The SOM Foundation, in partnership with the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid (ETSAM), invites you to join us for the third William F. Baker International Research and Design Forum. This year’s edition will take place on Thursday, November 6, 2025, and is organized in partnership with the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid (ETSAM) on the campus of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. The full-day event will include presentations by academics and industry leaders whose body of work, creativity, and expertise inspire the future of materiality, assembly, and technology in the built world.

November 6, 2025
9:00 am – 5:30 pm
Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
Avenida Juan de Herrera 4
Madrid, 28040
Spain

The forum is open to the public and welcomes design professionals, educators, and students. Registration is not required, and there is no fee to attend.

Lectures will be conducted in English.

Pablo Castillo Luna, recipient of the 2025 Researcher-in-Residence, discussed his research project “A Permeable Atlas.”

August 6, 2025 6 p.m. PDT
Schindler House
835 North Kings Road
West Hollywood, CA 90069

Imagining Future Cities: Global and Minnesota Visions, Past and Present examines the enduring pursuit of the Future City, both globally and in Minnesota. The concept of future cities as a means to create more habitable, just, and sustainable places for people to live, work, and play has captivated visionaries across place and time. The exhibition at the Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis has been supported in part by the SOM Foundation as part of the 2024 Research Prize.

June 25, 2025–September 14, 2025
Weisman Art Museum
333 East River Road, Minneapolis, MN 55455

The (Im)material Matters Lab at the University of California, Berkeley, led by Professor Liz Gálvez, presents Collective Comfort: Airing on Possibilities, an innovative exhibition examining climate resilience in desert cities. The exhibition at the Center for Architecture + Design in San Francisco highlights design-research, full-scale prototypes, and student work that address the urgent need for alternative cooling solutions in regions facing extreme heat.

November 21, 2024–February 6, 2025
Center for Architecture + Design
Hallidie Building
140 Sutter Street, San Francisco, CA 94104

Maya Livio, recipient of the 2024 Researcher-in-Residence, led a conversation with artist Huntrezz Janos and writer and researcher Emma Kemp as part of her research project “Hospes: Housing Justice and Multispecies Cohabitation at the Wildland-Urban Interface.”

July 20, 2024
4 p.m. PDT
Schindler House
835 North Kings Road
West Hollywood, CA 90069

On Wednesday, June 5, the SOM Foundation organized a fellows reception in Washington, DC coinciding with the AIA Conference on Architecture 2024.

June 5, 2024
5 p.m. EDT
1700 K St NW Ste 1000
Washington, DC 20006

On Wednesday, June 7, the SOM Foundation organized a fellows reception in San Francisco coinciding with the AIA Conference on Architecture 2023.

June 7, 2023
5 p.m. PDT
One Maritime Plaza
300 Clay Street
San Francisco, CA 94111

Montserrat Bonvehi Rosich and Seth Denizen lectured on “The Right to Sewage: Digesting Mexico City in the Mezquital Valley,” recipient of the 2019 Research Prize. Their project asks what hydraulic, soil, ecosystem, social, and policy conditions can increase chances for success and what its prospects for socioecological sustainability are.

December 12, 2022
Noon CST
Online

Clare Lyster, recipient of the 2019 Research Prize, shared the outcomes of her yearlong project “Hot Farms: How Emails Grow Tomatoes,” a design-based research project addressing the 2019–2020 SOM Foundation topic "Shrinking Our Agricultural Footprint" on Wednesday, November 2 at noon CDT.

November 2, 2022
Noon CDT
Online

The second International Research and Design Forum took place on Friday, October 14 and Saturday, October 15, 2022, and was organized by the SOM Foundation in partnership with the Cluster of Excellence Integrative Computational Design and Construction for Architecture (IntCDC) at the University of Stuttgart. The two-day event included presentations by academics and industry leaders whose body of work, creativity, and expertise inspire the future of materiality in the built world.

October 14–15, 2022
University of Stuttgart
Keplerstraße 17
70174 Stuttgart
Germany

Kristine Mun and Biayna Bogosian, recipients of the 2018 Research Prize, discussed their project “Architectural Standards Guide from a Neurological Perspective.”

April 13, 2022
Noon CDT
Online

Architect and urbanist Charles Waldheim, juror of the 2019 Research Prize, discussed his work as it relates to the topic of the Research Prize: “Shrinking Our Agricultural Footprint.”

The lecture was organized in collaboration with the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and the Chicago Architecture Biennial.

October 14, 2020
6 p.m. CST
Online

On Friday, September 6 and Saturday, September 7, 2019, the SOM Foundation partnered with the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) to organize the inaugural International Research and Design Forum in Chicago. During the two-day event, industry leaders, researchers, and academics from around the world delivered presentations and panel discussions on the groundbreaking ideas and research that continue to elevate design thinking within the urgent context of climate change.

September 6–7, 2019
S.R. Crown Hall
3360 S. State St., Chicago, IL 60616

Secret Cities: The Architecture and Planning of the Manhattan Project exhibition at the National Building Museum explored the vast, highly classified effort to produce the atomic bomb, with an emphasis on the three new “secret cities” that were built to accommodate the tens of thousands of people who worked on the project.

May 3, 2018–July 28, 2019
National Building Museum
401 F St. NW, Washington, DC 20001

On Friday, November 10 and Saturday, November 11, 2000 a two-day conference on contemporary architecture and pragmatist debates sponsored by the SOM Foundation was held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

November 10–11, 2000
MoMA
11 W. 53rd St., New York, NY 10019

On Monday, May 1 and Tuesday, May 2, 2000, a two-day cross-disciplinary workshop sponsored by the SOM Foundation took place at Columbia University's Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture.

May 1–2, 2000
Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture
Columbia University
1172 Amsterdam Ave., New York, NY 10027

In the Spring of 1992, The Chicago Institute for Architecture and Urbanism hosted an exhibition showcasing work by CIAU Fellow John Hejduk.

May 6–June 3, 1992
Charnley House
1365 N. Astor St., Chicago, IL 60610

In the Spring and Fall of 1992, the Chicago Institute for Architecture and Urbanism hosted a public dialogue series at their headquarters, the Charnley House in Chicago. Invited guest speakers gave presentations on their work, by the fireplace in the Charnley House Library, followed by a dialogue with the audience. The series was funded, in part, by the Graham Foundation and the SOM Foundation.

Spring and Fall, 1992
Charnley House
1365 N. Astor St., Chicago, IL 60610

On Friday March 6, 1992, this one-day colloquium focused on architecture, real estate, and urban values in the Loop, Chicago’s financial and commercial heart.

March 6, 1992
Charnley House
1365 N. Astor St., Chicago, IL 60610

On December 15–16, 1991, the Chicago Institute for Architecture and Urbanism invited a group of theorists, critics, and practitioners to consider the relationship between architecture, urban design, and information technology.

December 15–16, 1991
Charnley House
1365 N. Astor St., Chicago, IL 60610

From November 14–December 24, 1991, the Chicago Institute for Architecture and Urbanism hosted an exhibition in the Charnley House Dining Room showcasing work from students at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

November 14–December 24, 1991
Charnley House
1365 N. Astor St., Chicago, IL 60610

On October 24 and October 25, 1991, the CIAU brought together scholars, curators, and design practitioners to discuss two Chicago World’s Fairs, which would have taken place a century apart, had they both been realized.

October 24–25, 1991
Charnley House
1365 N. Astor St., Chicago, IL 60610

On Friday, December 9 and Saturday, December 10, 1988, a two-day symposium sponsored by the SOM Foundation in collaboration with the Graham Foundation and the Chicago Chapter of the AIA Foundation took place at the Graham Foundation’s Madlener House.

December 9–10, 1988
Graham Foundation
4 W. Burton Pl., Chicago, IL 60610

On Friday, September 9 through Sunday, September 11, 1988, a conference on architectural theory was held at the Charnley House, then headquarters of the SOM Foundation’s Chicago Institute of Architecture and Urbanism.

September 9–11, 1988
Charnley House
1365 N. Astor St., Chicago, IL 60610

Divisible by 2, a square pavilion designed by John Whiteman for the 1988 Geburt einer Haupstadt (Birth of a Capital) exhibition in Austria, explored the political power of architecture.

June 25–July 24, 1988
St. Pölten, Austria

12 and ¼ Degrees, supported by the SOM Foundation, was a performance event that took place in and around the Wexner Center for the Arts on June 9, 1988, one year before it was completed. The purpose was to introduce the project, designed by architects Peter Eisenman and Richard Trott and landscape architect Laurie Olin, to the Columbus community.

June 9, 1988
Wexner Center for the Arts
1871 N. High St., Columbus, Ohio 43210