Architecture Is Burning: An Urbanism of Queer Kinship in Ballroom Culture

Malcolm Rio is a graphic and architectural designer and thinker living in New York City. He is currently a PhD student at Columbia University where he researches the historical intersections of race, sexuality, nationhood, architecture, and urbanism. He received his 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 his research on urbanism, black ontology, and ballroom culture. 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. Rio was an inaugural AICAD teaching fellow positioned at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) where he taught graphic design, architectural design and foundation studio courses. During his appointment at MICA, Rio’s research focused on the racial and class dimensions of mobile network technologies in Baltimore City as a case study of the hollowing out of public transit systems in medium-sized, post-industrial cities across the US.