Architecture for Kids & The American Institute of Architects | Architecture Week 2026 — Inspiring the Next Generation

A forgotten park is never just a planning problem, it is a community story waiting to be retold. We sit down with three emerging designers from El Paso, Texas, Joaquin Sanchez, Samantha Chavez, and Natalie Quintero, to hear how they reimagined Keystone Heritage Park as a place people actually want to use again, not once, but for years.    Their ideas start with a simple question: how do you make a...

A teenager starts an architecture club because her school offers no architecture classes. That single choice says a lot about where the profession is heading, and who gets to take part. I’m joined by Ella Davis, a rising senior from Fort Worth, Texas, who is founding the first AIAS chapter at her school and using Architecture Week 2026 as fuel to bring more young people into design, the built envi...

A flying house, a year that feels impossibly far away, and a teenager who proves that architectural design starts with trying something new. We sit down with Marcel Wolosik, a 16-year-old architecture student from Sussex County Technical School in New Jersey and a dual enrolment student at Sussex County Community College, to talk about his Architecture Week 2026 design challenge: a futuristic home...

A high school design brief asks a simple question with huge consequences: what would you build if an extinct animal could come back, and people needed a place to study it, care for it, and learn from it? We sit down with Grace to unpack how she takes that Architecture Week challenge and turns it into a research and rehabilitation centre concept that feels bold, organic, and surprisingly practical....

A public square can be a living room for a city or a blank patch of concrete people rush across. We sit down with Lucas Zhu, a high school student with a sharp eye for how design shapes behaviour, safety, and belonging, to unpack what happens when civic space stops working and what it could become instead.    Lucas shares the moment architecture clicked for him while travelling and shadowing an ar...

Architecture can start with one great teacher, one school project, and one moment where a building suddenly feels alive. We sit down with Jack McMahon, a young designer from Las Vegas, Nevada, to trace that moment and follow it forward, from an inspiring high school architecture programme to studying architecture at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Along the way, we talk about why Jack calls architecture...

Architecture can feel like a closed world until someone hands you a brief and says, “Try.” I’m joined by four guests who prove that one week, one competition, or even one sketch can change how a young person sees their future, and how they see the places they live. With Architecture Week 2026 (12 to 18 April) as our backdrop, we talk about making architecture education visible, welcoming, and genu...