Peter Reyner Banham, the renowned architectural historian and cultural critic, taught in the newly-founded architecture program at the State University of New York at Buffalo between 1976 and 1980. During his tenure at Buffalo, inspired by the daylight factories and the grain silos of the region, he conducted research that led to his seminal book, A CONCRETE ATLANTIS, illuminating the relationship between American industrial buildings and European Modern Architecture. The Peter Reyner Banham Fellowship program at Buffalo was established in 2000 to celebrate Banham's legacy at Buffalo, and, most importantly, to project new work that is inspired by Banham's foundational body of scholarship on material and visual culture. Each year, the Banham Fellow engages the students and the faculty of the department through research, creative activity, and teaching, and presents that body of work through an exhibition and a lecture.

Architecture and design exhibitions have long been important public sites of broadcasting, experimentation, position-taking, and the interrogation of fundamental aspects of the designed environment. Just as individual exhibitions have constituted key benchmarks within the disciplinary history of architecture, the representation and display of space through exhibitions has operated historically as a crucial medium for shaping and embodying broader cultural attitudes toward the design of the built world. In recent years, the specific formats and challenges of exhibiting architecture and design, both built and speculative, have often been used as critical devices for identifying, communicating, and convening publics around shared matters of concern. These have increasingly included urgent questions of equity and justice, labor, gender, race, class, community, and lifestyle in relation to spatial issues of density, economy, policy, infrastructure, climate, and sustainability. Futures of the Architectural Exhibition records a discussion of critical approaches to the representation of architecture through conversations with seven contemporary curators working inside and outside of the museum. Mario Ballesteros (Archivo Diseno y Arquitectura, Mexico City), Giovanna Borasi (Canadian Center for Architecture, Montreal), Ann Lui (Future Firm, Chicago), Ana Miljacki (Critical Broadcasting Lab, MIT), Zoe Ryan (ICA, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia), Martino Stierli (Museum of Modern Art, New York), and Shirley Surya (M+, Hong Kong) speculate on the specific challenges and potentials of exhibiting space.