NOMA Announces 2025 National Conference in Kansas City

NOMA 2025 NATIONAL CONFERENCE: FUTURE UNFOLDING
October 8–12, 2025 • Kansas City, Missouri

THE NATIONAL ORGANIZATION OF MINORITY ARCHITECTS CONVENES MEMBERS, PARTNERS & ALLIES AT ANNUAL CONFERENCE, THEMED “FUTURE UNFOLDING,” IN KANSAS CITY, MO, OCT. 8–12

Headliner Events Include the Opening Keynote by Dr. Ruha Benjamin; Heal Our Cities: An Intimate Conversation with the Family of Michael Brown; and the Inaugural NOMA Awards Show with Kiki Shepard at the Midland Theater

The National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA) is hosting its 2025 Annual Conference: Future Unfolding, taking place October 8–12, 2025, in Kansas City, Missouri. Hosted by NOMA KC at the Sheraton Kansas City Hotel at Crown Center, this year’s event will gather more than 1,200 architects, designers, students, and industry partners for five days of learning, networking, and celebration focused on equity, innovation, and the transformative future of design.

Kansas City’s vibrant cultural history and thriving design community make it the ideal host for this year’s theme, Future Unfolding. Kansas City has more fountains than any city in the world—except Rome. With over 200 fountains and a rich jazz and barbecue legacy, KC is bursting with history, culture, and creative energy. It’s the perfect place to envision a future unfolding in the architecture, design and planning profession. Attendees can expect over 100 workshops, keynotes, student programming, career development opportunities, and networking events that spotlight diverse voices in design and reinforce NOMA’s mission of equity and justice in the built environment. Conference highlights include the welcome reception at Science City at Union Station, NOMA Awards programs featuring The Phil Freelon Professional Design Awards and NOMA Barbara J. Lurie Student Design Competition; Bros Arts Ball; and the annual Professionals versus Student basketball game.

OPENING KEYNOTE THURSDAY: RUHA BENJAMIN

RACE TO THE FUTURE? From Artificial Intelligence to Abundant Imagination

Description: What does it mean to build justice into the very structures where we live, work, and gather? In this visionary keynote, Dr. Ruha Benjamin, Princeton professor and author of Race After Technology and Imagination: A Manifesto, invites architects, planners, and designers to examine how the built environment intersects with systems of inequality, surveillance, and technological bias. As today’s political landscape brings renewed attention to civil rights rollbacks, discriminatory zoning practices, and the racialized deployment of surveillance technologies in public space, Dr. Benjamin draws from her groundbreaking concept of the “New Jim Code” to expose how architecture and design can unwittingly replicate systemic harm. Yet she also offers an inspiring framework for reimagining design as a tool of resistance, care, and collective liberation.

About the Speaker: Ruha Benjamin, PhD, is the Alexander Stewart 1886 Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, founding director of the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab, and the award-winning author of Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code (2019), Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want (2022), and Imagination: A Manifesto (2024). Her work investigates the social dimensions of science, medicine, and technology with a focus on the relationship between innovation and inequity, knowledge and power, health and justice. She is the recipient of honors including the Marguerite Casey Foundation Freedom Scholar Award, the President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton, the 2023 Stowe Prize, and a 2024 MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship for “illuminating how technology reflects and reproduces social inequality and championing the role of imagination in social transformation.” She earned her BA in Sociology and Anthropology from Spelman College, MA and PhD in Sociology from UC Berkeley, and postdoctoral fellowships at UCLA’s Institute for Society & Genetics and Harvard’s Science, Technology & Society Program.

FRIDAY LUNCHEON KEYNOTE

HEAL OUR CITIES: AN INTIMATE CONVERSATION WITH THE FAMILY OF MICHAEL BROWN

NOMA President Bryan C. Lee Jr. will be joined by Cal and Michael Brown Sr. on Friday, Oct. 10, for a keynote luncheon titled, Heal Our Cities: An Intimate Conversation with the Family of Michael Brown. They will discuss the urgent role of community centers in healing and uniting neighborhoods facing deep social, economic, and racial challenges. The powerful conversation will examine how these centers can act as anchors, fostering dialogue, providing resources, and nurturing collective strength to build safe, resilient, and equitable communities. The Browns are co-founders of the nonprofit organization Chosen for Change, through which they transform grief into activism and community healing. 

About Chosen for Change: On August 9, 2014, Michael Brown, Jr. was brutally murdered by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. His untimely death shook America to its core, causing pivotal shifts within the Black community that ignited community organizations and change agents to fight for the injustice black people face against police brutality. Michael Brown, Sr. decided to turn his pain into purpose by creating the “Chosen For Change Foundation” which was born in loving memory of Michael Brown, Jr. Grief isn’t a linear process; but with the help of his wife Cal, they have provided community support, outreach programs, activities, and events that are responsive, reflective, and holistic for families affected by, or at risk of becoming and/or experiencing grief resulting from the loss of a child due to a tragic unforeseen circumstance. They’ve cultivated a movement of healing and collective recovery, elevating voices of those living with grief and transforming personal tragedy into community resilience and empowerment.

THE INAUGURAL NOMA AWARDS SHOW WITH KIKI SHEPARD

For the first time, NOMA is bringing the glitz, glam, and celebration with the NOMA Awards Show on Friday, Oct. 10th, a brand-new, premier event recognizing the best and brightest in our community to Midland Theater in downtown Kansas City. The ticketed gala, also available for virtual registration and viewing, is a celebration of all things NOMA at Kansas City’s iconic Midland Theater. Guiding us through the NOMA Awards Show is the Showtime at the Apollo’s legendary Mistress of Ceremonies KiKi Shepard. The awards honors exceptional leadership, including NOMA members elevated to the NOMA Council (NOMAC) and award-winning work of NOMA professional and student members including:

• Phil Freelon Professional Design Awards: NOMA named their annual professional design awards the Phil Freelon Professional Design Awards in 2019. This year, over 60 firms applied to this year’s Phil Freelon Professional Design Awards in the categories of Built Work; Unbuilt Work; Vision; Historic Preservation, Restoration and Renovation; and Small Projects.

• NOMA Student Design Competition: The NOMA Student Design Competition fosters creativity and innovation among aspiring architects. Each year, participants are challenged to address real-world architectural problems through a lens of equity, sustainability, and social responsibility. The 2025 Barbara G. Laurie NOMA Student Design Competition held live onsite is “The Highway to Healing,” a transit-oriented development (TOD) master plan that will be the epicenter of transportation, development, and engagement in Harlem Park, Midtown-Edmonson, and the surrounding neighborhoods. Student project teams will propose a design for a new transit hub that addresses the needs and desires of the immediate community, provides an efficient and effective solution to the addition of the Red Line through the I-40 corridor, and supports future inclusive and responsive development.

NOMA CONFERENCE SEMINAR TRACKS OFFERS DESIGN INSIGHTS & EXPERTISE  

The conference offers five content tracks organized around the following theme: Design, Technical, Business, Community & Justice, and Local Tours. Session topics include the following, presented by a wide-range of diverse and professional design experts:

• Faculty Networking Session – Sponsored by ACSA (Faculty/ Academia Interest only)
• Decarbonizing Lab Buildings Through Electrification
• Development Drawing Breath: Phil Freelon’s Living Design Legacy
• Architecture & Cultural Identity: Confronting Gentrification Through Community-Driven Design
• Resilient by Design: Leveraging Data & Material Innovation for Climate-Adaptive Architecture
• Immigrant Architects Coalition – Empowering the Immigrant Architects Community
• Taking Care of Business: Transparency in Firm Ownership

To learn more about NOMA’s conference sessions, visit the full schedule. For those unable to attend the conference, NOMA also offers 15 virtual sessions which can be registered for remote viewing. Sessions are reviewed by the American Institute of Architects (AIA) for continuing education credits, including required Health Safety and Welfare (HSW) designations.

Register for the NOMA 2025 Conference: For full details on the agenda, speakers, travel, and accommodations, visit noma.net

About the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA): The National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA) was formed over 50 years ago to represent the needs of African American architects. Founded in 1971, the purpose of NOMA was to bolster and provide support for the handful of Black licensed architects around the country. Today, NOMA is a haven for architects of all origins who seek inclusion in the design industry. We continue to advocate for the licensure of African American architects (who account for only two percent of all licensed architects today), as well as those from other underrepresented backgrounds.

With the largest NOMA membership to date, our more than 3,800 members from 46 professional chapters and 128 student chapters, are a force that push boundaries and break barriers to create a more inclusive and equitable future for all. www.noma.net