The PAYETTE Architecture Forum, created in 2005, is envisioned as a professional discussion group focusing on architectural design issues in practice.
The forum seeks to achieve the following:
1. Provide an environment for lively and candid discussion, including direct exchange of opposing views.
2. Encourage an open and ongoing cross-pollination of ideas across the firm.
3. Foster critical thinking regarding the architectural implications of design decisions.
4. Maintain sharp design sensibility through continued exposure to engaging intellectual dialog.
Each forum discussion is approximately one hour long, beginning promptly with a 15 to 20 minute presentation, followed by open discussion for the remaining time. Presentations provide a concise focus for the ensuing discussion and will draw on photographs, drawings, and diagrams of examples that will seek to encourage exchanges of ideas rather than to simply provide information.
Discussion of specific PAYETTE projects are not central to the forum agenda. The intent is to promote an open atmosphere unfettered by direct emotional attachments to our individual efforts. By targeting general discussion of architectural design concerns, we hope attendees depart inspired to think about the direct application in practice with an eye turned toward a continued commitment to quality.
The forum sessions are open to everyone, and we do not limit the nature of presentation topics. The common thread between multiple disciplines encourages us to focus on architectural implications and their connecting characteristics.
Architecture Forums in the past year have ranged from Branding & Identity within the practice of architecture to Andrea Love’s recent discussion about what makes a building sustainable. The Architecture Forum began as an internal discussion group. As we share each topic, we want to open the discussion. How do you approach some of the topics we’ve mentioned or what questions did one raise for you?
Previous Architecture Forums:
Discussing Sustainable Buildings
Contrast as a Contextual Strategy
Architecture Branding and Identity
Landscape Architecture
Innovate?
On Diagramming
Are Architects Out of Touch?
The 2025 OpenLAB Boston studio work will be exhibited at Virginia Tech Monday, March 2nd through Wednesday, March 4th.
Please join us for the following events on Monday, March 2nd:
11:00am - Lecture with Parke MacDowell
1:00pm Lobby talk with Kevin Sullivan
This year’s studio identifies seven sites along the frayed edges of Boston’s Greenway. The Greenway is a one-mile-long linear park running through the heart of the city, reconnecting downtown Boston with its waterfront. Many of the parcels along its edges remain undeveloped and present mute, blank facades to the public realm. Addressing and repairing these edges through acts of infilling, layering, grafting, framing, and placemaking is the core focus of the studio—SUTURE.