by: AIA New York
Ali C. Höcek, FAIA, NCARB, is the principal of AC Höcek Architecture LLC (ACHA), adjunct professor at the Spitzer School of Architecture, and co-founder of CARRRE. His award-winning work spans museum exhibitions, community projects, residential design, and landmark preservation. Integrating his work across community engagement, teaching, and practice, Höcek’s collaborations with non-profits, creatives, students, and professionals at local and international levels create transformative, uplifting environments and initiatives, particularly benefiting underserved communities.
Höcek’s work explores prefabrication, migration, and disaster resilience. His disaster relief design, Deploy, is currently patent pending. ACHA’s socially driven projects include the Powell Garden Pavilion, the Brownsville Community Culinary Center, and recovery efforts following the 2023 earthquakes in Turkey. Höcek has lectured extensively on disaster resilience, including at Columbia University, Bilgi University in Istanbul, and at the annual 2025 ASLA and NJASLA conferences, presenting strategies for disaster-resilient urban parks.
This year, the Jury of Fellows of the AIA elevated Höcek to its prestigious College of Fellows in the fifth category of Fellowship, which recognizes architects who have made efforts “to make the profession of ever-increasing service to society” through “alternative career, volunteer work with organizations not directly connected with the built environment, or service to society,” according to the organization’s definition. Höcek was honored for his collaborations with non-profits, creatives, students, and professionals at local and international levels to “create transformative, uplifting environments and initiatives, particularly benefiting underserved communities.” Only three percent of the AIA’s membership is distinguished with Fellowship. Höcek’s distinction was celebrated at the AIA Conference on Architecture from June 4–7 in Boston, MA, as well as at the Center for Architecture during the 2025 New Fellows Celebration on Wednesday, March 19, from 6:00–8:00pm.
Q: What is influencing your work the most right now?
Architecture is receptive to, and in continuous dialogue with, a multitude of disciplines. It is this dialogue that is strongly influencing my work now. Recently we completed a common roof terrace for a building overlooking Central Park. Inspired by Adolphe Appia’s set designs, we created a series of stepped platforms to capture the views. In Appia’s work, stepping allow performers to move fluidly from platform to platform and scene to scene, just as this terrace yields a diversity of interactions among its visitors.
Other recent community-facing work addresses urban resilience parks. These are for both everyday use and to aid in disaster recovery. Several influences shape this work, from community resilience hubs to the hiyokechi, open public spaces established during Japan’s Edo period when cities were built from wood, making fires a constant threat. The hiyokechi served as both firebreaks and social gathering places.
All of our work is highly collaborative and exemplifies architecture’s ability to engage across disciplines, reinforcing how architecture resonates when it operates at multiple levels.
Q: What do you see as an architect’s role—and responsibility—within our culture?
Architects have many responsibilities, among which is to create spaces that foster social well-being. Architecture is inherently social—both in practice and product—requiring collaboration across many levels. Our work reflects societal conditions, but it is essential to look beyond them and ask who or what is inadvertently excluded. Today, architects must confront urgent realities, from redlining and cultural erasure to environmental destruction and the hyper-commodification of cities. To design today involves questioning prevailing economic and ideological frameworks and ensuring our works provide for inclusivity, the natural environment, and meaningful engagement with individuals and communities.
Q: What are your thoughts on architectural education today?
Architectural education today is remarkable in its engagement with social and environmental issues. Both the curriculum and students demonstrate an acute awareness of the challenges they are inheriting, responding with urgency and innovation. However, a critical gap remains—few programs equip students with financial and economic literacy. Every architecture school should offer courses on project funding, budgeting, and office management to prepare graduates for professional realities. Understanding both design and financial structures ensures that architects can not only envision transformative projects but also navigate the financial mechanisms essential to their development and execution.
Q: What do you think are the biggest challenges, or opportunities, facing cities today?
A major challenge facing cities today is their increasing commodification, where market-driven demands often overshadow community needs. However, meaningful urban development emerges through a balance of top-down municipal efforts and bottom-up community initiatives.
My office, in collaboration with architects in Turkey, is researching bottom-up recovery efforts following Turkey’s 2023 earthquakes. Our focus is on how these efforts exhibit greater agility, creativity, and community responsiveness compared to top-down governmental approaches. The two operate at very different metabolisms, yet together they offer a compelling model for how cities can develop in more inclusive and adaptive ways.
Q: What are your greatest sources of inspiration? How/why did you decide to pursue architecture?
I grew up in a bi-cultural family where creativity, education, and social issues were highly valued. Living in NYC, Istanbul, and Vienna also shaped my early understanding of architecture.
In Vienna, my family lived next to the Werkbundsiedlung, with works by Loos, Lurçat, Neutra, and Rietveld. Though neglected at the time, my father, an architect, and I often walked the neighborhood, discussing its buildings. Vienna also exposed me to the secondary status of Turkish migrant workers and how a city could embody contradicting ideologies.
In Istanbul, the Beyoğlu neighborhood became an educator, revealing the co-existence of both its sublime and seedy sides. It embodied complexity—home to Ottoman-era embassies, synagogues, and churches as well as the refined Pera Palace Hotel, brothels, and liberal bookshops.
From both cities, I learned that urban life is defined by diversity and contradictions, and that my understanding of this complexity made me well-suited to a career in architecture.
Editors’ Note: This feature is part of a series celebrating the members of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) New York Chapter who are elevated each year to the AIA College of Fellows, an honor awarded to members who have made significant contributions to both the profession and society. Learn more about Fellowship here.