Preston H. Thomas Memorial Symposium: Junior Architects — Building Disciplinary Transformation Through Education

Sharon Egretta Sutton

Keynote Speaker

An educator, author, and citizen architect with worldwide reach, Sharon Egretta Sutton, FAIA, has shifted the profession of architecture toward a more equitable, diverse, and inclusive future. Throughout her career, she has held fast to an uncommon passion to represent the unrepresented, while developing tools of activism for the next generation of design professionals. Sutton was just the twelfth African American woman to become a licensed architect in the United States, the first to be promoted to full professor of architecture, and the second to be elevated to AIA fellowship. Currently, she is a distinguished visiting professor of architecture at Parsons School of Design, having previously served on the faculties of the University of Cincinnati, University of Michigan, University of Washington, Columbia University, and Pratt Institute. She is the first African American ever to receive the AIA/ACSA Topaz Medallion Award for Excellence in Architectural Education.

Sutton's research, shared across six books and countless articles she has either authored or co-authored, encapsulates hidden histories, broken pipelines, and other factors that hamper the potential of architecture education to affect change. In her 2017 When Ivory Towers Were Black, Sutton tells the story of a bold experiment that opened doors of opportunity at a world-class university for students of color, transforming their lives and becoming best practices in the fields of architecture and planning. In her 2023 Pedagogy for a Beloved Commons: Pursuing Democracy's Promise Through Place-Based Activism, Sutton offers a game plan for students and other hopeful citizen architects to learn and use practical skills to continue her vital work.

Milton S. F. Curry

Milton S. F. Curry (B.Arch. '88) is a Professor of Architecture and Senior Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives and Engagement at Cornell University's College of Architecture, Art and Planning (AAP); founding editor of CriticalProductive (a peer-reviewed academic journal focused on culture, arts, and spatial practice) distributed by MIT Press; and principal of Milton Curry ProjectStudio design consultancy. 

Curry produces creative work and scholarship on the role of architecture in shaping social consciousness and the intersectional role of race, class, and urban geography embedded in modern and contemporary aesthetic practices in the Americas. At Cornell, he will launch and direct the Black Cities Americas Lab, which will examine the possibilities of environmental justice and reparations movements on the urban design and redevelopment of America's inner cities. Current work also includes three book manuscripts on architecture race theory, diversity in the practice and profession of architecture, and the cultural significance and critical histories of the boutique hotel. In addition, Curry leads the curatorial team at work on three exhibitions (USC Architecture, Getty, LACMA) on the life and work of Paul R. Williams, slated to open in late 2026.

Curry was Dean at the University of Southern California School of Architecture from 2017–22 and Associate Dean / Associate Professor at the University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning from 2010–17. He was a professor at Cornell Architecture from 1995–2010 and Director of the Cornell University Council for the Arts from 2002–08. Curry serves on the Museum of Modern Art Board of Trustees Architecture and Design Acquisitions Committee and the Abode Communities Board of Directors and Finance Committee. 

Curry received a Bachelor of Architecture from Cornell University in 1988 and a Master of Architecture II post-professional degree with distinction from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design in 1992.

Peter Robinson

Peter Robinson (B.Arch. '98) is the founder of WorkUrban, a design consultancy with the principal mission to promote effective urbanism around the world through community engagement and participatory design. WorkUrban partners with communities, institutions, and individuals while engaging students on a pathway toward leadership and empowerment. WorkUrban's recent collaborations include Brownsville Heritage House, Medgar Evers College Preparatory School, Universe City, and My Brother's Keeper Alliance.

As a founding board member of BlackSpace Urbanist Collective — a nonprofit organization that demands a present and future where Black people, Black spaces, and Black culture matter and thrive — Robinson utilizes his strong belief in the power of collaboration to advance student advocacy and create community change. BlackSpace was recognized as one of "The 10 Most Innovative Architecture Companies of 2021" by Fast Company.

A sought-after leader in the field of architecture, urban design, and design consultancy, Robinson has recently been elected Vice Chair to the Board of Trustees at AIA New York | Center for Architecture, where he presented at the organization's inaugural Presidential Lecture Series. He also serves on the Board of Advisors for BRACE: Building Research + Architecture + Community Exchange. Previously, he served as Treasurer for the New York Coalition of Black Architects and has worked with the organization in the areas of student and professional advocacy.

A native of Kingston, Jamaica, Robinson was raised in both Kingston and New York City, where he graduated from the High School of Art and Design. He earned a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Cornell University and a Master of Science in Architecture and Urban Design from Columbia University. He has worked at a number of noted architectural practices in the areas of design, management, and design strategy, greatly contributing to the successful futures of leading corporate, cultural, religious, and academic institutions.

Robinson previously taught architecture design and urban theory at Barnard College at Columbia University, Syracuse University, and Parsons School of Design, and was a Visiting Critic at Cornell University's Gensler Family AAP NYC Center. He has been a guest critic at Cornell, Columbia, Rhode Island School of Design, China Academy of Art, and Harvard.

Prior to accepting the position of Assistant Professor at AAP, he was the fall 2021 Mellon Scholar.

Robinson's research focuses on cultural subjectivity and the city, broaching parallels and interferences among architecture, urban design, planning, and cultural practices/theories as a means to engage/inform social action.

Throughout his career, Robinson has worked to leverage institutional relationships to provide sustainable, locally directed infrastructures of support to underserved communities. In the fall of 2021, he collaborated with Universe City NYC (UC), an ecological public health laboratory in East New York, Brooklyn, to deliver the design studio Housing + Communion: "For Health and Strength…". UC's mission to create neighborhood food sovereignty is deeply embedded in local cultural practices. During this studio, students worked alongside UC staff and East New York community members to design spatialities that centered living the mission and values of Universe City. This collaboration served as a source of regard that contributed to UC being awarded a Mellon Foundation, Humanities in Place grant the following year which Robinson helped to secure. This two-year grant will provide the recourses and undergirding for UC to host similar collaborations, implement programming, and creates the spaces for their radical social/cultural mission.

María González Pendás

María González Pendás is an architectural historian of modernity and coloniality of the Spanish transatlantic world whose research explores the intersections of aesthetics, technologies, ideologies, and power through the built environment. Her current book manuscript, Holy Modern: Technocracy, Theocracy and the Architectures of Hispanic Fascism, studies the architectural workings of fascism, technocracy, and the imperial figment of Hispanidad in the second postwar and through the lens of Spain. Other projects have investigated relations of labor and race in México; the coloniality of concrete technologies and innovation across the South Atlantic; and the relationship between technology, religion, and secularism in global modernity.

González Pendás has received grants and fellowships from the Society of Architectural Historians, the Graham Foundation, and the Fulbright Foundation, among others, and was a member of Columbia University's Society of Fellows in the Humanities from 2016–19. She received her Ph.D. in Architecture History and Theory from Columbia University and her Masters in Architecture from the Polytechnic University in Madrid. Prior to joining Cornell, she taught at Vassar College, The Cooper Union, and the Art History Department at Columbia University, where she also coordinated the public humanities initiative of the SOF/Heyman Center for the Humanities to promote civically engaged forms of scholarship and pedagogy.

Jennifer Newsom

Jennifer Newsom is a licensed architect, artist, and principal of Dream The Combine, cofounded with Tom Carruthers in 2013. Through her practice, Newsom has coproduced numerous site-specific installations in the U.S. and Canada that explore metaphor, perceptual uncertainties, and the boundary between real and illusory space. Dream The Combine are winners of the 2018 Young Architects Program at MoMA PS1 for their installation Hide & Seek, and the 2020–21 J. Irwin and Xenia S. Miller Prize.

Newsom's research lies in the space between real, tangible bodies made of flesh, steel, glass, etc. and the perception of these bodies through vision. As scholar Sarah Lewis has noted, "Seeing has become a mode of reading the world. We make meaning of what we see through conditioned sight, and the question becomes what conditions the mode of seeing? When it comes to race and equity, this has become increasingly important to understand." As an architect, she examines racial constructs in the context of built constructions, where these spatial metaphors act as mechanisms for connectedness and engagement. People are the activating agents in her work, and their presence is needed for a reconsideration — a "reconditioning," to use Lewis's term — of our bodies in relation to one another.

Emmanuel Pratt

Emmanuel Pratt (B.Arch. '99) is an urban designer, artist, and MacArthur Fellow. He is the cofounder and Executive Director of Sweet Water Foundation. Pratt's praxis is rooted in over a decade of explorations, investigations, and transdisciplinary work that intersects across architecture, urban planning, agroecology, human ecology, and human development. His work has built upon and moved beyond the theory of Communicative Action towards the creation of a new paradigm of Regenerative Neighborhood Development (RND). Pratt was a Harvard GSD Loeb Fellow in 2017, a 2019 Joyce Award recipient, and a 2019 MacArthur Fellow.

Andrew Epps

Andrew Epps is an Urban Ecology Fellow-In-Residence at Sweet Water Foundation. A multidisciplinary organization with a creative, grassroots social justice practice, Sweet Water blends urban growing, art, and education to activate vacant land and develop regenerative community assets, including a two-acre farm in Chicago's Englewood/Washington Park neighborhoods. As a Fellow, Epps performs a daily flow of agricultural, carpentry, and research tasks. He earned a master's degree in regional planning from Cornell University in 2023, where he studied urban adaptation to climate change and community-led approaches to land governance. He was born in the Driftless Area of Wisconsin.

Naomi Langer Voss

After five formative years working at Frank Gehry and Associates on notable projects such as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao Spain, Naomi Langer Voss established her architectural practice Naomi Langer Studio in Los Angeles in 2001. The firm specializes in single family residential projects, select commercial, and institutional projects including an award-winning renovation of the B'nai David Judea Synagogue Los Angeles. In 2018, she decided to expand the practice to New York City and engage in community-based projects. She founded ARCscholars in the fall of 2021 and is actively growing the program.

Langer Voss began her teaching career in 1995 and taught design studios at Woodbury University, Pasadena City College, and Otis College of Art and Design from 1995–2002. Currently she is an adjunct professor at City Tech, New York City College of Technology, and Parsons School of Design.

She received her Master of Architecture degree with honors from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the University of Michigan.

Ann Lui

Ann Lui, AIA, is a founding principal of Future Firm, a Chicago-based architecture and design research practice. She is an Assistant Professor of Practice at the University of Michigan. Future Firm designs spaces for changemakers, including residential, commercial, and cultural buildings. Future Firm was awarded the J. Irwin and Xenia S. Miller Prize in 2021 and has been exhibited at the Shenzhen Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture, Storefront for Art & Architecture, and the Chicago Architecture Center.

Lui's work explores the intersections of professional practice, collectivity, and the built environment. She was cocurator of Dimensions of Citizenship, the 2018 U.S. Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale. She coedited Public Space? Lost and Found (MIT/SA+P Press, 2015) and is coediting Log 53, "Coauthoring" (2022). Her current research explores building codes through the lens of social equity, including the recently published "Toward an Office of the Public Architect" (Log 48).

Jess Myers

Jess Myers is an urbanist and assistant professor of architecture at Syracuse University whose practice includes work as an editor, writer, podcaster, and curator. In the past, Myers has worked in diverse roles — archivist, analyst, teacher — within cultural practices that include Bernard Tschumi Architects, the Service Employees International Union, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Rhode Island School for Design. Her personal interests and research engage multimedia platforms as a means to explore politics and residency in urban conditions. Her podcast Here There Be Dragons takes an in-depth look at the impact of security narratives on urban planning through the eyes of city residents. Her work can be found in Urban Omnibus, The Architect's Newspaper, Log, l'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui, Avery Review, The Architectural Review, Places, Dwell, and the Funambulist Magazine. Her 2022 exhibition, A Pause Is Not A Break, was recently on "view" in Providence, Rhode Island; Ames, Iowa; and Ottawa, Canada.

Kim Dowdell

Kimberly Dowdell (B.Arch. '06), AIA, NOMAC, is a licensed architect and frequent speaker on the topic of architecture, leadership, diversity, sustainability, and the future of cities. In her 2019–2020 term as national president of the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA), she worked to increase opportunities for women and people of color to gain more equitable access to the building professions. She also more than doubled the organization's membership and significantly raised NOMA's profile.

Dowdell's career aspirations are rooted in her upbringing in Detroit, where she was initially driven to utilize architecture as a tool to revitalize cities. She earned her Bachelor of Architecture at Cornell University and her Master of Public Administration at Harvard University. Her professional experience has spanned architecture to government and teaching to real estate development. She is currently the director of strategic relationships and a principal with HOK, a leading global design firm. She cofounded the SEED Network in 2005 and has been a LEED-accredited professional since 2007. In 2022, she was elected to the Cornell University Board of Trustees.

Dowdell's overarching mission is to improve people's lives, by design.

Anya Sirota

Anya Sirota is a Ukrainian-born architectural designer and educator. She is the founding principal of Akoaki, an award-winning practice of architects and urban designers specializing in public space and cultural infrastructure. Since its launch in 2008, Akoaki has explored how the creation of compelling environments inspires positive social engagement.

The studio's work has been featured in international publications and exhibitions, most recently the Vitra Design Museum, the Saint Etienne Design Biennale, and the Chicago Cultural Center. She is the recipient of the Architecture League Prize, SXSW Eco: Place by Design Art + Interaction Award, the Harvard Araldo Cossutta Prize for Design Excellence, among other recognitions.

In parallel to her practice, Sirota is an Associate Professor and Associate Dean at the University of Michigan's Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning.

Noliwe Rooks

A multi-disciplinary scholar, Noliwe Rooks is the L. Herbert Ballou University Professor of Africana Studies and the chair of Africana Studies/ Rites and Reason Theatre at Brown University. Her work explores how race and gender both impact and are impacted by popular culture, economic malfeasance, social history, and political life in the United States. She works on the cultural and racial implications of beauty, fashion, and adornment; race, capitalism, and education; and the urban politics of food and cannabis production. The author of four books and a variety of articles, essays, and op-eds, Rooks has received research funding from the Ford Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the Woodrow Wilson School, among others. She lectures frequently at colleges and universities around the country and is a regular contributor to popular outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Time Magazine, and NPR.

She has two books forthcoming in 2024 — A Passionate Mind in Relentless Pursuit: The Vision of Mary McLeod Bethune, which will be published by Penguin Random House, and Integrated, An American Dream from Pantheon Books.

Andrew Chin

Andrew Chin is the Interim Dean of the School of Architecture + Engineering Technology (SAET) at Florida A&M University (FAMU). Chin has 30 years of administrative and teaching experience. He earned his Bachelor of Design and Master of Architecture from the University of Florida and a Master of Science in Urban & Regional Planning at Florida State University. Since 1991, Chin has taught design studios,thesis research, and urban design classes at FAMU, the University of Florida, and the Georgia Institute of Technology. With more than $2 million in external funding from the U.S. Economic Development Administration (EDA), the U.S. Dept of Housing & Urban Development (HUD), the Florida Department of Community Affairs, the Florida Division of Historical Resources, the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the Kellogg Foundation, and local planning agencies, Chin's research exposes the intersection of race and urban form in North Florida communities.

Kiki Cooper

Kiki Cooper is a designer-activist, organizer, and facilitator. They received their undergraduate degree in Landscape Architecture from The Pennsylvania State University and are currently at the Harvard Graduate School of Design working towards a Master of Landscape Architecture in Urban Design and a Master in Design Studies in Publics. Their practice and core design principles intersect at the crux of food security, design justice, education, community building, youth empowerment, queer identities, and mental health. Alongside Design As Protest, Dark Matter University, and Bruxas Bruxas, Cooper activates their passions through collaboration, art, research, and academia.

Curry Hackett

Curry J. Hackett is a transdisciplinary designer, public artist, and educator. His practice, Wayside, synthesizes cultural and ecological narratives to envision meaningful work in the public realm. Noteworthy projects include the Howard Theatre Walk of Fame, the DC High Water Mark project. Hackett began his academic career in 2019 at his alma mater, Howard University, and has since taught at Yale University, Carleton University, City College of New York, the University of Tennessee–Knoxville, and is a core member of the anti-racist design justice school Dark Matter U.

Currently, Hackett is completing the master's of architecture in urban design program at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. In 2022, he was named an inaugural Journal of Architectural Education fellow and a finalist for the Harvard GSD Wheelwright Prize. In 2023, he won the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) Creative Achievement Award for his Subjective Waters studio, which explored Black culture and water. Recently, Hackett was named a grantee by the Graham Foundation for his ongoing research project, Drylongso, which explores relationships between Blackness, geography, and land.

Torri Smith

Torri Smith is a Detroit-based designer, artist, and educator. Her investigations span from environmental justice and design biology to storytelling and urban placemaking. She currently serves as the Principal + Founder of ARC BAE, an art and design-based practice that focuses on the promotion of kinship between the natural and built environment for all its inhabitants. Smith served as the 2021–2022 Michigan Mellon Design Fellow in Egalitarianism and the Metropolis. She holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Lawrence Technological University and a Master of Architecture from the University of Michigan. Smith currently conducts research related to her interests at the intersection of environmental justice, urban activism, and design while simultaneously exploring the ways in which ecological regeneration can address systemic racial inequity, tangentially sharing this passion by teaching high schoolers from Detroit Public Schools through ArcPrep.

Zain AbuSeir

Zain AbuSeir is a Lecturer III and DEI Faculty Lead in Architecture teaching in the undergraduate program at Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. AbuSeir earned a Bachelor of Science in Architecture and a Master of Architecture from the University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. Her work explores the potentials of architectural methods of representation and analysis in spatializing and unfolding scenes of charged and unsettled sites.

Megan Panzano

Megan Panzano is Senior Director of Early Design Education and Lecturer in Architecture at Harvard's Graduate School of Design (GSD).  Her role includes Program Director of the Harvard Undergraduate Architecture Studies track, as well as Director of the GSD's Black in Design Mentorship program and the Design Discovery public summer programs. Over eleven years on faculty at Harvard GSD, Panzano has coordinated and taught award-winning intro and advanced design studios and interdisciplinary courses to students at every level of design education — high school, college, graduate, and doctoral.  She is an architectural designer with an independent practice, studioPM, interested in architectures that are progressive through their interplay of images, objects, and space in the production of more inclusive, open-ended forms of subjectivity.

Janet Loebach

Janet Loebach is the Evalyn Edwards Milman Assistant Professor for Child Development in the Department of Human Centered Design at Cornell University.  Loebach's efforts focus primarily on the development of inclusive, child/youth-friendly environments and examining the impacts of built and natural environments on children's behaviors, mobility, and healthy development. She also has expertise in participatory approaches and tools for engaging young people in research and planning.  Loebach is the cochair of the Children, Youth & Environments Network of the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA) and sits on the editorial boards of the journals Children, Youth & Environments, Cities & Health, and PsyEcology.

Jada Cannon

Jada Cannon (they/them) grew up in Denver, Colorado, and graduated from the University of Colorado Denver with a B.S. in Architecture in 2021. They focus on exploring the value of biodynamic processes, multi-generational timescales, diverse perspectives, and multifaceted approaches to accessibility in their architecture studies. They are driven by a deep commitment to promoting diversity, inclusion, and equity in the field. In their work with the Sweet Water Foundation, they aspire to become an architect who considers an array of different, often underrepresented, perspectives and represents communal values in the built environment.

Aaliyah Phillips

Aaliyah Phillips is Territory's program director, working to help create a welcoming studio space, deepen Territory's roots in Austin, and build pathways to careers for young people ages 14–24. Phillips brings over seven years of experience in community organizing and restorative youth programming. As a longtime West Side Chicago resident, she is committed to building lasting relationships with young people, families, and residents as essential participants in Territory's place-based urban design work. Phillips is very passionate about working alongside Chicago youth to change the stereotype around youth in public spaces and to open pathways to careers and community leadership through design.

Nihar Nitin Pathak

Nihar Nitin Pathak is a trained architect with work experience in the construction industry as an architect and a sustainability advocate. She has a master's degree in sustainable design and is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in Architecture-Engineering-Construction-Management at Carnegie Mellon University. As an architect, Pathak focused on passive architectural design leading to her passion in sustainability. She specializes in bio-based materials in construction and indoor environmental quality. Her research focuses on the use of bio-based materials in building interior finishes and their impact on the environment with the help of life cycle impact analysis. She also works with strategies pertaining to improving the indoor environmental quality in existing buildings through post-occupancy evaluation. She is the graduate instructor for a graduate-level course titled Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ); Energy, Health and Productivity. Pathak is also a UDream Instructor, where she teaches sustainability strategies and designing with the help of simulations. She has worked as a sustainability associate enabling a variety of project types including commercial, residential, institutional, industrial, and logistic parks to be certified green-building facilities. Pathak has also been actively involved with various corporate campuses and university projects trying to attain a near-zero status in terms of energy, water, waste management, and carbon.

Katie Zaeh

Katie Zaeh (she/her) is an educator and architect living and working in Baltimore. She co-teaches tenth-, eleventh-, and twelfth-grade architecture pathway classes at the Baltimore Design School, A Baltimore City Public Transformation School. She is a licensed architect and certified K-12 art teacher. She has taught courses at Morgan State University and the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) and has worked at several local architecture firms. She is especially interested in early design education, in creating more equitable pathways to becoming an architect, in digital drawing, and in adaptive reuse. Zaeh earned a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture at Princeton University and a Master of Architecture at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation (GSAPP). After working as an architect for several years, she was drawn into architectural education hoping to address the lack of diversity in the profession. She returned to Princeton as a fellow to develop and instruct the Princeton ArcPrep program, an intensive pre-college program in architecture for students at Trenton Central High School. Following her fellowship, Zaeh wrote the curriculum for the Baltimore Design School, where she now teaches.

Suzanne Lettieri

Assistant Professor

Suzanne Lettieri is a designer and educator, and co-principle of Jefferson Lettieri Office. Her work tackles a range of scales and seeks to bridge the gap between aesthetics and socially conscious design. 

Lettieri was a Michigan‐Mellon Design Fellow in Egalitarianism and the Metropolis at Michigan's Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, where she was the lead instructor for ArcPrep, an immersive pre-college program in Detroit, Michigan. Additionally, she served as an Assistant Professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology, where she taught interior design and initiated the pilot program Inclusive Recruitment Strategies. She was a Visiting Critic in the Department of Architecture from 2014 to 2016. 

Lettieri worked at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, CODA, and Biber Architects. Her work has been exhibited in New York, Detroit, and Boston, and published in Project, The Cornell Journal of Architecture, The Plan Journal, and Plat. She received a residency fellowship at MacDowell in Peterborough, New Hampshire, and a Graham grant with Kunlé Adeyemi for the upcoming book African Water Cities, based on studios taught at Cornell AAP, Harvard GSD, Princeton, and Columbia University.

Lettieri earned an M.Arch. at Cornell in 2011 where she received the Richmond Harold Shreve Award and Eschweiler Prize, and a B.F.A. in Interior Design at the Fashion Institute of Technology in 2007. 

Imani Day

Design Teaching Fellow

Imani Day is a licensed architect, writer, and founder of RVSN Studios. Originally from Montclair, New Jersey, she graduated from Cornell University's School of Architecture in 2011 and spent her early career in New York working with Robert Stern and Diller Scofidio. In 2015, Day moved to Detroit at the height of the city's bankruptcy to focus on community-oriented work, designing and building socially inclusive spaces across multiple different scales of impact. Her interests and advocacy efforts support the equitable evolution of under-resourced neighborhoods, the authenticity of culturally grounded spaces, and revising design processes to focus on tangible social progress. Day has previously taught with Florida A&M University and the University of Detroit Mercy and held an editorial fellowship with Columbia University's Avery Review.