How America's youngest licensed architect thinks about the future

At 22, Emily Almloff is the youngest licensed architect in the United States. She is also bucking trends.

According to a report from the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB), “a third of architects are baby boomers, and 13% are over the age of retirement.” While those architects may soon leave the workforce, replacing them is not always easy. Per the NCARB’s report, it takes an average of 13.3 years for an architect to earn a license, but during a 10-year sample, 36% of candidates stopped their pursuit. Overall, the NCARB anticipates a net decrease in the number of architects in the near future.

Those trends make counterexamples like Almloff stand out. She graduated from the University of Kansas (KU) architecture program in 2024, then took all six parts of the Architect Registration Examination in January and February 2025. “One every week with a break in the middle,” she says. 

During her education, Almloff interned at Slaggie Architects in Kansas City, Mo.; EMI USA in Colorado Springs, Colo.; and HFG Architecture in Kansas City. HFG hired her as a design professional in September 2024. She became a health care architect following licensure in April 2025. 

We caught up with Almloff to discuss her decision to get licensed, why she thinks would-be professional architects may hold back, and what the future may hold. (The following interview was edited for clarity.)

What inspired you to pursue architecture?

I took architecture classes in high school because I love to draw. When I graduated, I was looking for something that would let me be creative but also use problem-solving skills. Architecture seemed to be a really good intersection between those. And with architecture, I can be creative in a way that can help make an impact. People are in buildings 95% of the time, so if architecture can help make people’s lives even just incrementally better, it’s a cool way to do something. 

Do you have any architect influences?

I was obsessed with Charles and Ray Eames. Although their designs are expensive now, when they first started out, their ideology was to make good design affordable for the masses, which is cool. That’s something that we should do. And yes, I do have an Eames chair. I bought it on Facebook Marketplace for 80 bucks. It's my prized possession. 

I'm also really inspired by MASS Design Group and their focus on using design as a tool to help people. It’s really exciting to me and something I want to see happen more often.

Why did you go into health care architecture?

KU has a health care architecture program that you can choose for your fifth year. I was part of that program, which Kent Spreckelmeyer leads, as well as Frank Zilm. They kind of know everything about health care architecture. 

Having a really efficient building that meets people's needs can make a big impact in health care. That was really exciting to me. I work on a lot of rural hospitals or smaller renovation projects throughout the Midwest.

In the current political climate, rural hospitals might be in trouble. How is that affecting your company’s work?

It has been detrimental to a lot of projects that we’ve already designed and been paid for but are not getting funded to completion. Other hospitals which need to happen will not even get to the point where they reach our desk at all. And now the end users in both of these cases just don’t get a hospital. People in those communities now have to drive an extra two, three hours just to receive care. 

Many people don’t get their architecture license. How did you manage the process and why was that important? 

I knew a license would bring a lot of new opportunities. Plus, I’d already put in all this time [in school, internships, and volunteering], and I really wanted to be able to finally say, “I am an architect” and have the ability to go further. I also knew that if I waited, I would have many more responsibilities. This is probably the easiest time in my life to do it. 

Are there changes that you’d want to see in the education/licensing process?

It was a good and helpful process via NCARB, and I’d like to see more young people do it, even if it seems intimidating. And there is a trend of making licensure more accessible. For example, in 2023, NCARB got rid of the rolling clock, [a requirement that] once you take your first exam, you have to finish them within five years. [The rolling clock’s retirement has since happened in most jurisdictions.] Continuing to do things like this, that make licensure more accessible, is a good thing. 

What will have a big impact on the profession in the next few years? 

Definitely technology. Everybody's talking about AI . Maybe we’re talking about it too much. There will be both good and bad changes. It can help with automation, but it might also lead to more errors if we rely on it too much. 

Do you worry that AI will displace people in the industry?

No, because the specific information that we have and the experience that we have about what architecture actually feels like isn’t something you can get with AI. But it can be a helpful tool to get some of the repetitive work done, like going through and labeling doors correctly.

While you can’t speak for an entire generation, do you get a sense that young people are interested in the built environment or architecture? 

Many of my friends are architects, so that’s hard to say. But the [size of] the KU graduating class keeps growing, and I don’t know if that’s a trend overall or just that more people are interested in going to KU architecture [school]. But the education and time needed to do this does scare people away from even starting architecture in the first place—four years undergrad, and another two to three years for graduate school, and another three years for getting your work experience, and then you have to take your exams, and, well, at that point you could just go to medical school. 

Is money an issue for people looking to enter the profession? 

The experience and education needed in architecture versus other fields with the same amount of experience and education needed is disproportionate. It’s not that in architecture we’re making an unreasonable amount, but when high schoolers look at that in comparison to other fields that have the same requirements, it is a little disproportionate and may discourage them from entering the profession.

What does your crystal ball say about the future?

A lot of people in my generation think more collectively in a way that’s new. We interact on the same social media sites, see all the same stuff at the same time. I’m really curious to see how that’s going to affect the industry, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we see more collaboration from the beginning of projects with end users as well as the engineers and the contractors and the owners. Instead of there being formal sit-down meetings, we can have more informal conversations from the beginning.

Stacey Freed is a freelance writer covering architecture and design. She lives in upstate New York.