Junior Architects explores the evolving landscape of architectural and design education, propelled by student-led movements advocating for an emancipatory educational model in the face of broader sociopolitical divisions around race and class. At this pivotal moment, as academic institutions reevaluate their pedagogical strategies, this timely and incisive volume investigates both current and emerging avenues for achieving enduring diversity in design education. The book critically assesses early-learning initiatives at accredited architecture schools in the United States, scrutinizing their capacity not only to foster a more varied generation of future designers but also to instigate a paradigm shift in teaching methodologies, knowledge creation, contextual understanding, professional development, and evaluative standards. It forecasts a momentous transformation on the horizon for educational institutions, the field, and the profession at large.

Suzanne Lettieri is a coprincipal of Jefferson Lettieri Office (JE-LE) and an assistant professor in the department of architecture at Cornell University. 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. Additionally, she served as an assistant professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology, where she initiated the pilot program Inclusive Recruitment Strategies and previously held a visiting critic position at Cornell University. Her work has been exhibited in New York, Detroit, and Boston, and published in Project, the Cornell Journal of Architecture, The Plan Journal, Journal of Architectural Education (JAE), and Plat. She received a residency fellowship at MacDowell, a Graham Foundation grant with Kunlé Adeyemi for the book African Water Cities (NAi010, 2023), a Faculty Fellowship in Engaged Scholarship (2022-23), an Einhorn Center Community-Engaged Practice and Innovation Award (2024), and an Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) Diversity Achievement Award (2024). Lettieri is a coeditor of Junior Architects.

Anya Sirota is an architectural designer, associate professor, associate dean of academic initiatives at Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, and founding principal of Akoaki. Her work, situated at the intersection of architecture and urban design, explores how a distinct synthesis of aesthetics, social enterprise, and cultural programming can offer contemporary and multi-disciplinary strategies for urban transformation. Her ongoing research and design efforts have received international recognition with recent projects featured at the Vitra Design Museum, the Brussels Design Museum, the Centro Pecci Prato, the Saint Etienne Design Biennale, and the Chicago Cultural Center. She is the recipient of the Architectural League Prize (2018), the ACSA Faculty Design Award (2016), the SXSW Eco Place by Design Award (2015), and the R+D Award from Architect Magazine (2013).