Profile
Troy Schaum’s design and research focus on new possibilities for form, representation, and politics in the post-megalopolitan city. He is pursuing this line of research through practice-based work at Schaum Architects, an award-winning architectural firm based in Houston. His firm considers the city at the scale of the building, both as a site of theoretical experimentation and as a material configuration that may be transformed through building. This work, which unfolds at a range of scales nationally and internationally, has received several AIA design awards. He has also been a finalist in the 2017 MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program, named one of the 2016 New Practices New York by the AIA, awarded as one of the Architectural League’s 2019 Emerging Voices, and named to the Domus list of 50 Best Architecture Firms 2020 and AN 50 in 2025. Schaum is the co-author of Blanking: An Annotated Archive of Thoughts and Projects on Architecture (Park Books, 2025).
Recent and ongoing work includes a restoration and new buildings for the Judd Foundation and for the Chinati Foundation, both in Marfa, Texas; work across several local and global sites on art galleries, arts headquarters, and artist studios; a café pavilion in Houston’s Memorial Park; and a residential tower on Park Avenue in New York City. His work has been exhibited internationally – including at the Venice Biennale, MoMA, the Storefront for Art and Architecture, Slade Gallery in London, and the Center for Architecture in New York–and published in many journals and other media, including The Guardian, The New York Times, Fast Company, Architect’s Newspaper, Texas Architect, Azure, Dezeen, Domus, Architect, Frame, and Architectural Record.
Troy Schaum is also the editor of Totalization: Speculative Practice in Architectural Education (Park Books, 2019), in which contributors explore the status of expertise in the formulation of contemporary practice.