“Beyond Architecture” Exhibit in Cowgill Lobby

The Architecture Advisory Board is back on campus for their annual visit! Catch their exhibition in conjunction with Studio Collective, “Beyond Architecture” in the Cowgill Lobby.

“How did your education allow you to get where you are today?” 

We all had our beginnings: a spark of curiosity, a pull toward design, a path that led us to architecture. At Virginia Tech, we are shaped by the rigor and intensity of a program that builds architects but more than that, it builds thinkers, makers, and problem solvers. We immerse ourselves in the culture of studio, pushing through sleepless nights, impossible deadlines, and the ever-present pursuit of something greater. We refine our craft, our perspectives, our ability to see. And then, we step beyond. 

What happens when architecture isn’t the end goal? When the designer leaves the studio and finds themselves in unfamiliar territory? Some of us remain close to the field, shaping the built environment, designing the spaces we once imagined on trace paper; others take a different route, branching into industries of varying architectural adjacency and new ways of creating. Yet no matter how far we go, architecture lingers. It bleeds into the way we learn, the way we work, and the way we move through the world. 

This journal explores the intersection of design and life and how architecture shapes the teachers, the entrepreneurs, the fighters, the artists, the strategists, the visionaries. We carry it forward, building not just structures but ideas and possibilities that reach far outside the world of architecture and beyond.