Gil Oberfield Memorial Lecture 2026: Peterson Rich Office

The annual Gil Oberfield Memorial Lecture was founded in honor of Gil Oberfield, AIA, former member and chair of the AIANY Interiors Committee. The lecture brings to the podium speakers whose work excels in the field of interior architecture. This year’s lecture will feature Peterson Rich Office (PRO), an architecture and design practice recognized for cultural and publicly engaged projects at multiple scales.

Since establishing their firm in 2014, principals Miriam Peterson and Nathan Rich have led a diverse team in realizing projects for leading clients in the cultural, residential, retail, and public sectors. The firm has developed a significant body of work around adaptive reuse, especially with projects that introduce new elements into structures of historic significance. Through this work, PRO has developed an architectural vocabulary that embraces context and finds richness in it as a point of departure for creating something new, rather than something to be smoothed over or erased entirely.

In May 2026, the Metropolitan Museum of Art will unveil PRO’s design for the new 12,000-square-foot Condé M. Nast Galleries, adjacent to the Great Hall. The galleries will serve as the new home for the Costume Institute’s annual spring exhibition, along with presentations from other departments. PRO is also designing the galleries’ inaugural show, Costume Art, exploring fashion as a connected, embodied form. Phase II of the project re-envisions the ground-level public concourse, including new dining and retail spaces and a new 83rd Street entrance, marking the museum’s first major investment in public spaces in more than 30 years.

PRO’s collaboration with the Met reflects the studio’s broader role across New York’s cultural landscape, including at the Brooklyn Museum where PRO will design new permanent galleries for its renowned Arts of Africa collection, set to open in fall 2027. Other recent projects of note include the MoMA Design Store in Soho, The Shepherd Gallery & Arts Center in Detroit, the Pruzan Art Gallery at Wesleyan University, and artist studios for Nina Chanel Abney and Mickalene Thomas. Through an ongoing multiyear partnership that started in 2014, PRO works with the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) on inclusive community design initiatives that inform improvements to the nation’s largest public housing system and advance design excellence across renovations in all five boroughs

Speakers:
Miriam Peterson, AIA, Partner, Peterson Rich Office
Nathan Rich, AIA, Partner, Peterson Rich Office

About the Speakers:

Miriam Peterson is a founding partner of Peterson Rich Office. Born and raised in New York City, Peterson draws inspiration from this rich urban context to create spaces that connect people to one another and to their surrounding communities. With a B.A. in Economics and Italian from Cornell University and a Master of Architecture from Yale University, Peterson brings an inquisitive and research-driven approach to each project, advocating for an expanded role for design at the intersection of architecture, economics, and policy. For over a decade at PRO, Peterson has developed an internationally recognized body of work across a diverse range of projects. The firm has been named Architectural Record’s ‘Design Vanguard,’ awarded AIA New Practices New York Prize, and selected as one of the Architecture League of New York’s Emerging Voices.

Nathan Rich is founding partner of Peterson Rich Office, where he brings a breadth of experience with global reach. Rich attended Wesleyan University and Yale. He was also a Henry Luce Scholar at Tsinghua University in Beijing where he learned to speak Mandarin and wrote about rapid urbanization in Asia. His particular grounding in the visual arts has informed PRO’s work and portfolio of projects. Prior to founding PRO, Rich worked at SHoP and Steven Holl Architects. In 2021 along with his partner Miriam Peterson, he held the inaugural Kaplan Chair in Urban Design at the Regional Plan Association.