For the 14th year of the Archtober festival, we explored the theme Tracing the Future, examining the evolving landscape of New York City through affordable housing, sustainable design, infrastructure, and more. From engaging talks to hands-on workshops, this month has been a vibrant exploration of how our built environment can shape and inspire what lies ahead. Let’s look back at some highlights as we step into November.

This month, the festival:

• collaborated with 148+ partners
• featured over 500 partner programs
• organized 27 Building of the Day tours
• oversaw 5 wicked teams compete for the Pritzkerpumpkin

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Countless memorable programs that took place over the course of the month included Indigeneity and Traditional Ecological Knowledge in Spatial Practices, developed in collaboration with the Indigenous Society of Architecture, Planning and Design (ISAPD), featuring Anjelica Gallegos, Co-founder, ISAPD; Julia Watson, Author, Lo–TEK: Design by Radical Indigenism; Winona LaDuke, Founder, Winona’s Hemp & Heritage Farm; and Christian Hart Nakarado, Assistant Professor of Art, Wesleyan University; Founder, Slow Built Studio. The group explored the intersection of Indigenous perspectives and the built environment—how architecture, urban planning, and land use intersect with traditional ecological knowledge, cultural practices, and Sovereignty movements.

Another highlight included Why is Everything So Ugly, co-hosted by media partner n+1 and the Center for Architecture. The talk drew from an essay of the same name that was published in n+1's Winter 2023 issue, in which the magazine's editors explored a wide range of unattractive, unseemly, and visually depressing phenomena across the contemporary built environment, with journeys into ugly architecture, ugly product design, ugly films, and ugly lighting. The purpose was not to be denunciatory, but rather to taxonomize, to interrogate, and above all to notice.

Archtober 2024 saw the 22nd edition of Open House New York weekend, which invited attendees to check out hundreds of normally off-limits NYC sites, from single rooms, studios, factories and public spaces to entire buildings, blocks, bike corridors and parks. Urban Omnibus celebrated its 15th anniversary in conjunction with OHNY, while the Institute for Public Architecture hosted a free screening of The Story of the BQE, a documentary tracing the history of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (BQE) by Adam Paul Susaneck of Segregation by Design and produced by the Institute for Public Architecture (IPA) and NYU Schack Institute of Real Estate.

This year, the festival also introduced its first design competition, the “Greetings From…” Archtober Postcard Competition, which invited creatives from all backgrounds to submit a design imagining the future of New York City. Three winners were chosen, each receiving $500 and their postcard displayed and distributed at the Center for Architecture. Read more about the winning designs here, including a winning entry by the legendary architect and environmental designer James Wines.

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Thank you for celebrating with us this Archtober! And fear not—though the monthlong festival may be wrapping up, we have plenty more talks, tours, and activities planned for the rest of the year. Stay tuned for partner spotlights, feature stories, and more on the Archtober Stories blog, subscribe to the Archtober newsletter to receive our monthly digest of events, and follow @Archtober on social media for the latest updates.