For me, the answer is my mother, Emellen Mitchell Estes. Long before I was designing urban spaces or serving as Mayor, she was the one who gave me the “zoning permits” to build imaginary cities in our backyard in Atlanta.
An educator at heart, Emellen was a graduate of two iconic HBCUs—Morris Brown College and Atlanta University, now known as Clark-Atlanta University. She served as a teacher and Principal in the Atlanta Public Schools during the segregated 50s, 60s, and 70s. Despite the challenges of the era, she and my father fostered my passion for art, architecture, and the performing arts.
A tribute to Emellen Mitchell Estes, a dedicated educator and mother, whose influence shaped a legacy in architecture and education.
She didn’t just teach me how to build; she taught me who I was. She shared our rich ancestral history and kept me grounded in faith at the historic Big Bethel AME Church on Auburn Avenue.
I am the architectural designer, urban planner, and graphic & web designer I am today because she believed in the blueprints of my imagination.
Several of the year’s biggest architecture and design stories, and indeed much of all global news, were driven by US president Donald Trump. Perhaps the most controversial was his plan to extend the White House by building a giant ballroom.
The initial news of Trump’s gilded plans drew over 250 comments, as readers discussed the architectural merits and need for the ballroom.
Schumacher waded into architecture’s culture wars with a paper titled The End of Architecture in the Khōrein journal, which is published by the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory at the University of Belgrade.
“Architecture, as an autonomous, theory-led discipline, has ceased to exist,” he wrote. “The discipline has self-dissolved, eroding its intellectual and professional autonomy under the pressures of anti-capitalist politicisation and woke virtue signalling.”
With Trump championing classical architecture in the USA, the traditional-versus-modernist style debate resurfaced, and we asked: Do people really prefer traditional architecture?
The piece was highly discussed with over 100 comments joining in the debate.
University of Kentucky assistant professor Leen Katrib sparked debate earlier this year when he stated that 20th-century heavyweight architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was not an example to follow.
In an opinion piece, Katrib encouraged people to reassess the master of modernismand learn about the problematic legacy of some of his most significant works.
The fate of loans for architecture students in the USA was also a controversial topic, as the terms of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill mean that borrowing levels will be determined by whether a degree is considered professional or not.
Architecture, along with nursing and accounting, will not be considered “professional degrees”. This decision was criticised by the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and much discussed in the comments section.
“The American Institute of Architects strongly opposes any proposal or policy that fails to recognize architects as professionals, particularly when designating which degrees qualify for student loan caps,” said the AIA in a statement.
On November 21, the US Department of Education (DOE) announced that it is narrowing its internal definition of “professional degree”. Newly excluded professions, including architecture, will have significantly less access to federal loans through stricter borrowing limits from July 2026.
To become an architect, you will still need a licence, and to get a licence, you will still need to have completed an accredited architecture degree. But there will be less financial help available to you. It is the imposition of yet another barrier to becoming an architect.
Since professionalism was introduced in the 19th century, it has been under political attack from both right and left
This news is devastating. It demonstrates the lack of respect that the MAGA administration has for our profession and ensures that a “professional” architecture education will be ever more exclusive.
At the same time, the news, for the many critical of a discipline that is underpaid and increasingly marginal, it is also welcome. It prompts an overdue discussion about what it means to be an architect and what architecture gains by being a licensed profession.
The learned professions, such as architecture, are characterized by both the extent of required education and the specificity of expertise. They bestow an elite status on those who ascend to their privileges.
Since professionalism was introduced in the 19th century, it has been under political attack from both right and left. Free-market capitalists have viewed the professions as a form of protective collusion – an actual but unrecognized monopoly. Neo-Marxists have viewed professions as a noblesse-obligé-driven division of labor that leads to false class division.
Today, indifferent to the right/left divide, advocates of innovation call for the end of the siloization of knowledge demanded by professional boundaries. More than ever, they say, our political economy needs shared information and collaborative expertise.
In the US, the learned professions have lost their exceptional status. Before the rise of neoliberalism, professions were exempt from antitrust-mandated competition because their codes of ethics, prioritizing social responsibility and quality service, were understood to be inconsistent with the cost-cutting economy.
It is ironic (or not?) that Trumpism has initiated a process that many of us architects want to encourage
In the 1970s, however, the Department of Justice went after the professions, forcing them to operate like traditional businesses and offer competitive pricing. For architecture, this meant the end of fee structures that had traditionally indicated consensus rates for a project’s size, program, and location.
From there, architecture firms’ race to the bottom began, as did the watering down of our supposedly collusional code of ethics. It no longer was viable for architects to serve needs in the built environment that were not supported by capitalism.
Beyond antitrust-enforced competition, the profession of architecture also has not done itself any favors. In reaction to a series of 20th-century lawsuits that positioned architects as responsible for building and planning errors, architecture systematically risk-managed itself away from the liabilities that come with a larger stake in programming and construction.
The professional skills for which architects still want to be recognized – design – are increasingly perceived by the public as frivolous or outperformed by those in adjacent fields. And architects’ valorization of design becomes an excuse to dismiss seemingly gauche concerns for business and money.
It is ironic (or not?) that Trumpism has initiated a process that many of us architects want to encourage: the de-professionalization of architecture. Indeed, we see numerous advantages.
Advantage one: architects would identify as workers, unionize, and support other workers in their struggle against technological displacement and capitalist exploitation. The limited successes of recent attempts to unionize architecture firms underscores architecture’s entrenched loyalty to its patronage-based roots.
Architectural employees would no longer be exempt from the labor board’s overtime pay rules
As long as we see ourselves as a professional class above working class concerns, we give the power and benefit of shaping the material world to a wealthy few, and undermine personal and planetary wellbeing in the process. By reimagining architecture as a diverse and engaged discipline, we build the networks of solidarity needed to distribute agency in the built environment.
Advantage two: architects would be legally allowed to form worker-owned cooperatives. Cooperatives further break architecture’s consolidated power model by enabling profit sharing and expanding representation via collective ownership and decision-making, but they currently are restricted due to state fears about equalizing the status of licensed and unlicensed workers. State licensing boards have a monetary interest in prioritizing licensed over unlicensed workers.
Advantage three: architectural employees would no longer be exempt from the labor board’s overtime pay rules. Because professional roles are deemed to require advanced knowledge, intellectual discretion, originality, and/or ethical judgement – work that does not conform to hourly limits – overtime pay is not required. Architecture, a field notorious for overworking its subordinate personnel for excessive durations at low wages, would have to develop more balanced and efficient approaches to work.
Advantage four: through the availability of more models for practice and exposure to the broader interests of its diversifying practitioners, architecture would reimagine its businesses and find ways to deploy its community-building expertise beyond client-motivated or commission-based projects.
Advantage five: building is a luxury for most Americans. Even among those who can pursue a construction project, hiring an architect is optional. With such limited sources of work, architecture services are undervalued – with little leverage for improvement. Through the expanded deliverables and engagement that de-professionalization would foster, architecture could grow its client base and propel its societal relevance.
Advantage six: architecture education would no longer be dictated by the limiting criteria of professional standards. Architecture schools will be freed to teach through the unique contexts of place, be it neighborhoods, resource networks or land rights.
It’s time to turn the tables and misuse conservative ideals
Advantage seven: the practices and scholarship of the built environment would be able to hybridize, specialize and multiply. An architecture that is no longer understood exclusively as “comprehensive building design” can actively redefine what it means to shape the material world, both by focusing within the discipline and exploring across disciplines.
Advantage eight: with no special status incentivising professional isolation, architects would collaborate more earnestly with planners, urbanists, ecologists, landscape architects, interior designers and others in collective action towards a just and sustainable planetary future, helping them to steward the climate and built environment.
Advantage nine: once architectural expertise is not determined by the (disinterested) state, architects, like pilots, can control their knowledge through industry-determined certification. Architects would gain authority over the terms that describe them – and with that, the ability to evolve with the times.
Advantage 10: architecture education and licensing could be shortened, making entry into the discipline cheaper, more accessible and more diverse. Yes, the DOE judgment puts a cap on the borrowing totals available to those wanting to pursue an architectural education, but a shortening of the qualifying process would more than compensate. Currently, the US demands four more years on average compared to European countries to legally practice architecture.
It’s time to turn the tables and misuse conservative ideals. It’s time to de-professionalize architecture and make it inclusive, relevant and valued.
Andrea Dietz is an architect, researcher and educator. She is assistant professor and program head of design at the Corcoran School of the Arts & Design at the George Washington University. She is also the co-president of the executive board for advocacy group the Architecture Lobby, the founder of Support Structures, and the co-author of The Organizer’s Guide to Architecture Education (2024).
Peggy Deamer is an architect, researcher and educator. She is a professor of architecture at Yale University, a principal at Deamer, Architects and a founding member of the Architecture Lobby. Her multiple books include Architecture and Capitalism: 1845 to the Present (2014) and Architecture and Labor (2020).
The National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA) is disheartened, but not surprised, by this act of malice from those seeking to deprofessionalize careers that serve the public good. The United States Department of Education has declared architecture a non-professional degree, severely limiting access to financial aid and government funding. Students working their way through school now face a maximum of $22,500 per year in federal support, a designation that fundamentally undermines the economic viability of pursuing this profession.
As President of NOMA, Bryan C. Lee, Jr feels obliged to stand strongly against these actions while defining a strategy for how we move forward together. We are living through times that feel both disturbingly precedented and unprecedented, poor policy continues to drive harmful outcomes for our communities.
Current students enrolled in bachelor’s and master’s degree programs will be most directly impacted by this policy change. While there is no guarantee this reclassification will remain permanent, we must prepare as though it might. As an organization, NOMA must ensure continued access for students across the board to complete their architecture programs over the coming years
Loans available to architecture students in the USA will be reduced under the terms of president Donald Trump‘s One Big Beautiful Bill, as architecture will not be considered a professional degree.
Under the terms of the One Big Beautiful Bill, the provision of student loans in the USA will be overhauled starting 1 July, 2026, with borrowing amounts set to be determined by whether a degree is considered professional or not.
Architecture not a “professional degree”
Architects, along with several careers including other nursing and accounting, will not be considered as “professional degrees”, a move that was criticised by the American Institute of Architects (AIA).
“The American Institute of Architects strongly opposes any proposal or policy that fails to recognize architects as professionals, particularly when designating which degrees qualify for student loan caps,” said the AIA in a statement.
“The title of ‘architect’ is earned through years of rigorous education, extensive professional examinations, and a demanding licensing process,” it continued.
“To classify otherwise dismisses the expertise, professional standards, and dedication that define the profession.”
Architecture student loans capped at $20,500
The Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP), which will replace all previous loan programs, will see borrowing capped at $20,500 for “graduate students” and $50,000 for “professional students”.
“Beginning on July 1, 2026, the maximum annual amount of Federal Direct Unsubsidized Stafford loans – a graduate student, who is not a professional student, may borrow in any academic year or its equivalent shall be $20,500; and a professional student may borrow in any academic year or its equivalent shall be $50,000,” states the bill.
The AIA believes that the changes to borrowing determined by the bill will reduce the number of people who can afford to study architecture.
Cap will reduce number that can study architecture
It stated that it will lobby to change the designation of architecture as a non-professional degree.
“Lowering the loan cap will reduce the number of architects who can afford to pursue this professional degree and harm American leadership in this field,” said the AIA.
“AIA will be actively engaged with policymakers to ensure that the essential role and professional standing of architects are properly recognized in federal policy. We remain steadfast in our commitment to protecting the integrity and value of the architectural profession.”
During his second term, Trump is taking an increased interest in architecture. On his first day in office, he signed an executive order to promote classical architecture.
A Prince George’s judge on Monday ordered the county council to throw out the widely criticized redistricting map it approved this fall and instead implement one proposed by a nonpartisan committee — a decision the council said it would appeal “immediately.”
Circuit court judge William Snoddy declared the map, which drew three liberal politicians out of the districts in which they were running or considering running, invalid because of a procedural error made by the council. More than 150 residents had testified against the map in November, with many calling it an obvious example of political gerrymandering, before it was approved by a council majority as part of the decennial redistricting process.
A group of residents last week filed a lawsuit in which their lawyer argued that the map was improperly passed via a resolution, which does not require a signature from the county executive, rather than a bill, which does.
