Aaron Cayer

Aaron Cayer is an assistant professor of architecture at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. He writes and teaches about the history of architects, planners, and engineers, focusing on the ways they contribute to and respond to global inequities.

Trained both as a historian and architect, he received his PhD in architecture history from UCLA as well as undergraduate and graduate degrees in architecture from Norwich University in Vermont. His research has been recognized and supported by international awards and fellowships, including a 2024 Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome and a 2021 Thom Fellowship from the Huntington Library. He was awarded the inaugural Kristine Fallon Prize by the International Archive of Women in Architecture in 2022, and he was named to the Architectural League of New York’s “American Roundtable” in 2020 for research about rural economies and communities.

His first book, Incorporating Architects: How American Architecture Became a Practice of Empire (June 2025) is forthcoming with University of California Press. In it, he traces the rise of U.S.-based architecture and engineering corporations, such as AECOM, as well as their impact on professions and politics after World War II.

Cayer’s project, “The Architecture of Polarization: How Our Buildings and Builders Shape our Politics,” will examine how architecture, engineering, and construction enterprises—and the buildings they produce—influence policies and laws that segregate our cities and stoke political divides within them. It will also consider if and how the traditional tools of architects and designers may be used not only to win commissions, but also to encourage local and state legislators to adopt regulatory policies for urban developments that promote evenness, social cohesion, and equity.