Archtober, NYC’s architecture and design festival, celebrates 15 years

Bustler has been a proud sponsor of Archtober since 2011

Archtober, a New York City-based platform that promotes the discovery of architecture and design through experiences and content, will celebrate the next installment of its annual festival from October 1–31, 2025. In collaboration with nearly 100 partners and sponsors across the city, the 2025 festival will gather events, exhibitions, resources, and activities across the five boroughs to raise awareness of the importance of architecture and design in New York City.

“In a moment where uncertainty, hyper-individualism, post-pandemic isolation, and climate crises loom ever larger, we’re urgently and collectively feeling a need for public space and human connection,” says Jesse Lazar, Assoc. AIA, Executive Director, AIA New York and the Center for Architecture. “As we celebrate 15 years of Archtober, this year’s theme Shared Spaces feels particularly pressing in imagining a healthier and more humane urban landscape.”

Festival Theme: Shared Spaces

In recent years, Archtober has launched each festival with an annual theme, beginning in 2023. This year’s theme, Shared Spaces, considers a world where space and resources are shared responsibly, inviting participants to re-envision how we move, connect, and live together in New York City. It points to the cast of collaborators who are actively shaping and experiencing the city, such as architecture firms, urban developers, civic organizations, activists, and the public. Shared Spaces holds our collective wonder, anxiety, learning, and joy, making room for the complexity of the human experience in 2025.

This year, the festival ran the second year of its design competition, the “Wish You Were Here” Archtober Postcard Competition, which invited creatives from all backgrounds (architects, illustrators, design enthusiasts, etc.) to consider their ideal public space in New York City. Submissions closed on August 18 and winners will be announced in late September. Each winner will receive $500 and have their postcard printed and distributed at the Center for Architecture throughout the course of the 2025 festival. Additionally, for the first time, the selected designs will be printed in Oculus magazine’s fall issue!

“New York City has always been an emblem of public life and its possibilities. We as a city thrive in and because of shared spaces, and we’re excited to highlight this idea through this year's festival programming,” says Katie Mullen, Director of Archtober and Director of Exhibitions and Programs, Center for Architecture. “This 15-year milestone reminds us of the vital role that architecture, design, and community play in shaping a vibrant New York City.”

Newly launched this year, the festival is partnering with select cultural institutions to share Archtober Coloring Sheets of iconic NYC public spaces with young New Yorkers. Created by Greater Studio, the drawings range from Coney Island’s Luna Park to the new Davis Center in Central Park to the Roosevelt Island tramway. Distribution sites will be at institutions including, but not limited to: Brooklyn Children’s Museum, Brooklyn Central Library, and Jefferson Market Library.

Program Highlights

Planned partner programming for this year’s festival spans a variety of event types, from panels to tours to celebrations and more: embark with Classic Harbor Line on an AIANY Industrial Waterway Tour to Freshkills Park on October 5—a fully narrated three-hour, fifteen-minute cruise from Chelsea Piers through bustling industrial channels into the heart of Freshkills, where AIANY guides and Freshkills Park planners will reveal the remarkable landfill-to-park transformation, showcasing thriving ecosystems, expansive wetlands, and inspiring views of New York Harbor.

Grace Farms will be commemorating its 10th anniversary on October 11, hosting a day of music, conversation, and celebration. The program will feature Grace Farms CEO and Founder Sharon Prince and Grace Farms architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA, as well as music by cellist Arlen Hlusko and a talk on natural pigments with artist Hannah Rose Thomas, PhD.

On October 14, n+1 will host a discussion at the Center for Architecture about the architecture and built environment of 21st-century urban social democracy titled "What Could Mamdani’s New York Look Like?" At once gleefully speculative and firmly grounded in the reality of governance, the conversation will roam from bike lanes to social housing to the mechanics of policymaking.

What does it mean to create spaces that are not only affordable and functional, but also joyful, safe, sustainable, and ours? On October 15, 1014 will host “Not Just Livable – Lovable: Urban Quality, Human Reality and the Shape of Home.” This panel is an open invitation to think about what it really means to make a home in a place where housing is expensive, neighborhoods are changing fast, and public space matters more than ever. We’ll explore the full spectrum of the urban experience, from the private to the public.

On October 18, Van Alen Institute will celebrate Van Alen Fall Fest 2025, in partnership with Gowanus Open Studios, opening its doors for the public to gain insight into community-led design projects across New York City.

The METROPOLIS Sustainability Lab + Conference, hosted on October 17 at Parsons in New York, will be the premier gathering of visionaries shaping the future of the built environment. This year’s event, themed SYNERGY, brings together top leaders from corporate America, higher education, healthcare, and hospitality to discuss strategies, tackle challenges, and uncover opportunities at the intersection of design, wellness, and sustainability.

Later in the month, on October 22, Female Design Council will host its annual "Archtober Mingler for Women Architects and Designers" at the Ligne Roset flagship in New York. This is a free event for women in the architecture and interiors space to socialize, enjoy drinks, and meet other collaborative, creative women, and to learn about the work of the Female Design Council, the premier professional network for women in design. The event is open to both FDC members and non-members, with an RSVP required.

The festival will feature numerous exhibitions across the city, including Sketching the Surface: Exploring the New York School of Interior Design Archives and Contemporary Pattern Design (September 25, 2025–April 2, 2026) at the New York School of Interior Design Gallery. The exhibition presents works by textile and wallpaper designers active in the second half of the 20th century, alongside selections by current practitioners.

The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture, The Cooper Union will open an exhibition on October 14 featuring Archigram: The Magazine, the facsimile reprinting of all 10 issues of the original Archigram publications issued from 1961 to 1974. This work is being published by D.A.P. in conjunction with Designers & Books.

An exhibition at Leroy Street Studio, Brick & Mortar (& Curtains) (October 2–December 5, 2025), will provide a behind-the-scenes look at their collaboration with independent entertainment company A24 on its first brick and mortar venture: the revitalization of Cherry Lane Theatre, New York City’s oldest continuously operating Off-Broadway theatre.

Beyond timed and ticketed programming, the Archtober site continues to feature Anytime Activities, a section of ongoing resources for architecture lovers of all ages. Explore the assortment of experiences, from drawing activities to audio tours!

Building of the Day Returns!

For 2025, the festival’s popular Building of the Day series of architect-led tours will take place daily and includes:

• Bruckner House by S9 Architecture
• Casa Celina by Magnusson Architecture and Planning, PC
• Davis Center at Harlem Meer in Central Park by Susan T. Rodriguez, Design; Mitchell Giurgola Architects
• Manhattan West by Field Operations; Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
• Pier 1 Pavilion by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects
• SoMA by CetraRuddy
• South Street Seaport Museum, A. A. Thomson & Co. Warehouse by Beyer Blinder Belle
• Terminal Warehouse by COOKFOX Architects
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Michael C. Rockefeller Wing by wHY Architecture; Beyer Blinder Belle
• 505 State Street by Alloy Development

Archtober will once again visit projects outside of the five boroughs—we invite you to travel with us to Manresa Wilds, a 125-acre publicly accessible park designed by SCAPE in Norwalk, CT anchored by a 1950s-built power plant facility, to be transformed into a dynamic community hub by Bjarke Ingels Group.

At the Center for Architecture

This year's festival theme nods to 2025 AIA New York President Benjamin Gilmartin’s theme, “See You IRL: Designing Public Space” and its event series, “Designing for Public Life,” focusing on our shared social, cultural, and civic experiences in real life. The six-part dialogue series examines the forces reshaping both our contemporary public life and the physical spaces being designed to support it—how are large-scale public spaces addressing questions of health, safety, equity, and inclusivity? How are these spaces becoming infrastructures for both climate and social resiliency?

On view at the Center for Architecture, the upcoming exhibition Searching for Superpublics (October 3, 2025–March 2026) will showcase projects around NYC that illustrate new design approaches to large-scale civic and social spaces, as well as speculative ideas that expand the very nature of our public sphere. We'll celebrate the official launch of the Archtober festival in conjunction with the fall exhibition openings at the Center for Architecture on October 3—stay tuned for more details.

We are also excited to announce “Head Hi in the City,” a collaboration with Head Hi, New York’s premier architecture and design-focused bookstore. The Brooklyn-based cultural organization, bridging architecture, design, and art via projects, reading materials, and public programming, will be opening a month-long pop-up at the Center for Architecture for the month of October. Featuring books and design objects for sale as well as weekly events including book launches, talks, and the New York Architecture & Design Book Club gathering, Head Hi will spotlight recently released architecture publications selected to celebrate the festival theme of Shared Spaces and a commitment to deepening our relationships with the places we inhabit.

International guest program participants for Head Hi in the City include: Montreal-based studio Daily tous les jours, The New York Architecture & Design Book Club, organized in collaboration with the design journal Untapped, Mexico City-based curatorial platform Proyector, Irish photographer Rich Gilligan, architecture firms WORKac and Mattaforma. The pop-up space at 532 Laguardia Place will be designed in collaboration with New York-based architectural lighting designers Studio Atomic and Italian company Dooor. The shop will be open Thursday–Saturday, as well as during various Archtober events. Stay tuned for more information; the full schedule will be announced in mid-September.

On October 29, Pumpkitecture—the festival’s signature pumpkin-carving event—will return to the Center for Architecture, as teams of architects go gourd-to-gourd to compete for the Pritzkerpumpkin! Members of the public are invited to join the festivities and cast their votes in the competition.

The Archtober Guide on Bloomberg Connects

At its core, the Archtober festival is meant to encourage and inspire audiences to engage with the architecture and design that surrounds them. Building on our efforts to create year-round Archtober experiences, this year the festival will continue its partnership with Bloomberg Connects, the free arts and cultural app created by Bloomberg Philanthropies, to offer the Archtober Guide. Over the past 12 years, Archtober has toured hundreds of projects across the five boroughs. The Archtober Guide on Bloomberg Connects allows you to explore a selection of these sites from your phone, allowing you to dive deep into some of NYC’s most exciting contemporary and historical projects. View project images and listen to exclusive, app-only interviews with the architects and landscape architects who are shaping the future of New York City! Featured buildings include the Stapleton Library by Andrew Berman Architect, International Center of Photography by Gensler, Pavilion at Brookfield Place by Pelli Clarke & Partners, Adams Street Library by WORKac, and the Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art. You can also use Bloomberg Connects to explore Archtober partners including the Judd Foundation, Magazzino Italian Art, Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and the Neue Galerie New York, among many others.

In 2023, we introduced our virtual Travel To series, which has since expanded for 2025. Designed to highlight Bloomberg Connects partners that feature iconic architecture and historically significant sites around the world, this year we visited Serpentine Galleries in London’s Kensington’s Gardens, learning about Marina Tabassum’s commission for this year’s Serpentine Pavilion; attendees had the opportunity to ask questions in a live Q&A with Serpentine Exhibitions Curator Chris Bayley. Last year, we visited The Burrell Collection in Glasgow, the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver, and the Sir John Soane Museum in London, with curators, preservationists, and other experts guiding virtual travelers from around the globe through these remarkable spaces. Stay tuned to hear what other sites we will travel to in the fall!