2026 Rowlett Lecture

Date Range:

March 23, 2026 to March 23, 2026

Event Type:

Authorized

Location:

Walter and Lenore Annenberg Presidential Conference Center, located at 1002 George Bush Drive West, College Station, TX 77843

Description:

Rowlett Lecture 2026 The Integration of Art & Science in Architecture Cross-Pollination and Innovation
The Integration of Art & Science in Architecture provides an inspiring view of how today's most innovative approaches combine creativity, engineering, technology, and environmental intelligence to address global challenges. Discover how interdisciplinary teamwork fosters innovation, improves performance, and creates resilient, resource-efficient architecture for a more complex world.

The Rowlett Lecture participants include:
Architecture: Jose Palacios
Engineering: Mark Sarkisian, Eric Long
Sustainability: Luke Leung, Marcia Sedino, Shona Odea

The Integration of Art & Science in Architecture: Cross-Pollination and Innovation
Architecture is at a crucial turning point. A growing global population, climate instability, resource shortages, and increasing urban complexity demand solutions that are more precise, efficient, and responsible. The Integration of Art & Science in Architecture: Cross-Pollination and Innovation will examine how leading practices reimagine architecture as a discipline that merges imagination with evidence, intuition with analysis, and design ambitions with measurable environmental outcomes. Drawing on Skidmore, Owings & Merrill's (SOM) research-driven culture, the lecture demonstrates how artistic vision and scientific rigor now collaborate to create buildings and infrastructure that preserve natural resources, endure for generations, and respond intelligently to global challenges.
Case studies reveal how teamwork across disciplines drives innovation at different levels--from high-performance building shells to resilient city districts. Structural engineering shapes form and efficiency; environmental systems plan spatial strategies; materials science supports low-carbon building techniques; and computational design, AI, simulation, and digital fabrication expand what architects and engineers can achieve together. These connections illustrate how real collaboration occurs when disciplinary lines blur and expertise comes together around shared performance objectives.
The lecture emphasizes SOM's integrated design approach, where architects, engineers, planners, fabricators, and specialists collaborate as a single team from start to finish. This process creates architecture that blends elegance with durability, reduces embodied and operational carbon, enhances resilience, improves the human experience, and demonstrates the value of design that meets the highest environmental and technical standards.
Ultimately, The Integration of Art & Science in Architecture argues that the future of the profession depends on practitioners who synthesize diverse knowledge, work at complex scales, and design with clarity, efficiency, and stewardship. The lecture urges students, educators, and professionals to adopt a collaborative, research-driven approach that creates buildings and cities capable of enduring--and thriving--despite the significant challenges of our time.


There will also be an interdisciplinary Rowlett workshop on Tuesday, 24 March 2026 at the.
Rowlett Workshop 2026 -- Cross-Pollinating Art & Science: An SOM-Led Exploration of Integrated Design

ROWLETT WORKSHOP + DESIGN CHARRETTE
The tentative title is Rowlett Workshop + Design Charrette -- Cross-Pollinating Art & Science: An SOM-Led Exploration of Integrated Design
An immersive, interdisciplinary workshop inspired by the 2026 Rowlett Lecture, where students and professionals collaborate with SOM to blend artistic vision and scientific rigor. By engaging in hands-on learning, environmental analysis, digital fabrication, and AI tools, participants create resilient, efficient, low-carbon design strategies shaping the future of integrated practice.

Leveraging insights from the 2026 Rowlett Lecture, The Integration of Art & Science in Architecture: Cross-Pollination and Innovation, this intensive workshop immerses students and industry professionals in the collaborative processes architects and engineers need to master to address today's global challenges. Led by the SOM team, the workshop explores a real-world competition project that shows how artistic ambition and scientific precision actively converge to create efficient, resilient, and resource-conscious design solutions.
Participants will participate in hands-on tutorials and focused micro-lectures that demonstrate how structural engineering influences form, how simulation and environmental analytics improve performance, and how materials science, digital fabrication, and AI support durable, low-carbon solutions. Working together in interdisciplinary teams, students and professionals will develop strategies to increase efficiency, reduce embodied and operational carbon, optimize resource use, and design for long-term adaptability.
The workshop highlights integrated practice as crucial for tackling the scale, scope, and complexity of the built environment. It shows how innovation happens when the lines between design and engineering, intuition and computation, craft, and science blend into a collaborative problem-solving culture. Participants will gain a deeper understanding of how to synthesize diverse forms of expertise, use evidence-based decision-making, and create architecture that lasts--performing beautifully, responsibly, and resiliently in a rapidly changing world.

Contact Information:

Jennifer Robertson
Architecture
9798451015
jrobertson@arch.tamu.edu