Malcolm Rio

Malcolm Rio is a Doctoral Candidate in Architecture at Columbia GSAPP. Rio is also a graphic and architectural designer and thinker residing in New York City. They are currently a Ph.D. student at Columbia University where they research the colonial intersections of race, sexuality, architecture, and urbanism. Rio received their MS in architecture studies (SMArchS) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with several distinctions including the 2019 SMArchS Thesis Prize and the Arthur Rotch Special Prize for their research on the urbanism of house-ballroom culture in New York City. Rio also holds a Master of Architecture (MArch) from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and a BS in philosophy and a BFA in graphic design from Towson University.

They have taught seminars and studios in foundations, graphic design, and architecture at RISD and the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). Their scholarship, criticism, and interviews have been published across various platforms including Thresholds, Avery Review, New York Review of Architecture, ArchitectureMPS, and Pidgin Magazine, within a forthcoming article in the volume on sexuality, gender, architecture titled Living Room and edited by Sophie Hochhäusl.