Kyle Gaffney Returns to RISD as Guest Critic

Kyle Gaffney, Founding Partner

SkB Architects founding partner Kyle Gaffney returned to the Rhode Island School of Design as a guest critic, joining student reviews and conversations about work still in the process of becoming architecture.

Gaffney is a graduate of RISD, where critique is fundamental to architectural education. Returning as a practitioner puts him on the other side of a process that helped shape his own way of thinking: looking closely, questioning assumptions, and asking what an idea might become before deciding what it should be.

During the reviews, Gaffney joined students and faculty in examining design intent, process, and execution. The role of a critic is not to arrive with the answer. It is to notice what is unresolved, test the thinking behind a decision, and ask the question that might open the work up further.

That exchange has relevance well beyond the classroom. Critique remains part of how SkB Architects works in practice, where ideas become stronger through examination, conversation, and the willingness to stay with a question before settling on an answer.