Junior Architects: New Paradigms in Design Education

Harley Etienne is Associate Professor and Graduate Studies Chair in the City and Regional Planning section at the Knowlton School of Architecture at Ohio State University. Etienne also holds a courtesy appointment with Ohio State’s Moritz College of Law. His research focuses on the confluence of institutions, patterns of neighborhood change, and social justice.

Sharon Haar is a licensed architect and Professor of Architecture at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. Her research and teaching focus on the spatialization of architectural and urban pedagogy and the influence of feminism and egalitarianism on domestic and collective spaces. She is the author of The City as Campus: Urbanism and Higher Education in Chicago (University of Minnesota Press, 2011).

Suzanne Lettieri is a licensed architect, Assistant Professor of Architecture at Cornell University, and co-principal of Jefferson Lettieri Office (JE-LE). Her work positions design as a vehicle for educational justice, advancing inclusive pedagogies that bridge creative practice and early-learning engagement. Through spatial interventions and collaborative research with schools and community partners, she develops architectures and methods that expand access to design thinking and cultivate environments where young learners encounter agency, imagination, and the possibility of collective transformation.

Ann Lui is a founding principal of Future Firm, a Chicago-based architecture and design research practice. She is an Associate Professor of Practice at the University of Chicago, where she also serves as the Director of Undergraduate Architectural Studies. Lui’s scholarly work explores the intersection of professional practice and social justice. She co-curated Dimensions of Citizenship, the US Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. Lui also coedited Public Space? Lost and Found (MIT/SA+P Press, 2015) and Log 53, “Coauthoring” (2022).

Malcolm Rio is a doctoral candidate in Architecture at Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, where they research the colonial intersections of race, sexuality, architecture, and urbanism. Rio is also a graphic and architectural designer and thinker residing in New York City. They have taught seminars and studios in foundations, graphic design, and architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design and the Maryland Institute College of Art. Their scholarship, criticism, and interviews have been published across various platforms.

Anya Sirota is a Ukrainian-born architectural designer and urbanist exploring how spatial practice shapes civic life. As founding principal of Akoaki, she operates across scales—from installation to urban frameworks—linking critical inquiry with unconventional alliances. In Detroit, she leads the transformation of the Cultural District, an 80-acre experiment in cultural commoning. At the University of Michigan’s Taubman College, where she is Professor and Associate Dean, she advances pedagogical experimentation and cross-disciplinary collaboration.

Aaron Tobey is an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He holds a PhD from Yale University and has taught at Yale, the Rhode Island School of Design, and Colorado College. Building on professional experience as an architectural visualization specialist, Tobey’s teaching and research examine the intersections of architecture with histories of technology, organizational studies, design methods, and transnational studies to draw out the foundational, epistemological, and labor structures of contemporary professional practice.