10 Questions With… NOMA’s Bryan C. Lee, Jr.

The Midland Library expansion, completed by Colloqate Design, creates a public amenity designed with and for east Portland residents to gather and thrive. Photography courtesy of Colloqate Design.

Bryan C. Lee, Jr. approaches architecture as a catalyst for change rather than a purely aesthetic endeavor. For the newly appointed president of the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA), design is inherently political—a force that shapes communities, addresses systemic inequities, and, when wielded with intention, has the ability to amplify the voices of those historically underrepresented in the field.

As the founder of Colloqate Design, a nonprofit practice operating at the intersection of design, organizing, and advocacy, Lee has long championed community-driven work that expands access to and builds power through the design of social, civic, and cultural spaces. The New Orleans–based studio grounds itself in fundamental principles—justice, inclusivity, and equity—while forging deep ties to academic discourse and experimental pedagogy through initiatives like Dark Matter University.

Now, at the helm of NOMA, Lee sees an opportunity to expand that mission on a national scale. His presidency comes at a pivotal moment when architecture is reckoning with its role in systemic inequities. In this conversation, Lee reflects on his early influences, the urgency of community-led design, and his vision for the year ahead.

Bryan C. Lee Jr. Photography courtesy of Colloqate Design.

Bryan C. Lee Jr. On The Importance of Community-Led Design

Interior Design: You’ve just begun your term as president of NOMA. What does this role mean to you?

Bryan C. Lee, Jr.: I started with NOMA in 2004 as a student, looking for a group or organization that would allow me to feel like my best self and have someone to look up to. It wasn’t until I was 16 that I saw a Black architect for the first time: Curtis Moody. It made me realize how important it is to have a group of people who can come together and support issues that are crucial not just to our general cause, but also to society as a whole. NOMA became that for me. To look back 20 years later and see how much this organization has grown since I joined—and the direction it’s taken—shows the collective growth we’ve experienced, both as a professional organization and as a people. It’s a tremendous opportunity to bring the knowledge I’ve gained over the years as an architect and organizer. I believe that prepares me for this moment, and our board as well. No one does this alone. This moment has already been challenging, but we were prepared for it, and we’re in a good spot.

ID: You introduced NOMA Engage as a new pillar to formalize advocacy and community engagement. Can you tell us more about the inspiration behind its creation and the impact you envision it will have?

BL: NOMA Engage was a way for us to be more direct and forthright with the external organizations we want to be in community with. It’s about serving the communities we’re part of more directly and stepping out of the bubble of architecture to make sure we’re of service to a broader society. Engage is about taking us back to our roots to some extent. Early NOMA conferences included architects, mortgage brokers, developers, contractors, and civil rights organizations. There was already an earnest attempt at the beginning of this organization to be cross-organizational in its efforts. Engage is an attempt to bring that back to the forefront and make sure the work we do is attached to broader conversations around justice in the built environment.

Lee’s firm recently completed the design expansion of the Multnomah County Midland Library, addressing cultural and investment disparity in east Portland, Oregon. Photography courtesy of Colloqate Design.

ID: Can you share a formative memory or experience that first sparked your interest in architecture and design?

BL: One moment in my life that shaped me was when I was about seven years old, and my family moved to Sicily from Trenton, New Jersey. This was in the late ’80s, early ’90s. My mother was in the Air Force, and we were stationed there for about two and a half years. The juxtaposition of space and place between an American city on the East Coast and a historic, walkable city like Sicily, with its plazas and engaged social fabric, really struck me. It was a city that was adjacent to cornfields, more of a walking culture, and a culture that protected its elders. When I came back, I started drawing and asking my parents what that was. They said, “That’s being an architect.” And from that point forward, I just went with it. That was the origin point for me.

Another critical moment was when I was at Florida A&M University playing football. I became sick and had to make some decisions, so I transferred to Ohio State University. I went from a majority Black student body to a majority white student body, with exponentially more students. I found myself a bit lost, struggling to understand what I wanted to do. During my first year at Ohio State, I didn’t understand the value of architecture anymore. I didn’t understand why or who we were doing things for. And that’s when NOMA actually came into my life. A friend of mine, who was also transitioning from an HBCU to Ohio State, and I said, “Hey, we need more camaraderie. We need more community.” That was the origin point for us discovering NOMA. It was a huge moment for me, and it changed my life.

ID: Can you tell us more about your firm, Colloqate Design, and its approach as a multidisciplinary practice?

BL: We started Colloqate about eight years ago, in 2017. The first two years were kind of a wash. We were working on a single project, but it was during a fertile time in New Orleans…There was this impending momentum around social justice movements fighting for Black lives. At that moment, we were focused on the removal of racist monuments across the landscape of New Orleans. And we had this conversation about how to take things down, but we rarely got to the question of what comes next. “What do we do when we win this battle? What do we do on the other side of justice?” And so Colloqate was an answer to some of those questions. It was a way for us to think about cultural communal spaces and places that were truly in service of the communities that we serve.

Colloqate’s mission is still to challenge the privilege and power structures that use architecture and design as tools of oppression, and to reconfigure architecture and design as tools for justice, empathy, and care. Sometimes, that doesn’t look like what others in traditional practices would expect. It means more public spaces, more community involvement in the process—exponentially more community. That level of involvement can be challenging for some, but we’ve honed techniques and processes that allow other architecture firms to follow suit. One such initiative is our Community Design Organizer Program.

We have two different roles: Community Design Advocates and Community Design Organizers. These are people we hire from the community who are already organizing around their specific neighborhoods or communities. They become advocates for the community within the design process, joining the design team. Additionally, we might collect 15,000 to 20,000 comments over the course of a project, or more. We’ve developed a design justice framework that integrates this feedback directly into the architectural process, allowing us to track community commentary from schematic design to finished product. This documentation ensures that, for the longevity and history of the project, there’s always a record of the decisions made. In 20 years, if someone needs to change something or review the building, the as-built documentation will say, “This is what the community asked for. This is dear to their hearts. Don’t mess with this part.” If changes are necessary, look elsewhere. That’s the premise, and Colloqate has been working to forward this mission and these precedents to other architectural practices.

The Midland Library expansion, completed by Colloqate Design, creates a public amenity designed with and for east Portland residents to gather and thrive. Photography courtesy of Colloqate Design.

ID: How has your experience as founder and design principal at Colloqate influenced your vision for NOMA?

BL: I’ve always been both the biggest advocate for NOMA and, at times, a thorn in its side. I’ve always wanted us to be more vocal and more connected to larger conversations around justice. But early on, I had this comment that I always went back to: architecture feels like it is too big to deal with the small, nuanced conversations and too small to deal with the large societal conversations.

We found ourselves a nice little niche where we don’t owe anybody anything outside of the artistry of what we do. That’s comforting, as we don’t have influence over either of those spaces—but we do. As an organization, as architects, that’s what we attempt to do: to be vocal on the ground level in communities while also taking a stance on larger scale issues, whether that’s abolition, affordable housing, or accessible public spaces. All of this ties back into NOMA, because it allows us to change the playing field.

As a leader in this organization, my core belief is that if we want to grow—not just the organization, but also its footprint and impact—we have to change the playing field we’re playing on. We have to ensure that procurement is changed and that the requests from community members are adhered to in various places. When we create those documents and templates, and make sure that as we change the playing field, we open up opportunities for small firms, minority firms, or underrepresented firms to grow, to make more direct impacts on their communities, and to succeed in ways that, historically, those opportunities have been taken away from us. That’s the opportunity. There’s no other way to approach it for me. It has to be about changing the playing field.

ID: What have been the biggest lessons from the success of NOMA’s Project Pipeline program, and how do you envision its future?

BL: Project Pipeline is near and dear to my heart. I took it over in 2014 after running it locally in New Orleans. The greatest success was, as I mentioned earlier, our ability to be in community—on the ground level, talking to community members and their parents. That was the conversation that needed to happen, and Project Pipeline was a facilitation for that. One thing I’ve learned since is that whatever activity or event you are involved in, you’re just a conduit for better conversations. Better conversations lead to better spaces, places, and buildings. And that’s what Project Pipeline did.

I used to start Project Pipeline as a cheerleader, and we would talk about the fact that most of you will not become architects. Most of you will go on to live incredible lives doing many other things, but somewhere in the back of your head, you’ll have a conscious understanding of the impact of the space you’re in. Some of you will become architects, and you’ll have those connections to buildings that are impacting people—not just building for building’s sake. I see so much of what we started with Project Pipeline influencing the conversation around design justice in 2014. That trajectory within the profession didn’t exist before then, at least not as a codified concept. People had been doing it for decades, but now there are design justice initiatives at different universities. Project Pipeline fed all of that, and to this day, it shapes how we view co-location. It’s touched every part of my work because it’s the foundation for so much of what we do. We’ve taught nearly 20,000 students now, and that’s mind-boggling to me. Over a decade, that’s a remarkable feat, but there’s more to do.

For NOMA’s Project Pipeline Program, Lee helped formalize the summer camp curriculum, covering fundamental concepts in architecture and design. Photography courtesy of NOMA Louisiana.

ID: The Whitney M. Young Jr. Award recognizes your commitment to social responsibility in architecture. How has this honor shaped your goals as NOMA President?

BL: I remember sitting at the ceremony in 2013 when Harvey Gantt was receiving the Whitney M. Young Award. It was only my third or fourth year attending the AIA Awards, and I wasn’t getting up early enough to see the ceremony. But when I saw Harvey Gantt, I thought, “Okay, that’s interesting.” This man was a politician who worked in communities, an architect, who went to an HBCU, and had all of those credentials. I thought, “Okay, that feels familiar. It feels like something I want to aim for.” While I wasn’t necessarily thinking of the Whitney M. Young Award as my goal, I wanted to do work that was impactful—work that mattered to young people, community members, and elders. I think the Whitney M. Young Award provides more visibility for that work, and the hope is that it creates a space and opportunity to talk more thoroughly about some of the justice orientations I have. It also gives me fellowship within an institution where I’ve had my own set of challenges, but ultimately, I think I need to be invested in that space because it is where power gets shaped. It opens doors in ways that they weren’t open before. As an organizer, you use any tool you have to press for change where you can, and I’ll use it.

ID: How do you envision expanding NOMA’s partnerships with equity-focused organizations to further support underrepresented communities in architecture and design?

BL: NOMA’s four pillars—educate, empower, elevate, and engage—guide our efforts. One thing NOMA wants to do more clearly is articulate the brilliance in the architecture that our members create. Elevate will help us do that. I’d also like to engage in more direct communication and conversations with people. That could involve producing more videos and audio content so people can see, hear, and connect with each other more deeply. We also need to publish in ways we haven’t before—perhaps expanding our magazine to offer a more thorough exploration of the architectural theses our members are developing. It could also mean that we’re more actively in news cycles and we’re trying to be more connected to the communities that we’re serving. Local chapters should have access to platforms and templates that make communications easier, which is key.

Lee, former chair of NOMA’s Project Pipeline program, has helped reach over 20,000 youth with a mission to diversify the field of architecture and design. Photography courtesy of NOMA Kansas City.

ID: Looking ahead, what advice do you have for emerging architects who want to use design as a tool for activism and social change?

BL: First, understand activism and organizing outside of architecture proper, and then identify where the opportunities exist at your level to poke and prod a system. Ultimately, young folks or emerging professionals who can create templates and easy pathways for justice within a practice are in the best position to drive change. Most of our field—most of the organizations and entities we interact with—already rely on templates for everything. We simplify details and documentation as much as possible. If you can do the same for justice-driven initiatives in a way that doesn’t add cumbersome considerations for your firm, you create more opportunities. Tools like the Design Justice Index from Design as Protest (DAP) can help you track your progress and identify areas for improvement.

ID: Building on that, you co-founded the Design As Protest Collective and Dark Matter University to amplify marginalized voices in the built environment. Can you share more about these initiatives?

BL: Design as Protest came out of NOMA in 2015 during a conference in New Orleans. At the time, we were dealing with the removal of racist monuments, so we brought together a series of organizers, activists, and NOMA members who worked directly with individual organizers at a table, designing spatial resolutions to the issues they were facing. That gathering built momentum. In 2017, we organized a National Day of Action, where nearly 600 people across the country came together to design with a direct cause in mind—challenging some of the policies we anticipated under the first Trump presidency. Cut to 2020, we launched the Design as Protest Collective, a coalition that initially had around 250 members and now remains 50 to 60 strong. The organization allows us to explore the most radical possibilities of architecture while providing tools and opportunities for people to challenge systems with the backing of supportive organizations. That work has been as critical to my life as NOMA and Colloqate. Similarly, Dark Matter University emerged from the conversations sparked by DAP, focusing on those same justice-driven issues within academia. It challenges architectural pedagogy and ensures design justice principles are embedded in education.

Bryan C. Lee Jr. Photography courtesy of Colloqate Design.