170 projects. The texts explore the ethos and design philosophy of each firm and present a varied, vibrant picture of architectural excellence and innovation, anchored in local culture, geography, and community needs all across the US. Though focused largely on practices between the two coasts, several New York, Philadelphia and regional firms are included in the book and will be featured in the discussion at the Center.

Speakers:
Cathleen McGuigan
Marlon Blackwell, FAIA
Peter MacKeith

Moderator:
Matt Shaw

About the Speakers:

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. She is a co-author of the book, “Out There: New Architecture Across America,” published this year.

Marlon Blackwell, FAIA together with his partner in life and work, Ati Blackwell, FAIA, ASID lead the internationally recognized practice Marlon Blackwell Architects. Their work has received recognition with significant publication and more than 200 design awards including the 2016 Cooper Hewitt National Design Award in Architecture and the 2025 Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize. Working between the universal language of architecture and the particulars of place, they have cultivated a studio recognized for its formal clarity, contextual depth, and architectural integrity. In 2020, Marlon was honored with the Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architects for his enduring impact on the theory and practice of architecture. He’s a lifetime member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and an inductee of the American Academy of Arts and Science. Equally respected as an educator, he served as the E. Fay Jones Distinguished Professor at the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the University of Arkansas where he taught for over 30 years. Most recently, he was the Louis I. Kahn Visiting Professor at Yale University for the Fall of 2025.A monograph of their recent work, titled “Radical Practice”, was published in 2022 by Princeton Architectural Press.

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 14books, 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, scheduled for the National Building Museum in 2025. He was the co-commissioner of the US Pavilion at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale.

Matt Shaw is a New York–based author, editor, and columnist, whose work focuses on architecture as an instrument of political, social, and cultural shifts. He has been published in the New York Times, The Guardian, e-flux, Artforum, The Architectural Review, and Domus. He is the author of American Modern: Architecture, Community, Columbus, Indiana (Moncelli, 2024) and is the co-founder of the experimental project space Hot Air in downtown New York. He has previously served as Executive Editor of Architect’s Newspaper, where the online publication won an International Committee of Architectural Critics (CICA) honorable mention. He teaches critical writing and media studies at UPenn, The Cooper Union, and SCI-Arc, and has served on a number of advisory boards, awards committees, and built project juries.