Elizabeth McNicholas, AIA is Founding Principal and current President of McNicholas Architects in Chicago. She and her husband and partner Matt McNicholas, AIA are both double-alumni of The School of Architecture at The University of Notre Dame, which – in addition to a world-class architectural education – gave Elizabeth opportunities to work for and study with her favorite architect-heroes, Demetri Porphyrios and Leon Krier, at the very outset of her career.

Since 2007, her firm has specialized in Institutional, Ecclesiastical, Residential, and Master Planning design, with completed projects in over a dozen countries across five continents. MA’s work includes the adopted master plans for the renewal of four neighborhood areas on the west and south sides of the (CNU-darling) City of South Bend. Further afield, her firm has served as design architects on a slate of Temples for the LDS Church, including those recently opened in Helena, Montana and Okinawa, Japan; designs of the Wellington, NZ and Budapest Temples are recently completed, and Temple designs for Hamburg, Germany and Cape Coast, Ghana are currently under way.

McNicholas Architects have been privileged to work for several important Catholic entities as well: completing a Chancery Chapel for the Winona-Rochester Diocese in 2024, and presently designing several buildings for Chicago’s Misericordia Home campus, which was recently master planned by the University of Notre Dame’s Housing & Community Regeneration Initiative. Elizabeth’s firm is additionally often engaged in Historic Preservation-related work: they are the retained architects for Adler & Sullivan’s Auditorium Theatre, and just last year received an Urban Guild Award for their contributions to the restoration of Columbia, South Carolina’s historic landmark Babcock Building.