How do we navigate the competing demands of clients, communities, institutions, and civic life while serving the public good?
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Architecture in Publics brings together architects, designers, civic leaders, neighborhood advocates, public-sector partners, and allied practitioners to examine who architecture is for and what it is accountable to. Together, we will ask how architecture’s public value is shared and understood, and how design can support more durable forms of trust, participation, and civic capacity.
In Greater Boston, these questions are especially visible. Institutional growth, housing pressure, evolving public space, climate risk, and shifting civic trust all shape how people experience and participate in the city. Decisions about land, ownership, and design carry long-term consequences, and invite broader participation from the publics they affect. These pressures are also producing new forms of collaboration, public engagement, and design practice. This summit looks not only at what architecture delivers as a finished work, but also at the processes, relationships, and forms of trust it builds along the way.
The summit also arrives at a transitional moment for the BSA as we prepare to open a new home at 99 Chauncy Street in 2027. This gathering is part of a broader conversation about what an institution of architecture might offer its members, the publics affected by design, and the city itself.
Submit an experience, project, or moment to help shape the Architecture in Publics program.
Rather than looking only at finished projects, we're interested in the experiences, decisions, relationships, conflicts, negotiations, and tools that shape public work. We are especially drawn to situations where people had to work through tension, disagreement, unequal power, trust, responsibility, harm, or repair, as catalysts for change.
You do not need a completed project, polished presentation, or finished answer to participate.
If a form isn't the easiest way to contribute, we welcome a conversation instead. Please email [email protected] and we'll set one up.
Submission deadline: September 8, 2026 Notification: Rolling, before October 5, 2026
Architecture in Publics is organized around four contexts where public work happens. They help us make sense of the conversations that might happen over the course of the day.
Design Practice Experiences from architecture, landscape architecture, planning, urban design, and related fields that reveal the design principles embedded in public work. Examples might include competing responsibilities, difficult decisions, unexpected outcomes, or lessons learned.
Policy, Governance & Institutions Experiences from government, civic institutions, permitting, procurement, funding, regulation, or organizational leadership. How did policy shape design, or design shape policy?
Community & Neighborhood Action Experiences led by residents, neighborhood organizations, advocates, cultural groups, organizers, coalitions, or informal networks. Architects do not need to be involved.
Methods & Tools for Public Work Engagement methods, facilitation approaches, prototypes, workshops, mapping strategies, games, templates, or other practices that others could learn from even if they're still evolving.
What are you looking for?