Aaron F. Cayer

Aaron Cayer, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Architecture. His teaching, research, and service work focus on the history and theory of architecture firms, the profession, and political economies. He received his PhD in Architecture History from UCLA as well as undergraduate and graduate degrees in architecture from Norwich University in Vermont. Prior to Cal Poly, he taught at the University of New Mexico, from 2018-2023.
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His research about architecture firms and architectural education has appeared in numerous journals and edited volumes, and he is currently finishing his first book, From A to AECOM: Architecture Practice at the Twilight of Professional Tradition (UC Press). Outside of the academy, he has been an active member of The Architecture Lobby since 2015, and he served as the Lobby’s National Content Coordinator in 2020. More recently, he was a founding organizer of the Lobby’s annnul “Architecture Beyond Capitalism” summer school, which began in 2021.
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He is the recipient of several international research awards, prizes, and fellowships, including the Rome Prize by the American Academy in Rome in 2023-24, the Barbara Thom Fellowship at the Huntington Library in California in 2020-2021; the Kristine Fallon Prize by the International Archive of Women in Architecture in 2022; and he was named to Architecture League of New York’s “American Roundtable” in 2020. He is currently working on two new book projects: one about professional practice, and another about men, masculinity, and architecture. For more on Cayer's work, see here.