Issuu

RICKER

SPRING 2026

EST. 1953

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Foreword

The Ricker Report is a student-run journal published by the University of Illinois School of Architecture. Originally founded as Ricker Notes, the publication was a student-edited periodical featuring articles, news, poetry, drawings, and book reviews. In 2018, Ricker Notes returned in the form of Ricker Report. The goal of the new Ricker Report is to provide a platform dedicated to exploring cutting-edge topics in architecture, design, and the built environment. Named after Nathan Clifford Ricker—the first architectural graduate in the U.S., the first licensed architect in the state of Illinois, and a pioneer in architectural education who helped establish the architecture program at the University of Illinois—the journal serves as a venue for showcasing innovative research, critical analysis, and creative projects. By fostering a dialogue between academic inquiry and professional practice, the Ricker Report highlights the diverse voices shaping the future of design, sustainability, and urbanism.

LETTER FROM RICKER |

This issue of Ricker Report examines how architects and designers engage with social issues. This publication is curated to highlight the missions and intentions of our featured architects, designers, and researchers and to examine their personal exploration of activism. Through their work, we trace how personal convictions evolve into spatial strategies and how individual practices intersect with broader movements for equity, justice, and systemic change. We aim to provoke nuanced, critical questioning of design activism’s boundaries: where it begins, where it fails, and how it might be reimagined. Rather than offering a singular definition, we embrace the multiplicity of approaches that exist within activist design practices, understanding that they are shaped by context, identity, and lived experience. The title, Intention/Intension, speaks not only to the intent of architecture that strives to better the world around it but also to the tension that exists between architecture’s efforts to improve the world and that which has caused irreparable harm to communities. By holding these contradictions in view, Intention/Intension does not seek to resolve them but rather to sit with their complexity. It invites readers to consider how design can move forward with greater accountability, humility, and responsiveness. How can architects and designers not only envision better futures but actively participate in building them?

The Ricker Report Team

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Editor-in-Chief Emilie Cooper Art Director Xiaoyi Zhu Lead Editors Pushpanjli Naomi Rockower Graphic Designers Connor Bandettini Giorgio Riccardo D’Attoma Flavio Ceja Gutierrez Jayleen Kim Kevin Mei Isabel Raftery Editors Brady Monahan Franchesca Austriaco Faculty Advisor Joseph Altshuler

TABLE OF CONTENTS |

Prototyping Space Outpost Office

Solidarity in Design Lindsay Harkema

Reimagining Worlds Lisa Yun Lee

Indigenous Resonance studio:indigenous

Architecture of Senses Illinois School of Architecture

PROTOTYPING SPACE Architecture as an Act of Citizenship and Collective Imagination

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Architecture is alway

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OUTPOST OFFICE |

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How or why did you form Outpost Office? Was there a specific moment where you both knew that Outpost Office was something that needed to be created or formed?

ERIK HERRMANN I’ll start by saying I don’t think there’s a need in the world for Outpost Office, and that’s kind of important to acknowledge. We are trying our best, but we have no illusions that the practice plays an oversized role in the world. Our job is to take all the expertise and opportunities we’ve been given and deliver things that suggest ways architecture can engage with people’s lives in ways we feel it currently does not. It’s thinking about educating people on what architecture is and what the built environment means to their everyday lives. These are things that are needed. So, Outpost itself is not needed, but what is needed are people that translate for folks and illuminate, show, and demonstrate the power of architecture. We resist the idea that architecture must align with centers of power, serve only some people, and end with a building. So we created Outpost Office because we need a platform to create those questions. As Ashley said, this is Outpost Office; it’s never less than two, and it gets bigger and smaller depending on our collaborative team at the moment. At its core, it’s something that is part of us, but it’s neither of us, and it’s a third thing.

OUTPOST OFFICE |

Essentially, Outpost Office can do things unrelated to us, which is kind of exciting. Forming the collaboration was practical because it gave people a sense that we were ready and available to do work, try things, enter the field, and do it in a meaningful way. ASHLEY BIGHAM Even the name “Outpost” came about because when we started this collaboration, we were living abroad. We had lived in Ukraine and Germany and were considering moving back to the US to work in the American context we knew best. Those years living outside of America in that context really shaped our perception of American architecture and what it meant to be a member of this society. So when you think about issues like activism or advocacy, they’re rooted in a cultural and societal understanding of a context. The name “Outpost” reminds us that from the outside, you often see things very differently, maybe more clearly, and we wanted to remain people who could see both sides of the context. Drawing Fields at ArtOMI Photos by Leonid Furmansky

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EH Living in these other contexts, working in these other places, and looking at those places through lenses of different times, you develop an appreciation for values that aren’t at the center of the U.S. context. In places where housing is seen as a right or places where public space is seen as something that belongs to everyone and can’t be owned, it’s simply the availability of design or the expectation that everyday people are going to know about design and be engaged with the built environment. These are all things that people take for granted in other places and not necessarily things we always see in our own context. Being in this outpost changed our perspective, and we began to appreciate architecture’s power and potential more. It starts with thinking about how architects can advocate for changing value systems. So thinking about architects saying this doesn’t have to end with a building—maybe we don’t build, or we think about temporality in new ways or how public space should be engaged and who it’s for. These things all get foregrounded when you go to other contexts where different values are in play, and public and private spaces are used differently.

Public Utilities, Spain Photos by Laurian Ghinitoiu

OUTPOST OFFICE |

AB First, like all people, architects are citizens of the world or a particular country, residents of a city or state, with some kind of relationship to a polity that they choose to participate in. I think everyone can decide how they can engage in activism, no matter their profession. All of us as people, citizens, or members of communities can participate in building better societies. Certain ways our work has engaged with different communities and issues of politics and society include some of our research projects on housing and public impact projects.

What does activism mean to you, and what are your means of achieving it in architecture?

We’re very interested in engaging wherever we are working. Architecture is always a projection of some future, and visualizing it for many people is a key way for them to believe in it or even understand its inherent potential. As people who create images, drawings, models, or built projects that are put into the world, it is very important for us to help others coalesce around a singular idea, image, or presence that may be physically embodied in an architectural project in the future. So it’s a way of building ideas around a particular scene. EH Architecture is never done alone. I think we’ve been fortunate to work with clients who are strong advocates for the public they serve. We seek opportunities to work with groups like that. It’s really about carefully understanding, within a project, who you’re advocating for with your design decisions and how those decisions measure against larger goals. I don’t think it’s as simple as having a role, like an activist role you’re trying to fill in the world. It’s about maintaining clarity regarding all the different opportunities you have to advocate for.

“Everyone can decide how they can engage in activism, no matter their profession.”

- Ashley Bigham

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OUTPOST OFFICE |

Public Utilities, Spain Photos by Laurian Ghinitoiu

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Public Utilities, Spain Photos by Laurian Ghinitoiu

What are the philosophies AB that tie your work We often say that we have two strains of practice in the office. One together? is “speculations” in and around the American suburbs, and the other is creating platforms for social gathering. I think those are the two extremes of society that we like to work at. With the individual dwelling unit, we’re thinking about conceptions of family, chosen families, relationships between people, privacy, and the affordable housing crisis in America. Then, platforms for social gatherings represent the other extreme. Projects like Cover the Grid or the Drawing Fields series are ones we’re really thinking about bringing large numbers of people together in public or communal spaces to do shared activities. We’ve always struggled to say that our office is about one single thing, because like many designers, we love different things. We love new projects. We love chasing ideas down rabbit holes and continuing to explore and investigate, so it even feels limiting to say one singular thing that Outpost Office does. But I think those two ideas represent threads that we have chased down in many projects in our firm.

Architecture is Never Done Alone —

Done Alone — Architecture is Never

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OUTPOST OFFICE |

Do you think that smaller architecture could make as big of an impact as larger-scale architecture? EH We’re interested in how one piece might suggest changes to larger systems. We consider this concept in our drawing projects, which focus on very specific sites, and we have ideas about how to express it. We show how it’s connected to a larger system, and it’s the same logic with the housing: we don’t see the house as a single object; we see it as a piece within a larger system. Our question is, in what ways would you change that piece, which would then allow that effect to ripple through the system? If you can change one house and show what’s possible on one single lot, then it can begin to happen in many other places. That’s fundamentally how suburbanism works, right? You create a box that works. It fits within the economies and needs, and then it gets multiplied over and over and over. So why can’t we as architects use that same tactic? For us, the key in this suburban work is trying to find ways to push the boundaries, but not just push them formally, which is a concept that many architects have tried in the suburbs. We’re more interested in what the spatial structure can do, because it affects questions with huge societal impacts.

How many people can live here? How many private spaces are there? How many shared spaces are there? These are fundamental questions because that’s already happening throughout these built environments. That’s the kind of work we’re trying to do, growing together. We consider it not as a one-off; it’s a prototype, and the prototype implies that it’s not finished. There are many ways in which it could grow and develop, and that won’t be just through us. We expect its power to lie in its ability to multiply and in its ability to be adopted in many different ways.

Public Utilities, Spain Photos by Laurian Ghinitoiu

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Could you share a little bit more on the twodimensional interventions you also do with space?

AB Drawing Fields came about because we were thinking about the smallest physical impact you could have on a site with the largest spatial, public impact. What is the minimum an architect can do to have a significant impact when faced with a small budget or site constraints? There are so many kinds of constraints that architects deal with, and we often try to make the most out of a constrained project or a constrained site. We were thinking, what’s the lowest type of construction impact we could have? What about material impact? We were tired of seeing pieces of temporary architecture that we designed or built end up in the trash. We were thinking about material waste and were also very interested in different technologies. So we found this robot, which is a prosumer tool. Soccer coaches, football teams, metro parks, and universities with sports teams often use it. Because of this, this GPS marking robot was designed specifically to line sports fields, any sports field. We knew it could draw really straight lines, and it could draw a soccer or football field perfectly. But we were thinking, could it do something else? Could it draw arcs and curves and use different colors?

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Architects are very good at making drawings, but architectural drawings are always scaled, and the result (the building) is one-toone. We were trying to think: what if this drawing itself were the output? What is the one-to-one result? These were the questions and opportunities we considered when we came up with this idea. EH Back to the term “prototype,” it allows us to “prototype” the space. Often, when people see the possibilities for a space, they see architectural renderings and drawings. However, having something drawn on the ground at a one-to-one scale allows for prototyping new possibilities in existing spaces and enables thinking about them without committing to the intense time and material resources. We’re hoping to use the process in a prototyping way to think about visualizing a space and to allow for a dialog about how a space might be transformed before it happens.

Drawing Fields at Ragdale Photos by Outpost Office

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Labyrinths at Texas A&M Photos by Leonid Furmansky

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“We knew it could draw really straight lines, and it could draw a soccer or football field perfectly. But we were thinking, could it do something else?” - Ashley Bigham

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Do you believe that these 2D interventions could evolve into something more permanent?

AB It kind of did in North Lawndale, Chicago. We did two installations there, one in Pilsen at the community garden and one in North Lawndale. The site in North Lawndale sat on an asphalt lot with a basketball court that the community heavily used. It was an important space and used by community groups, including church groups, kids, and people who cut through that lot just walking to work every day. The community was already planning to raise money to resurface the lot, but when we were brought in for the Chicago Biennial, they did not have that funding in place, and it was not happening for the next few years. Our project was designed to be the “in-between” of a future scenario for the site and its previous state. One thing that we wanted to do with the colors, the patterns, and the assets that we drew on the site was to really give the community a conversation point and a reference point. We met with many community members, including a local high school group that was doing a design summer camp. They shared activities they did on the site and those they wanted to do but lacked the infrastructure for. There were things like hopscotch and performance areas for musicians. There was, of course, the basketball court. They also wanted to add a three-point line where there was not previously a threepoint line. Then we also used different colors. We had included color charts of primary, basic colors, but also other colors that we mixed ourselves. We were really offering a reference sheet so that the community could talk over the next two years as they use the site. One reason we used color and pattern the way we did was to provide a sampling for people to see how they used it over time. I think people often imagine how we will use the space, but when you really start to live in it and interact with others in spontaneous ways, new things emerge that you probably wouldn’t have noticed before. Now, of course, they have completely redone the court, and it looks fantastic, so our project is gone. Some things, some colors that we used, remained, and some didn’t. We can see traces or remnants of things. We’re very happy that the site progressed, and it moved on past our project. We really saw our project only as a kind of blip in a very long, important history for the community.

Cover the Grid, Chicago Photos by Outpost Office

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The curator of the Chicago Architecture Biennial, David Brown, who is from Chicago and has worked in different neighborhoods in the city on public space activism, was instrumental in connecting us to community organizations. Germane Barnes was also working on the same site as we were, and he was a part of meeting community groups. Joseph Altshuler has also done interesting community-based projects in Chicago. It’s an important point about building a team of people. It’s probably impossible for any two architects from another city to just drop in and start talking to the community. That’s why having people on the ground made all the difference—people who could connect us to the community organizations already using the site and make those introductions. It also wasn’t always an easy process. When you work with the community, everyone in it has a different idea of what a space should be. The community does not have a singular voice. They’re all individual people. So we were trying to learn and listen to as many different opinions and voices as we could. Not every project is going to be precisely what every person wants it to be. That’s just not possible. We just tried to do our best to represent their desires and wishes and also knew it was always going to be temporary. The important thing is that, in the long run, people have access to quality public spaces.

How did you both get into transforming architecture from just being a physical project to being a more conceptual one?

EH I think that there are several things that go into it. Some of it is a bit pragmatic, like we were seeking work through non-traditional channels. Traditional channels are set up for your relationship with a client and expectation of a building that serves a very particular function or market need. For us, it was about working in a way that leveraged everything we knew and what excited us about architecture. We considered how architecture could better engage the public. This led us to consider working on exhibitions similar to our work in Ukraine, installations like those we’ve done with Drawing Fields, or even producing speculative housing proposals that serve as prototypes, which we can share in galleries and submit to competitions. I think it started with our education. We had really great mentors from places like the University of Tennessee, where we started as undergraduates, and one of the first things that a good architectural education does is dispel you of the idea that everything is about buildings. It also shows you that architectural ideas can take different forms.

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We’re like paper architects without paper. Paper architects are architects working on speculative projects, particularly in the 80s and 90s, when things weren’t getting built, but there was still an aspiration for building. We engage in paper-architect-type projects, but we want to realize them, even if that means temporarily painting them for two weeks; this type of realization fosters public engagement. The only downside of paper architecture is that it tends to circulate primarily among architects. Even when we do buildings, we still have a conceptual frame for how we think about it, and that’s important to us. The conceptual comes first because it allows us to “architect” and materialize different forms of thinking.

Labyrinths at Texas A&M Photos by Leonid Furmansky

“We engage in paper-architect-type projects, but we want to realize them, even if that means

temporarily painting them for two weeks; this type of realization fosters public engagement.” - Erik Herrmann

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OUTPOST OFFICE |

AB Even with our early work, which we did not physically construct, we were always very interested in constraints. Whether it’s coding or digital work or just a drawing, we make our own constraints for our version of “paper architecture” and speculative projects. Those constraints might be purely formal constraints, like what geometries and formal relationships we’re allowed to use. It might involve formatting, creating drawings that are animations instead of plans, sections, or elevations, and considering how the method of representation serves as its constraint, allowing certain types of things to work while preventing others.

How do you make sure you incorporate some of these more speculative and more idea-driven ideas into more constrained built projects? How do you keep the personal message that you want in these projects?

The idea of constraints was always there and something that we’ve talked about previously as fundamental to architecture. I don’t know how you do architecture without constraints, because then every option is open. As we’re working on our first ground-up building, which is a house, the constraints are different, but the idea of constraints and solving problems around those different constraints is really part of the enjoyment of architecture. Not every constraint is enjoyable to work with, but they are all necessary. Every architectural project is an idea. That is what we’ve learned from paper architecture. That idea could be in a drawing; it could be in a building. It’s the quality of the idea that makes a remarkable architectural project. EH We’ve learned over time that being a good architect is about being a good magician. The paintings look effortless, but they’re really complicated. That is also an important acknowledgment. We may not be well-versed in solving all the problems we face now, but we are well-versed in facing many challenges at work. As Ashley said, it starts with the idea. I wouldn’t say our buildings will look like patterns from Drawing Fields, but some of the ambition in how we think about space and architectural objects, as opposed to their use, is present.

Drawing Fields at Wexner Photos by Outpost Office

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We are certainly indebted to the work that we’ve done, and we find moments where all of a sudden, we find ourselves thinking in the exact same way as we did on a past project, even on an entirely different type of project. A bigger building isn’t a more important building; a more expensive building isn’t a more important building; a building that lasts longer is not necessarily a better building. We are always looking at ways that architects have pushed the field forward and contributed new ideas to how we think about space. Contributions like that can come in any form and can be either small or large. There are so many projects that exist only as drawings. That is just as important as massive edifices. It really comes down to, you know, understanding how architects are, what they’re advocating for in their work, and what that work does. We’re indebted to a lot of things like intelligence and a lot of ideas in the built environment that no architect took part in.

“It goe s back t o the ‘outpost’ question about learning from contexts that are , about learning from the , about not .”

overlooked

everyday trying to seek

-Erik Herrmann

OUTPOST OFFICE | 33

Drawing Fields at Wexner Photos by Outpost Office

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Labyrinths at Texas A&M Photos by Leonid Furmansky

OUTPOST OFFICE

OUTPOST OFFICE | 35

Outpost Office is an architectural practice based in Columbus, Ohio, where the principals and co-founders, Ashley Bigham and Erik Herrmann, are associate professors at the Knowlton School at The Ohio State University. Outpost Office seeks new public audiences through experimental creative production ranging from the serious to the absurd, often simultaneously. Their designs propose that architecture can be projective and impactful while also inexpensive, temporal, and open-ended. Outpost Office has been exhibited internationally, including at the Chicago Architecture Biennial, Art Omi, and the Wexner Center for the Arts. The practice has been in residency at MacDowell, Ragdale, Loghaven, and Headlands.

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LINDSAY HARKEMA | 37

02 ARCHITECTURE AS A COLLECTIVE ACT Redefining Design Through Inclusivity and Care

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What inspired the LINDSAY HARKEMA creation of WIP? WIP started as an idea to bring women in practice together. This was six years ago now, at the end of 2019. It evolved through conversations with women in practice over a longer period, including friends, colleagues, and peers starting their own independent practices or working in large firms. There was a consistent interest in some kind of community or professional network that would be a space for resource sharing, information sharing, and something that could enable collaborative projects as well. So there was a long lead-up of discussions with many different women that preceded the organization of WIP, and then I invited a group of those women to an informal gathering to talk about what this group could be. Once that group was assembled, the pandemic happened very soon after. There were few opportunities to meet in person for a while, but we continued online exchanges. Then some project opportunities came up, and the smaller group of the collaborative design team, WIP Collaborative, came together in response to one of those opportunities. When we won a project and then built it together, it initiated what has now been about five years of working together, creating different kinds of public-facing projects.

LINDSAY HARKEMA | 39

“WIP started as an idea to bring women in practice together.” women in practice together.” “WIP started as an idea to bring

WIP Collaborative (From left) Bottom row: Sera Ghadaki, Ryan Brooke Thomas, Lindsay Harkema, Abby Coover Top row: Sonya Gimon, Bryony Roberts, Elsa Ponce Photo courtesy of WIP Collaborative

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Spatializing Reproductive Justice Exhibition, Chicago Architecture Center Photo by Asya Gorovits

LINDSAY HARKEMA | 41

From the exhibition, Spatializing Reproductive Justice, can you tell us about how this project came together? Spatializing Reproductive Justice began as a sort of teaching collaboration between Bryony Roberts, who is another architectural designer, educator, and co-founding member of the WIP collaborative, and me. Roberts, Lori Brown, a professor at Syracuse University, and I came together after the Supreme Court case that overturned Roe v. Wade was decided in the summer of 2022. I think independently, we were each motivated to teach studios about reproductive justice in the wake of the decision. We came together to do that in solidarity and to pool our resources. We were teaching at three different institutions: Lori at Syracuse, Bryony at Columbia, and myself at City College here in New York. We decided to craft our studios around this theme and then have a shared guest lecture series. We framed the project as a larger collective effort of research and design in which the students participated. This effort was part of a broader discussion about the immediate fallout from the overturn of Roe v. Wade, as well as the historical inequities and ongoing restrictions on access to reproductive health care for women based on class, race, sex, and gender inequalities. While we were teaching the studios, Natalya Dikhanov and Sadie Imae of FLUFFFF Studio joined us. After that semester, we had incredible research and design ideas from students that we felt should be more public-facing. We took that body of work, received grant funding from the Graham Foundation, and curated the exhibition, which opened at the Center for Architecture here in New York. We traveled to the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and still intend to continue to travel, although the political circumstances have only worsened. That makes it challenging. Our goal is to travel across the country, particularly in states that have greater restrictions on reproductive health care. But I think we felt it was so relevant for architecture because reproductive justice is a movement that was founded by Black women in the U.S. in the 1990s. They came together during a time when the mainstream feminist movement was very much

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a white-led, exclusive movement focusing on specifically abortion access. This focus was important, but it sort of missed or did not acknowledge all of the other systemic layers of inequality that shape the experiences of women of color and marginalized communities. Reproductive health encompasses many other aspects. So they coined the phrase. They were responding to health care reform that was happening with proposals from the Clinton administration, and they coined “reproductive justice” as the right to bodily autonomy, the right to have children or not have children and raise the children we have in sustainable communities that really broaden the interests of reproductive justice. Abortion access is a key part of that, but it’s also social and environmental. It’s about resources. It’s about having care available and accessible to communities. To me, that makes it very relevant for architects, and yet this issue is a subject that we’ve not really talked about in this discipline. In some ways, it was a response to the immediate political moment, with the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the erosion of women’s rights. At the same time, it highlighted a longstanding blind spot in architectural education, as we have not been discussing these issues. I think the students enjoyed it. We had these three studios that were at different levels. Bryony and I were teaching advanced option studios, while Lori was teaching a core studio, so her students were simply placed in it. I think what was particularly compelling was that we had a range of students; some were really passionate about the issue of reproductive justice, while others were students in the studio taking on the topic. I thought that was really important. This topic is not something to discuss only with people who find it the most critical, but rather to establish it as a foundational principle of architecture. The work that students did really showcased how the tools of architecture can be used to advocate for different things. They did a ton of research and made maps showing the changing legal landscape around reproductive healthcare access and calculating travel distances and costs associated. And then they speculated about design solutions or design ideas for clinics, mobile networks, or other kinds of spaces or systems that could enable access to care in different contexts and circumstances. Lori’s studio also considered housing. My studio specifically looked at federal lands as a potential opportunity, since local or state laws do not govern them.

LINDSAY HARKEMA | 43

There were so many ways that the skills, problem-solving capacity, spatial awareness, and design talent that students have could be applied to this project, and that’s why it made such a rich base for an exhibition. I think that’s precisely what design education is for: to tackle challenges and questions and social issues and matters of justice in this way and really think about them across scales.

Spatializing Reproductive Justice Exhibition, Chicago Architecture Center Photo by Asya Gorovits

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Did the exhibition create a dialogue between what’s going on out there and a reaction to the political landscape? Do you think that’s the way you intended it to be, or is there a different direction you wanted?

That was pretty core from the beginning. I mentioned that we organized guest lectures shared across the studios, featuring designers and creative practitioners working on unrelated themes, as well as healthcare providers and advocates for reproductive justice. We brought in the expertise from other disciplines and the people who really understood different aspects of the field that are essential to really being able to tackle any social or political topic in architecture. We are not experts, but we can synthesize and respond to outside expertise. The goal of the exhibition was also to facilitate those discussions. We organized panel discussions alongside the exhibition that brought in practitioners from outside design who are working with healthcare—who are thinking about policy. One of the most memorable panel discussions we had, alongside that at the Center for Architecture, was with a lawyer from the ACLU who was actually thinking about the issue before the presidential election in 2024, so they were already prepping for a potential Trump presidency. They were thinking about what possible attacks on reproductive freedom could come again.

This is not new. This has been happening. This has always been happening. This has always been happening. This has been happening. This is not new. We had that lawyer in dialogue with architects and artists who were working together on an installation, speculating about the herbal abortive plants and the long history that exists around herbal medicine as well as the cultural community care practices that have existed long before modern medicine and contemporary legal systems. It was an incredible discussion because there were so many connections between these seemingly disparate fields. It was motivating because it spoke to different ways that we as creative practitioners or practitioners in different disciplines can respond, advocate, and work collaboratively toward the futures that we believe in, despite the challenges of the present.

LINDSAY HARKEMA | 45

The hope is that these things are not at odds, and that policies and different kinds of regulatory systems are reinforcing and fostering justice and justice-driven design. But I think one thing that designers can do is to show those possibilities and to impact decisions about policy and other administrative systems through our work. With WIP, most of our built works have been temporary installations in public spaces. Temporary installations might seem inconsequential because they’re there for a short time and then they go away. We architects like to think about things that are built and permanent and long-lasting, and at the same time, you can be a bit more experimental with a temporary installation, especially when we’re speculating about public spaces that are tricky and very regulated. Our most recent project has been looking at city streets, public streets in New York City, which are incredibly controlled and overwhelmed with all of the administrative layers of that space. There’s very little room to experiment, except for when you test things out for a short period of time then study them. They have takeaways that then you can bring to city agencies or bring to discussions about policy and help shape that. I think architects and designers have a real opportunity to impact that, and it’s happening. Some of our organizations in cities, nonprofits, and even our professional organizations have groups within them that are working to have policy impacted. It changes the rules of the system, which is the goal I think you touched on in the questions, which is my interest in spaces of exception. To me, that’s what it’s about: identifying where those opportunities are. Streets here in New York, like I said, are so incredibly controlled, and yet during the pandemic, suddenly they were the quickest spaces to convert from spaces for cars to spaces for people. That was a result of a city decision to—and this happened in other cities as well—put the outdoor dining spaces and community spaces in open streets. It was temporary. We’re still trying to figure out how some of those things can be more long-lasting. At the same time, it opened up this incredible revisioning of the street as a place for people or as a place that could be a resource during a public health crisis; it could become something totally different than what it is. That’s what’s really exciting, and that’s what designers can do. We can show where those opportunities are and make them testing grounds for new ideas about shared spaces that have different values that center marginalized needs like care or neurodiversity or disability and then, in turn over time, inform design policy.

How can architects or designers balance this visionary, justice-driven design with real-world constraints, policy, zoning, and funding? How does that come to fruition?

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How have these pop-up exhibitions impacted the zoning and policy experts who actually work in the field? Is there a specific example of a place where it had an impact?

For the projects we’ve been working on, some city agencies were involved from the beginning. Our first project, Restorative Ground, was a streetscape installation that occupied the footprint of an outdoor dining space during the pandemic. The project was commissioned to re-invite people back into public spaces after months of isolation. In terms of how it was permitted and who allowed it—it was the Department of Transportation (DOT). We didn’t really follow any of the rules for typical outdoor dining structures that the authorities put out at the time. That was partly because we were in dialogue with them, and they understood the project. The project was being facilitated by an organization called the Urban Design Forum, supported by the Hudson Square Business Improvement District, and funded by the property owner. All of those organizations working together viewed the situation as an opportunity to create something within and outside of those rules. Because it was in dialogue with the DOT, we have continued to engage with them on other projects. It is these examples that make their way into city publications around public design and streetscapes. There was a recent publication, Streetscapes for Wellness, that the project was included in. The good thing is that if you’re building or creating something in the public realm, you must deal with legal frameworks and various city agencies, depending on the typology. That also means there’s a sharing of knowledge. I think that’s something that I’m really interested in, and there is a history of that. There are women artists and architects who have worked in that kind of space of exchange with city agencies. I’m thinking of the artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles; you might know of her work called Maintenance Art. She became really interested in the art of maintenance, and she established a long-standing residency with the Department of Sanitation here in New York City. A part of her work as an artist was meeting, speaking with, and shaking the hands of every sanitation worker in the city. That’s a deliberate act to show these two ways of working: as an artist, as a spatial practitioner, and as someone who literally cleans and picks up waste in the city; these are all forms of maintenance. All forms of caring for the environment. You can’t have one without the other. That’s what I’m interested in through my work as well. At larger scales, larger firms, and larger projects, that’s all part of it. There’s always permitting. There’s always tons and tons of back and forth with various regulating bodies just to get things realized. The more we promote the values we want to see shaping the world, the more we can impact those spaces.

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As an artist, as a spatial practitioner, as well as someone who literally cleans and picks up waste in the city, these are all forms of maintenance. All forms of caring for the environment. You can’t have one without the other.

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Restorative Ground Photo courtesy of WIP Collaborative

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How can architects and designers move from designing exceptions to making those inclusion values the norm in everyday practice?

I think it builds on what we’ve been talking about. Designers make the possibilities visible and tangible. Show what environments can be and what they’re capable of to support all these different needs that we haven’t considered: social justice and care for different bodies. It’s embracing a giant multiplicity of human identity, creating spaces that have different conditions enabling people to choose what’s right for them. For me, “spaces of exception” is a concept that I started thinking about in my thesis as a student at totally different scales and contexts. It’s something that has stayed with me. I’m still interested in this idea, and I think of it as something you create that deviates from norms in a really helpful, productive way. Other times it’s the opportunity that exists. It’s like a pre-existing condition that designers can come in and exploit for good. We were talking about legal frameworks around spatial projects. I mentioned that public spaces can feel like the least opportune places because there’s already so much constraining them. At the same time, there are opportunities to totally flip that, because

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the many people involved made a collective decision: this type of space is what we need now. I’m really interested in privately owned public spaces, a typology in New York that started as a zoning incentive to give developers more building volume if they created a public plaza or allowed open space next to the building, and it was totally disproportionate. At first, there were no rules around it. Developers literally made a blank space next to the building and got all this building value from that. This space is this weird public-private hybrid and, if done differently, could really benefit the city because it’s operating under a different set of conditions. Right now, those are regulated by design standards from the Department of City Planning. There’s municipal oversight, and then there’s the landowner that’s paying and caring for it. If that were really created as a space for care or a space for providing something that doesn’t exist in the public space, rather than reinforcing bland corporate plazas, there would be a huge opportunity there because of that weird, exceptional quality. In a lot of WIP projects, in my own projects, I’m looking for an opportunity that can flip something or be transformative in some way, using the exception to create something that’s exceptional. I think it’s important; even if the entire built environment became this beautiful landscape of care and inclusivity, designers’ work would still be inserting new imaginaries within that right. There’s always an opportunity to do something differently. I think given the multiplicity of people, we need different kinds of spaces all the time. As we conceive of built environments as more permanently adaptable, there will always be opportunities to transform and to change. That’s a principle we need across all design disciplines and scales: the principle of resilience. From an environmental perspective, we also need to consider how we design our environments so they can change over time and adapt to climate change. Societies and people are always changing, and no environment should be static or fixed, as that contradicts how we are as living beings. But we’ve always thought about architecture as something that’s really rigid and set in its ways.

Restorative Ground Photo courtesy of WIP Collaborative

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Are there any current or upcoming projects that you’re working on that you’d like to share with us?

There’s one I’ve been thinking about because we’ve been working on it for a long time. It is a project called the Neurodiverse City with WIP; Design Trust for Public Space, a nonprofit organization here in New York; and another architecture firm, Verona Carpenter Architects. They are also a women-led firm, and for several years, we actually have been working on this project, but this fall, we created the built component of it. This project is about reimagining public spaces for neurodiversity and considering what neurodivergent individuals need to navigate public space. Verona Carpenter was thinking about play spaces, and WIP was working on streets. We partnered with organizations that advocate for and support people with disabilities, including neurodivergent individuals. In our project, we worked with an organization called AHRC New York City. They organized a group of self-advocates who identified as neurodivergent young adults. We organized several workshops with them, first to survey existing streets and to understand what aspects of streets they felt were comfortable or uncomfortable. We used various tools to document that with them. We had design visioning exercises together where we gave self-advocates soft materials so they could make impromptu interventions and use that as a way of talking about opportunities to change streets to make them more inclusive and accessible for neurodivergent individuals. We called it a built prototype and a street-design prototype. These built pieces, as well as plants, graphics, and even an audio component, to which we invited other designers and artists to contribute, created this temporary installation that enabled us to test ideas about what could make streets feel more neuroinclusive. That project is now in a gallery that also advocates for marginalized groups. We are now in the phase of the project where we are considering what the potential policy recommendations could be based on. It’s been a long time coming. We were able to realize those pieces this fall, test them with the same self-advocate group, and now bring them into the last phase, which connects to what we’ve been discussing today. So it’s pretty exciting. I think I’m interested to see where that continues to go, especially because there are opportunities to continue dialogue with different city agencies. The Department of Transportation was also a partner in that project because they manage the spaces we’re thinking about, and other city groups and initiatives focus on mental health, social wellness, neurodiversity, and other disabilities. There are many intersections that will hopefully play a role in the future of that work.

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LINDSAY HARKEMA Lindsay Harkema is an architect, educator, founder of WIP (Work In Progress | Women In Practice), and co-founding member of WIP Collaborative, an award-winning shared design practice that creates vibrant, inclusive public spaces informed by local communities and context. Her work embraces a feminist perspective, reimagining shared spaces to unlock opportunities for positive change. She earned her Master of Architecture degree from Rice University and her Bachelor of Science from Washington University in St. Louis. Her individual and collaborative projects have been supported by Art Omi, the Design Trust for Public Space, the Graham Foundation, the New York State Council for the Arts, and the Urban Design Forum. She has taught at Barnard College, Cornell University, City College of New York, The New School, and Syracuse University.

REIMAGININ

NG WORLDS Storytelling as Social Accountability

Manual Cinema with Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, What Happened Next? Installation view at the National Public Housing Museum. Photo by Robert King/Mumur Ring

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How did you get into your LISA YUN LEE field? My first identity is as a cultural worker. A lot of what I do pulls from many different disciplines to try and create a more just world. There’s an often quoted phrase that says that the work of a cultural worker or an artist is to make the revolution irresistible, and I see that as the work that I do. I got a PhD in German studies, and my work was as a Frankfurt Scholar and Adorno Scholar. I grappled a lot with racial capitalism, rising fascism, and understanding social movements and the culture industry. From there, I founded a nonprofit in Chicago. Then I got roped in to work at the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, becoming the director of the UIC School of Art and Art History, and later on, I became the director of the museum. So it’s kind of a circuitous route. I’m what you would call intellectually promiscuous; I did a lot of different kinds of work.

How do you see design At the National Public Housing Museum, we link arts, culture, and and art as relating to public policy in a lot of our work. Sometimes people see these fields social justice? as different, but I think they are very interrelated. At the National Public Housing Museum, we believe that storytelling connects to social and moral accountability, both etymologically and structurally. That is linked with the keeping of accounts, which is the dispersion of resources and reparations to repair history. All of this work circulates through storytelling, social accountability, and the keeping of accounts. I started my work in the museum field at the Jane Addams HullHouse Museum. I learned a lot about this moment of progressive US history that accomplished so much, including minimum wage laws, child labor laws, immigrants’ rights, women’s rights, public safety and public health, and passing some of the most important legislation that is still with us to create a really vibrant democracy. A lot of that happened when Jane Addams first came to Hull-House in 1889 and began working with immigrants, even before women had the right to vote. They didn’t just focus on electoral politics as a mode of social change but also understood that you need different kinds of organizing and activism in order to create the world that we want to live in. She was interested in both analyzing and understanding the issues, expressing what people were against, and working closely with artists to unleash their imaginations and imagine a different world.

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They never separated art makers, designers, architects, and art historians from the work of labor organizing, immigrant justice, or laws that they were trying to pass. They believed that people need to build and create together to understand our common destinies. As an organizer and cultural worker, I found it instructive to realize that many people see these fields as really different. Instead of seeing artists as separate from any of the other work that is committed to creating justice, I see them as integral, foundational, and part of that effort.

Making prints with Posters for the People artist and 2019 Artist as Instigator at the National Public Housing Museum, William Estrada. Photo by Joe Nolasco

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Can you tell us more specifically about your work and what you do, for example, the role you play in various organizations you’re a part of relating to art history, prisons, housing, and more?

Currently, I am a professor at UIC, and I teach museum and exhibition studies. I helped found the department 15 years ago, and the museum studies program is committed to social justice. It’s one of the museum studies programs that has the most people of color and has placed MA students all throughout the country, working for museums and in social justice. I am also the executive director and the chief curator at the National Public Housing Museum, and a lot of the work that I do is thinking about the future of museums and how we create a just institution, one that respects labor. We have a labor union here and a community benefits agreement that is really thinking about our impact on the people who are most directly affected by our work: public housing residents. I also help to curate the exhibits, which is often not in a traditional way: I hit the archives and I find the best paintings or whatever it might be. For example, one of my favorite galleries in the museum is called History Lessons, and it has everyday objects and artifacts from public housing residents from across the country. I asked the prompt, “What is one object that helps to tell your story of public housing?” Then, the residents come together in story circles and work with writers like Nate Marshall, Audrey Petty, and Elise Paschen, and then they tell their own stories. My work crosses the line of being a cultural and community organizer and a curator, this 21st-century vision of curators who are finding ways to amplify people’s stories instead of just finding new ways to tell them themselves. A lot of the work that I also do is thinking about the decolonization of museums. There’s a way that people talk about decolonizing, as museums have traditionally served as places where the so-called one percent have preserved their power and privilege. Whether it’s fair wages or expanding collections, that’s considered decolonization. I believe that true decolonization means thinking about the land and the spaces you occupy as settlers on this land. Much of our current work is with Indigenous communities, considering the displacement of both public housing residents on our land and Indigenous people from the land where the museum is. We have a beautiful mural by Andrew Carlson in the museum now, and we’re working in consultation with the Pokagon nation to create our land acknowledgment. We’re also thinking about how we can engage in solidarity with Land Back movements and other Indigenous-led sorts of projects that are upcoming. We have a beautiful show opening that tells the story of Little Earth, an Indigenous housing complex in Minneapolis that is currently facing many issues, including ICE and the unjust killing of residents. All the work that we do here is always connected to the events that are

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Ned Lufrano’s high school basketball sweater on display in History Lessons: Everyday Objects from Public Housing at the National Public Housing Museum. Photo by Joe Nolasco

happening in the world. When you come to the museum, the first gallery that you see has WPA art posters and every single work, project, and administration poster that was created around public housing. Those posters show that it’s about public health, public education, public safety, and everything we hold to be sacred in a democracy, which is for the common good. Even though we’re a public housing museum, we’re also about the history of the public and our commitment to the commonwealth. A lot of the work that we do here connects to what’s happening with housing and other issues. Everybody has a place and the right to a home, so what does that mean when we start to deport people and separate families? All of these things relate to our mission.

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You have a wide range of work and involvement, including public housing, prison reform, racial healing, museum studies, sustainability, and more. Can you talk about the ethos behind your work that brings all of this together?

The museum is a site of conscience, which is a formal network of historic sites that really believes that to solve any of today’s problems, we have to go back in time and ask what we have not yet learned and that in order for us to preserve history, we have to make it relevant to people’s lives today. That’s a really important methodology that I subscribe to for all historic sites, the idea that never again will a single story be told as if it’s the only one. You realize that a lot of historic sites or historic house museums only tell the story of the one wealthy white dude who lived there or the famous male white architect who built the space. But actually, that historic site has so many different stories that you could be telling, like those of the people who cleaned the house, people you know who visited the house, or the wood that was chopped down and shipped from California to build the house. I really believe in the power of material culture having the ability to tell so many stories. If you have an iPhone, you could tell the history of Apple and Steve Jobs or the young Chinese workers who made it in China’s labor practices. The decision about which stories you are committed to is made by cultural workers and people who interpret these objects. I really believe in the famous chant, “None of us are free until all of us are free,” as Emma Lazarus said. If you think about the history of public housing and the defunding of it, but also the parallel rise of the prison-industrial complex and how much money we actually pour into building prisons, then these things are really connected. There’s no way that I can be fighting for a future of housing if I’m not also fighting as an abolitionist to end the injustice of the prison system. Finding connections between war and warming, between immigrant justice and women’s rights—these are the kinds of things that social movements have always done. If you find something you’re working for that contradicts what another group is pushing for, you have to re-examine your demands. For example, during the proceedings of the world reparations forum, African Americans were asking for reparations for the unjust history of slavery, and Indigenous people pointed out that they were asking for reparations for land that actually wasn’t theirs to begin with. Finding solidarity between people, like between Black folks in the history of the injustice of slavery and Indigenous people having undergone genocide, is critical. My ethos is to create a world in which we are all free, which means you can’t work on just one issue at a time. This has to be through finding spaces where these issues intersect.

National Public Housing Museum Photo by Ryan Barayuga

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How do you see all of these issues in housing, prison reform, race, gender studies, and environmentalism as being incorporated into the world of design, art, and architecture?

We must value those committed to making and creating in this world, as so much unmaking and destruction is also happening. Robin D.G. Kelly, a big hero of mine, shows and lays out in his book Freedom Dreams that no social movement has existed that hasn’t been led at some point by artists and people who are willing to unleash their imaginations about the world and work together with people, whether you’re talking about the so-called Third World Liberation and its work with surrealists or the Black Arts Movement in the United States. Artists, musicians, cultural workers, and designers have always been part of social movements and really critical to creating that change. As a public historian, you go back in time wanting to understand how liberation movements were successful, and you always see artists, designers, and architects at the core. But the key is that they’re not any better or worse than any other discipline. It’s critical that we work together to create a more just world; collaboration and willingness to cross boundaries are key.

Inversely, how do you envision art, design, and architecture as addressing social issues such as the housing crisis, climate change, or the prison system?

I can give you some examples of artists I love who are doing this work, such as Maria Gaspar, who converts prison bars into musical instruments and creates concerts from them, and Rick Lowe, an architect with Project Row Houses, who uses his architectural skills to reimagine the built environment in Houston. There are a lot of individual artists who are doing this, but I want to focus more on art schools that are acknowledging that part of the curriculum should be just committed to creating better human beings. This initiative isn’t necessarily about particular art skills and mastery, but linking art-making with making sure that the impact is on communities and so-called everyday people, not only to be successful in museums or sort of gallery shows and things like that. It’s important to recognize that art-making is labor and that artists are also workers, which is why we subscribe to WAGE, the Working Artists for a Greater Economy. All of the skills of an artist, whether as a maker, thinker, imaginer, or co-thinker, and even the strategies for any particular campaign, are really important. I subscribe to Joseph Beuys’ notion that all social change is a form of architecture, a social architecture where you’re recreating society, and that everyone is also an artist. How do we inspire all people to be thinking creatively, such as thinking about being a maker of their own environment and their own communities as much as professional artists?

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I just learned that in several Indigenous languages, including Anishinaabe and Ojibwe, the word for “ancestor” is actually the same word as the word for “grandchild” and “descendant.” We see these things as being far apart, but they are actually the same thing. This reminds me of a powerful metaphor by Isabel Wilkerson regarding America. She describes the country as an old house: even if you didn’t build it, you live in it now. If the foundation cracks or the stove breaks, you are still responsible for the repairs. We are all implicated in this history, and we all share the responsibility of addressing injustices to build a better world, simply because we all share the same home.

How do you see historic preservation as relating to social justice in the field of design? You talked a bit about rethinking the past, but what role does history play in our present?

Preservation is a field that is also like museums. Museums have served as tools of imperialism, and collections often arise from the ravages of war, but they don’t have to be. The first Western museum came from the fruits of the French Revolution, where people rose up. That’s the first collection of the Louvre, things that the people took from the king and presented to the people. Preservation traditionally has been used to just advance power and privilege, and that’s why there are more historic houses in the United States than Burger King, McDonald’s, and Taco Bell combined, but most of them only tell the story of wealthy white individuals. That’s also changing, and I’m really proud that there are new house museums that are rising up in Chicago and across the country, like the houses of Elijah Muhammad and Emmett Till. The Historic Trust has created new divisions to preserve African-American, gay, lesbian, and trans history. Preservation can and should be a tool of social justice because of this deep commitment that history not only informs our current situation but also can be a way for us to create a better future for all of us. We’re all living in a world with the impacts of history, and unless we become astute students of this history, we can’t analyze our current situation or solve and repair this history to create a better future.

“We’re all living in a world with the impacts of history, and unless we become astute students of this history, we can’t analyze our current situation or solve and repair this history to create a better future.”

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The opening of Resilient Hues at the National Public Housing Museum. The art-glass frieze was designed by Amanda Williams and Olalekan Jeyifous, who were inspired by salvaged paint chips and wallpaper from the building. Photo by Ryan Barayuga

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What is the role of the museum in the world today, and how do you work to achieve or maintain that role?

For me, it’s not about maintenance. There is so much that the museum field is responsible for that contributed to injustice that there’s very little that we need to maintain. It’s like we need to reinvent what the museum means in the 21st century. We have to reinvent collections. We have to reinvent how we think and talk about sustainability. I went to a museum conference for directors maybe twelve years ago, and people were talking about how everybody needs to have a climate-sort-of crisis plan because of flooding and global warming. Instead of just adjusting to the problem, it is really incumbent and important for us to contribute to finding the solution to these problems. As opposed to just having a climate plan, why not also see your mission as a museum as making sure that we address the future of environmental injustice?

Can you talk specifically about a foundational experience, project, or program that’s influenced your philosophy and your work?

Building this museum and working with public housing residents for eighteen years was really important because it showed that a museum involves many different stakeholders. If you want it to be a truly socially just museum, it needs to include not only public housing residents but also architects, designers, artists, and scholars from multidisciplinary fields, and it should work with labor unions; this work is a collective process. It also was a magical period when I was at the Hull-House Museum, because every single day we were learning about the history of Hull House, and they were trying to commit to a praxis of putting those theories into play. I started a soup kitchen with Sam Kass, who eventually went to the White House and became Michelle Obama’s advisor for her work about fair food, and Tara Lane, who was an incredible chef. We activated the dining hall at the Hull House to become a soup kitchen to think about food justice and started a farm down the street. This whole cycle of creating museum programming that bridges social services, feeds people, educates, and interprets the history of food justice while linking it to today’s issues has been very formative. It was a really successful program and an example of the kinds of programs that we are trying to create here at the National Public Housing Museum, like the Artist as Instigator series. We work with Tonika Lewis Johnson, an artist who reimagines her neighborhood in Englewood, looking at the history of unjust land sale contracts, and who recently won the MacArthur Genius Prize. We work with Amanda Williams and Olalekan Jeyifous, who are two architects, to create the beautiful entrance way to the museum using the scraps of paint and wallpaper that we salvage from the building. In every moment of our work, we think about history and preservation and collaborate with artists and activists to create something beautiful. What is beautiful is linked to what is just in the world.

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Browsing albums inside the REC Room, curated by DJ Spinderella, at the National Public Housing Museum. Photo by Joe Nolasco

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Mega Ran performs in front of an intergenerational crowd during Groundwaves Generations at the National Public Housing Museum. Photo by Kendall Jackson Jr.

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Housing insecurity is one of the most critical issues facing all of us today. There’s no community anywhere in the United States where a person who’s making minimum wage can actually afford a two-bedroom apartment. The United States is one of the few countries that does not believe that housing is a human right in our constitution, so there’s a lot of work that we have to do about these issues. One particular contribution is reminding people that the history of public housing is a mixed bag of failures and successes, but the mainstream narrative, which blamed residents themselves, especially Black folk, for the failure of public housing, especially because of the history of racial injustice in this country, is a false narrative. Systemic issues, unjust zoning practices, and a history of redlining contributed to the failure of public housing and resulted in the demographic of public housing in the United States being almost entirely Black by the late 20th century. Changing the narrative about public housing is one of the most important things that we can do as a cultural institution. I’m really excited to see what’s happening with Mayor Mamdani and the Green Movement and this commitment to building partnerships that truly benefit the public good. In February, the Chicago Architecture Biennial will have its housing summit that brings together artists and designers and architects and policymakers to think about the future of housing, both in Chicago and across the country. There are a lot of things that we can learn from other nations. The museum wants to be a site of convening that brings together everyone that could and should be thinking about housing.

Can you speak to your work in public housing and how this relates to social issues, nationally or systemically?

“What is beautiful is linked to what is just in the world.”

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How do your backgrounds in religious studies and in German studies influence your work today? When I’m teaching my classes, I always say that everything you learn becomes part of your toolbox for the work that you do, and there are important tools in traditional training in museum studies. But if we’re going to transform the future of museums to make them more just and more accountable to communities, you need a lot of other tools in your box. I use my training as a Marxist literary critic, which comes from German studies, and as an Adorno scholar, all the time. I was just teaching about the culture industry and visitor services and how we imagine a wealthy, visitor-centric experience that privileges the end user but also understands that the culture industry is at play. Even if a visitor thinks that they want something, what is the responsibility of racial capitalism for structuring that desire? As a feminist and someone who teaches gender and women’s studies, having a really good gender analysis helps you to curate and make sure that the way that you’re telling stories is balanced and includes the voices of many different people. All of these tools contribute to the work that I do. When I was studying religion, it was about interpreting the Bible and thinking about the power of individual words to sort of bring certain effects into being and create community. I use that when I’m writing a label and I’m thinking about the power of thirty words to describe an object. What is the kind of community, what is the kind of effect, and what are the kinds of things that I want to do?

Inside the Turovitz Family Apartment at the National Public Housing Museum. Photo by Jenny Fontaine/UIC

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How have your philosophical studies, specifically on German philosopher Theodore Adorno, influenced your work?

Adorno was a philosopher who thought a lot about identity, logic, and things that most people might not spend a lot of time thinking about. In his philosophy and critique of identity thinking, he talks about how sometimes, we think about our freedom as being restricted by the other. He pushed for a realization through dialectics where my freedom and your freedom are completely entwined. That’s how we should all live in a democracy, without seeing one person’s freedom as infringing on our own. Adorno and the Frankfurt School were the teachers of Angela Davis. Grace Lee Boggs, a philosopher and great Detroit organizer, was also an Adorno theorist. There are a lot of movement people who have read and spent time with Adorno and the Frankfurt School because of their critique of fascism through the lens of American capitalism. They were Jewish thinkers who fled Germany during World War II, so they experienced the rise of fascism through American culture. They saw that American capitalism, in some ways, was not that different from what was happening in Germany. Their analysis of capitalism and what was happening was so astute and important and helps us understand this current moment that we’re living through in the United States. They were also like the preeminent interdisciplinary thinkers. The Frankfurt School created the first journal of interdisciplinary research at that time, and they gave Freud his first grant. They were deeply committed to bringing people together to understand the world in order to figure out how to create change. Adorno, as an art historian, was very skeptical that artists could actually step outside of the system in any way and create change, so a lot of my work pushes against Adorno’s precepts. There’s a famous quote about having “pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will.” While I am deeply skeptical of the role and potential of artists in theory, in practice, I am heavily investing in artists and others to drive change. I believe we must remain aware of structural limitations—a skepticism I carry from my studies of Adorno and the Frankfurt School.

Visitors inside the Hatch Family Apartment at the National Public Housing Museum. Photo courtesy of Chicago Housing Authority

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I have my toolbox that I bring with me everywhere, my toolbox as a cultural worker with my critical Marxist theory from Adorno and the Frankfurt School. I have my work as a women’s studies scholar and a feminist. I have experience working at the Jane Addams HullHouse Museum, with the Hull-House movement that engaged community members, and with the commitment to social justice and change that preceded electoral politics. I have my work at the UIC School of Art and Art History, which is a public university that is committed to making sure that everyone has access to art education. Understanding who has access and the right to art is an important part of my toolbox. I have spent eighteen years working at this museum, which is a really important part of it. I understand that I am not a public housing resident, but I can amplify and learn from those voices and bring tools to help public housing residents realize this museum as well. My philosophy is really a combo pack of all of these different things that I bring with me everywhere. Every day I’m adding to my toolbox, including from this conversation with you all.

Finally, how would you describe your own personal philosophy? How does this philosophy manifest in your work and the way you engage with the world?

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Photo by Jenny Fontaine/UIC

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LISA YUN LEE

Lisa Yun Lee is a cultural activist and Associate Professor of Public Culture and Museum Studies as well as Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she previously served as the Director of the School of Art and Art History and helped found the Social Justice-Driven Museum and Exhibition Studies program. She has also worked as teaching faculty with the Prison Neighborhood Arts Project at Stateville Prison. She is the Executive Director of the National Public Housing Museum. Formerly the director of the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, Lee oversaw the house’s renovation, installed a permanent exhibition, and reinvigorated public programming. Her research and writing includes topics of museums, diversity, sustainability, and historic preservation. She has published a book on the philosophy of Theodor Adorno entitled Dialectics of the Body: Corporeality in the Philosophy of Theodor Adorno (Routledge, 2004). She holds a BA in Religion from Bryn Mawr College and a PhD in German studies from Duke University. Lee also was the 2017 Co-Curator of Open Engagement, an arts conference based at UIC. In 2000, she co-founded The Public Square at the Illinois Humanities Council, then called the Center for Public Intellectuals, an organization that fosters the exchange of ideas about cultural, social, and political issues and a reinvigoration of civil society. She has served on both Mayor Brandon Johnson's and Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s Arts and Culture Transition Teams. She served on Governor Pritzker’s Board of the Illinois State Museum and the Advisory Committee for the city of Chicago’s racial healing and historical reckoning project concerning memorials, monuments, and public art and is currently appointed to Mayor Johnson's Equity Advisory Council. She serves on the boards of the Field Foundation, the American Association of State and Local History, Chicago Torture Justice Memorials, Landmarks Illinois, and Gloria's Foundation.

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05 INDIGENOUS RESONANCE Building Narratives of Identity and Place

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Why and how CHRIS CORNELIUS did you start I started it in 2003, when I was working full-time in another office. studio:indigenous? I was teaching part-time at UVA, so I was living in Charlottesville. I was approached to be on a project with Antoine Predock for the Indian Community School of Milwaukee. That was the project that I started the practice with, but it was a long time coming because I had worked for three years between undergrad and grad. I had worked in an architecture firm that was doing work for my nation and on our reservation. It was at that time that I formulated the idea that there had to be a better way of making space for Indigenous people that was contemporary but grounded in the larger timeless worldviews that we hold. I went to grad school at UVA, and then I started teaching there, but whether the project with Predock had come up or not, I was probably going to start my own practice. It started with an agenda and with the idea of creating contemporary buildings for Indigenous people that go beyond just iconography and larger symbolism, but what drives me now is making the culture experiential.

How does your approach to architecture intervene in contemporary architecture?

I intentionally rejected traditional forms and symbols, so I wasn’t going to make a structure that looked like the traditional structure of my tribe or of the community I was working in. I wanted to learn about the cultural and material aspects and how to translate them. That doesn’t always come from material, but it always comes from culture. What can I say about the culture of the place? Then, how do I use the tools I have as a designer and professional in the 21st century to tell those stories? A project that exemplifies these ideas is a permanent land acknowledgment at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, a small liberal arts college. They wanted to acknowledge that the campus is on land that was traditionally the Menominee’s. They had renamed their plaza, and they were making something physical, so they approached me to design it. For part of that process, I talked to the Indigenous student group on campus, one of the Indigenous faculty members, and a friend of mine that is Menominee. The idea of community engagement has always been a part of my work in various ways, so it’s always natural for me. I knew that I didn’t want that particular project to be a symbol exactly, like a memorial or a statue, but I wanted it to say something. At the same time, I’m a designer and I’m making form; I am interested in materials.

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The form of it is an abstracted map of the Menominee land of Wisconsin that is lofted together. I designed the form in Rhino, then found a metal fabricator to make it. The main idea was that Menominee and other Indigenous nations differ in how they make and represent nature. So, if it’s in beadwork, weaving, or painting, even those things change. The Menominee beadwork features a mixture of figurative designs, such as vines and plants, and geometric abstractions, such as triangular shapes. They’re more geometric, so that’s what I gravitated towards.

Otaeciah (Crane) Permanent Land Acknowledgment installation at Lawrence University Photo by Tom Harris

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Otaeciah (Crane) close-up Permanent Land Acknowledgment installation at Lawrence University Photo by Tom Harris

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When I engage in a project, I’m trying to find the one story I can tell with the project, because I can’t tell everything about everything. I’m Indigenous; I’m not Menominee. I grew up in Wisconsin; my people are Oneida. We’re different cultures, but I know how to sort of read these different things, so when I started to think about the cladding of this thing, I wanted to incorporate the idea of the pattern. I decided that we were going to make it out of weathering steel and then have a custom perforation in the metal that reflected that geometric pattern. I knew that when they fabricated it, there was no way to control the orientation of the pattern. This meant that we had to make a pattern that actually went in both directions so that no matter how you put on the panel, you would see the pattern. The idea was that this way, I can make it Indigenous; I can create something that other Indigenous people, especially Menominee people, can come to and see. The other thing was the naming of the piece. The piece is called Otaeciah, which means “crane” in the Menominee language. This stage is where I engaged my Menominee friend and asked about the word and pronunciation. It translates into “crane,” which happens to be a clan [of the Menominee tribe] that’s responsible for art and architecture. It wasn’t that the piece looked like a crane, because the name came afterwards, but I thought it was important, and I’ve done this with other things. The piece I did for Exhibit Columbus is in the Miami language. Anytime I do something, I try to use that language in the localized place. What I found, especially with the Lawrence piece, is not only did the patterning help reflect the culture, but there was something unintended that happened where when you’re inside the piece, the pattern projects onto you from the sun, and the pattern is on your face; it’s part of you. It becomes part of this thing. That was important to me because it helps students there understand and identify with something Indigenous that they can engage with. What struck me the most out of what they told me was that on their campus, they don’t see anything that reflects them or their culture. It doesn’t look Indigenous, it doesn’t say anything about indigeneity, it’s just a standard campus for a liberal arts college. This idea that the pattern was projecting onto people was something amazing that happened. It was not intended, and it wasn’t about taking the pattern and turning it into the structure but more about using the pattern in the appropriate way and using that in a different material sense.

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Otaeciah (Crane) Permanent Land Acknowledgment installation at Lawrence University Photo by Tom Harris

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Wiikiaami (Structure) Photo courtesy of Chris Cornelius

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When you create a business, you have to have a name. I felt that What’s the meaning was like the first project: what I was going to do and how I would or purpose behind name it to talk about who I am. I decided that I wasn’t going to studio:indigenous? put my name in it, like Chris Cornelius Design, because it’s less about me and more about the work. This was 2003, when not a lot of people were using the term “Indigenous.” I knew that the work that I was going to do wasn’t just architecture or just buildings. It was really about design, which is why the “studio” is in there. I put the colon in the middle so you can read it like a list. One of those things doesn’t necessarily always come first, but they’re connected together, and that’s how I landed on the idea of the studio:indigenous. It took me a little bit to formulate that, but it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. It’s also tied to the naming idea, especially in indigenous culture, and I’m sure it’s similar in other non-Western cultures. Let’s take, for instance, place naming. Place naming isn’t just about declaring, like giving it a name didn’t mean I now own that. It’s more about the name getting us to think about the place, its characteristics, and what else it could be. I think that’s a part of Indigenous knowledge: knowing this is my experience, what I know about life, but I also know that there are generations after me that might interpret this differently. For instance, one of the examples I use in lectures is Bears Ears, a national park. If you look at it, the geological formation looks like the ears of a bear. Four Indigenous cultures nearby have names for it that all mean “Bears Ears.” It’s not just like, “I saw this thing; that’s what it looks like.” It gets you to think about the importance of the bear, of the ears, and of how the geological formation got there. There’s a whole other world that comes out of the naming. When I name pieces, I’m thinking about that too. The pieces have names to give them existence, for other people to tell me what they think that means, and to understand that the name is not just a title or a caption. I tell you how to read or understand the thing, but you begin to think about the other thing. Going back to the Lawrence Project, think about the fact that it’s not just about the Menominee people, but it’s also about their clan structure. Why is the crane important, and what are the other clans? Can this be a kind of gateway into understanding the culture?

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“I try to not talk in a way that is designed; I’m trying to understand what’s important to them.”

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I start to really engage the people. I try to figure out who the people are in the culture that I should be just talking to. I try to not talk in a way that is designed; I’m trying to understand what’s important to them. I’ve found that if I can get people talking about what’s important to them, ultimately the valuable information will come out. I’ll figure out what sounds important, and that should be signified in some way, usually through the name. It’s not so much through the specific clients or clientele. For Exhibit Columbus, I knew a group that were Miami people, and that was the area that they settled in, in Indiana and Ohio. They were the ones I engaged with to talk about what I wanted to call that piece, and eventually the term “Wiikiaami” came out, which means “wigwam” or “structure” in their language. It takes me a little bit to figure out. There’s not always just the client or commissioner of the work to consider; it’s also about who they ultimately want this project to serve. Especially with Indigenous projects, I try to talk to the right people to figure out what’s important to them, then translate that for them into a design or a physical thing.

How do you engage with people while choosing a name? Is there a lot of conversation happening with people, or is it more individual research?

It is really important to me to have the right thing, so I try to keep the story simple and make sure that it’s okay with the culture or the group, that it’s a word that can be used, that they’re okay with the name, and that it’s correct. If I can’t do that, then I try to be a bit more general and value-based. I tend to be more about how a particular group might see the land but not specifically hone in on things like clans or symbols. I usually want to get it mostly right and never want to be exactly wrong. Those people that I would talk to, other people in the culture—those are the people to whom I say, “Is this the right thing? “Is this something you want to share?” If not, then I’ll find something else.

How does your work make those stories visible? How much do you research to get it right?

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How do you see the final project conveying the message? How can the final project shape or affect the people or users who receive it?

The measure of success to me is if it resonates with other Indigenous people, because that means I’m on the right path. Let’s say, for instance, I was designing something that was about deer antlers, and I made the thing look like deer antlers. Some people would understand its importance. Many people, including architects, operate on a taste level: “I like that” or “I don’t like that.” I resist that sort of thing. There’s a resonance that happens with other Indigenous people, and I found that to be true in the projects that work. I haven’t had situations where people didn’t get it or didn’t understand it. The biggest project where that happened is the Indian Community School, the project I worked on with Predock, which has now been open for 19 years. I started working on it 23 years ago. They’re still a client of mine today. The school’s students learn that it’s a place for their culture and that they matter. To me, that validates it. Predock passed away two years ago, but he and I are not there explaining the project. We’re not explaining whether it was symbolic in larger, metaphorical ways. As designers in that world, you feel obligated to explain it. The other layer for me was understanding early in my design education, especially as an undergraduate, that I had to be a good architect and designer. And that has to be primary because otherwise, people will not pay attention to what I’m doing in the larger discipline. So there is this other level of validation. The statement might sound a little bad, but when I received national design awards telling me that other designers and design professionals understand a good design, that’s a validation because usually design awards are largely anonymous. So when the Lawrence Project won an Architect’s Newspaper design award, that was validation that people saw it as a significant design. At the same time, the students there understand, use, and love it, which is another level of validation. I know I’m on the right path when those things are happening, and I’ve been very fortunate with my work because I’ve been very focused on this idea of creating contemporary Indigenous things. I consider buildings to be artifacts. A hundred years from now, when I’m not here, what am I leaving behind? How am I going to be a better future ancestor? What are people going to say about the work that I’m doing now? That’s what’s important to me, and these other levels of users and the profession help validate that I’m doing the right thing.

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Wiikiaami (Structure) Photo courtesy of Chris Cornelius

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“I think of buildings as artifacts. A hundred years from now, when I’m not here, what am I leaving behind? How am I going to be a good future ancestor?”

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Indian Community School of Milwaukee Photo by Timothy Hursley

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Is there a timeline that you predict when it comes to the physical appearance, cultural acceptance, or perception of the design to create the feeling of an “artifact?”

It’s more about how we can understand the values of the place and people making the thing and translate that into a design that is different from the initial design. So for instance, at the Indian Community School, they distinctly told us they want a building that’s going to last 100 years, and that meant the material choices had to hold up to that standard. The point was that they’re creating an educational environment for Indigenous students that doesn’t exist anywhere else. That then caused me to think about saying something cultural about the material choice. If the material choice can exude, display, or translate a cultural value, that’s even better, because then the people of that culture will understand why we’re using it. For instance, why are we using copper so much? Why is there exposed copper in the building? It’s actually important to the Indigenous cultures in the state of Wisconsin. Much copper in Wisconsin has since been mined out, but it was part of Indigenous practices, especially those associated with water. It’s not just a hundred years ahead; it’s thousands of years behind. If I can do that, then I know that that’s the right choice. At the same time, maybe a client can’t afford a material, so I have to understand the qualities and characteristics of that material that I’m drawn to and what else can fulfill that at a cheaper price point or shorter lifespan. However, it’s important to me to think about these materials when they go into a landfill. If it’s in 50 years, can we make that 100 years?

How do you think activism is achieved in different phases of an architecture process?

That’s a great question. It took me a long time to accept that I was an activist and that activism is part of my work. It’s not a big sort of activism per se, but alternative activism. When my work is accepted in a larger profession, and I get to talk about it through lectures at various places—I lectured at your school two or three years ago—when I’m doing that, that’s activism. I’m telling you about Indigenous culture, the things that are important to me, and things that you probably didn’t learn if you went to school in the US. It is a responsibility for me to help educate people, and that’s where my activism comes in. It also gives you a way to understand how I’m thinking about a project, what that project means, and what it means to the people, place, and culture in which it exists. I’m trying to make that activism spread much wider and longer as opposed to protesting against a problem. That kind of activism is critical, but at the same time, I know that people don’t know about Indigenous cultures, and I’m trying to help build that context for understanding them in the work itself. Activism can happen with any one of us as designers. I was the chair here [at the Department of Architecture of UNM] for four years, and what drove me as an

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administrator was that architectural education was excellent at teaching us what and how: how to design a school and how to design a museum. However, it did not tell us who was involved and why. Who are we making this work for, and why are we doing it? So I, as an educator, am trying to help students understand that. I do that through teaching my own methodology. As someone who is learning design, you can also learn about activism, your responsibilities as a designer, the materials you choose, how you interact with people, and how you treat clients. And how you understand a corporation, a campus, or something else that has a culture that may not be as significant as indigeneity but does have a culture. The engagement or activism can then happen from the very beginning in each one of us as designers. We need to decide how to express it and how ready the audience is. That’s another thing I am constantly trying to gauge: an audience’s readiness for change and how I can calibrate what I’m trying to do to help meet their expectations. It’s not that we need an architecture course in activism. My point is that it should be in all of our courses, like in our history class. We should understand that it’s important to know what we can do now that we have this knowledge and to understand the context in which it was made. For example, what do we call great buildings, and how can we expand the things we call great buildings? That’s another level of activism that can happen. I think that we’re starting as academia, and architectural academia is starting to understand that. We’re doing that at UNM, and it’s a big part of how we educate students.

“It is a responsibility for me to help educate people, and that’s where my activism comes in.”

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Do you think that having an “integrated studio” in education can help close gaps? I think architectural education is really amazing. We can integrate this idea of activism or responsibility not only to the cultures, people, and places but also to the non-humans in those places. That’s where you can start to educate citizens, not just architects. There’s that component of how we are making better citizens who can make better decisions about the things that they’re doing, whatever that might be. The work that resonates with people is stronger if you have additional background experience or other types of work. It’s not to say that other kinds of work are bad, because there is also excellent architecture. They’re just beautifully designed. It then gives people an understanding of what architecture is in a large spectrum. Architecture can actually change the ways that people see a culture or a place, along with being a beautiful thing that they want to take selfies in front of. All of that can exist, and it’s not that one is better than the other. Certainly, if that’s a career path you choose, that’s fine too; that’s admirable. We can think of this field as a bigger spectrum of what architecture is that is actually helpful, and it’s not antithetical to creating work that engages people in a different way than just visually or aesthetically.

“Architecture can actually change the ways that people see a culture or a place, along with being a beautiful thing that they want to take selfies in front of.”

Indian Community School of Milwaukee Photo by Timothy Hursley

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Initial sketch of Wiikiaami Photo courtesy of Chris Cornelius

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STUDIO:INDIGENOUS

Chris Cornelius is a citizen of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin. He is Professor and former Chair of the Department of Architecture at the University of New Mexico. Chris is the founding principal of studio:indigenous and creates artifacts that offer a distinct vision of contemporary Indigenous culture. Chris was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and raised on the Oneida Reservation in Wisconsin. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Architectural Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and a Master of Architecture from the University of Virginia. Based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, studio:indigenous is working at intensely varied scales. Their distinct and highly personal approach leverages the cultural underpinnings, devices, and thinking of Indigenous culture to manifest original architecture, art, and objects. In 2025, Cornelius was inducted into the National Academy of Design. His other awards include the inaugural Miller Prize from Exhibit Columbus, multiple Best of Design Awards from the Architect’s Newspaper, and an Artist residency from the National Museum of the American Indian. studio:indigenous is the recipient of the 2023 Architect’s Newspaper Best of Practice Award for Best Small Firm, Southwest. Chris has been exhibited widely including the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale and 2023 Chicago Architecture Biennial. His work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). He has been a visiting professor at Yale (Spring 2021), Columbia (Spring 2024), and was the Spring 2025 Eero Saarinen Visiting Professor of Architectural Design at Yale University.

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06 ARCHITECTURE OF SENSES New Language for Inclusive Design

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Cone-Rod Dystrophy is a rare, inherited retinal condition within the spectrum of Retinitis Pigmentosa. It affects the eye’s photoreceptors—rods (responsible for low-light vision) and cones (responsible for color and detail). In this condition, the visual pigment in these cells is not properly produced or replenished, leading to reduced clarity, diminished color perception, and increased difficulty seeing in varying light conditions. Vision loss is progressive and may worsen over time.

When developing an accessible curriculum, what challenges did you all have to identify and overcome?

JOHN CLARK Immediately when I met Daniel, I knew that there were going to be many challenges. The way we digest and produce architecture is primarily visual. We make drawings, and we make models to communicate ideas. If you do not have sight... I didn’t know how that would work. The way that we produce drawings and models in architecture school is multivariate, but mostly it’s either analog or digital. The analog, we figured we could work that out, but we quickly learned that the digital tools we use in production are inaccessible to screen readers, which is the primary way Daniel can ingest information from the computer screen. So there was going to be a big issue there in terms of how we design or how we deliver content and have him be able to produce drawings and models in a way that short-circuits the graphical user interface. We’re developing a tactile language of representation, of outputting drawings in ways that can be digested by folks without sight but in ways that they can collaborate with people with sight in the same language. DANIEL BEIN A lot of the work in the studio is where we make drawings, and then we talk about them. Part of the process of talking about them, typically, is looking at the drawings and then evaluating them by some set of metrics. That has historically happened largely visually, so part of what we’re trying to achieve is to make that process accessible beyond just the visual.

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HUGH SWIATEK In architecture, we have conventions for how we represent information graphically, but those conventions oftentimes stem from the visual evaluation of drawings rather than tactile ones. So something that maybe visually expresses particular information works in one way, but then when you’re having to try to interpret that tactilely, it doesn’t always translate in a one-to-one way. ISAAC TU We ended up using swell paper to make visual images touch-sense accessible so that Daniel could try to feel his way around. For color, that’s something that doesn’t translate well into tactile form. So, we often change something from color to texture, like different swatches, so that it is readable for him. In essence, we’re working with zeros and ones instead of a whole gradient.

“To design for blind individuals, I would suggest designing with them.” - Daniel Bein

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Can you walk us through the design process of designing the sequence of courses?

JC We’re designing as we go. Working with Daniel is a collaborative process. We can have an idea about how a certain process might be useful for someone without sight, but we don’t really know if it actually works. So we’re constantly trying something and evaluating whether it works, and there’s a bit of openness built into the design of the syllabus and the design of the curriculum. One specific goal I have for this class is to have everyone in the studio doing a similar thing. So everyone in the studio is thinking about making designs in an algorithmic way, using certain rules and parameters that define how those rules are implemented, such as the numbers and sizes of things. One major way we encourage blind or low-vision students to engage with software that lacks a graphical user interface is by creating Python code that mimics what is typically done in Grasshopper or in a traditional graphic parametric language. A rule-based algorithmic approach translates well into code. All the students in the class are doing the same projects; the tools they use may differ slightly, but their thinking is similar. HS Broadly, though, from a curricular standpoint, the foundation studios equip you with a process, tools, and a language. What skills do we want you to have by the end of these foundation studios and your studio education? We work backwards from that. For the projects themselves, it is not a question of you learning how to design a school in all its intricacies and complexities; it’s more thinking about how that particular project is a vehicle for teasing out particular skills. When you’re designing the project, it is intended to test out different kinds of processes and outcomes as a way to equip you to use those as a design process more broadly. JC That process of testing is something that comes in from the first year, second year, third year, and fourth year. The things that we test are different. But at the heart of it is this idea of a feedback loop, and when you’re in the studio, you make a thing, and there’s a cue saying it’s a test, an idea, and to see whether that idea works with regard to solving a problem. To see if your solution works, we need to feel, see, hear, or taste it. It needs to output in a way that our senses can digest it.

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HS Essentially, we need to understand the implications of what you’re proposing. That’s where I’m thinking when it comes to representation. We don’t set up a problem and say everyone will reach the same answer. We’re setting up guardrails around the solution set, but for every student, their projects will ask and answer slightly different questions. DB Largely because conversational exchange is the area for which the fewest tools currently exist. For final production, there are already tools available outside the professional ecosystem—granted, they can be very slow. Microsoft PowerPoint, for instance, is a program that I can drive. But they’re not suited to the rapid production needed to create an intermediate schematic, send it to someone, and then make another based on their feedback.

Drawings are printed on swell paper to create raised lines, transforming visual images into tactile graphics. Photo by Jaxon Womack

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“For the projects themselves, it’s not a question of you learning how to design a school in all its intricacies and complexities; it’s more thinking about how that particular project is a vehicle for teasing out particular skills.” - Hugh Swiatek

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Could you elaborate more on what the 3D printing presentation process might look like?

JC To shorten the feedback loop, we need to automate the process of transferring designs from CAD software to the real world, especially now that 3D printing has become so fast and Rhino and Grasshopper can generate G-code. We haven’t quite gotten there yet, but the ambition is to have the production of designs and the output of those designs happen within a single command-line interface. So using Python to drive multiple software programs: one for CAD, one for G-code output to the printer, and one for creating an image to put on the swell paper, the 2D tactile thing. Is there a single interface that we can use to drive these multiple design tools? For example, this semester, we have 3D printed base materials. Using a tactile baseboard for modeling or drawing allows for the insertion of rebar tie wire, resulting in more accurate 3D physical sketches. So manipulate parameters or whatever the measurements are at the beginning and end and then be able to output an STL that Isaac is able to help at this point run through the 3D printer. We’re also using the 3D printer more graphically, such as printing on fabric and creating 3D prints with holes, as part of our graphic novel, the studio’s final deliverable. Something that can literally pop up or something that literally has different layers of information, more than the binary of black and white. DB In part, models are inherently tactile, and iteration ideally is serial. So you’re making lots of things and producing those and testing out different ideas. One of the ways that we’re thinking about 3D printing is a way to speed up that process of making things that are tactile and that you can test out ideas and test out differences on it. Rather than thinking about 3D printing as just the thing you use at the very end to develop a model that represents all of the decisions you’ve made up until that point, use it throughout the process as a way to test out decisions, but do so fluidly and quickly. So for one assignment in the studio this year, we were to make several iterations of structure based on a given set of parameters. What we ended up doing was using a large language model to write out some code in Python with basically a “parametric jig.” I had a set of numbers at the top that controlled the model’s layout, and I could adjust them. Then anytime I wanted to generate a model from that, I just pressed a button, and over in Rhino, which is currently impossible to drive with a screen reader, it would make the model, and I would go back to the text. First off, I’d use the scanty eyesight that I have left to look at the model and think, okay, did that do what I wanted it to? Not really; this skylight makes absolutely no sense. Let’s move that in the next iteration. Then I’ll

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go back to the text, change the numbers, generate it again, and find out that whatever I did to the numbers completely broke it. Now we’ve got this bizarre rectangle sticking up out of the roof where it doesn’t belong; go back and change the numbers again. We ended up with probably thirty or forty models, of which barely nine were actually true iterations, and most of the others were just steps in between iterations as I moved a number and the entire thing broke. JC What’s cool about it is I set up the basic Python script so that it worked in a way that was very close to how a Grasshopper script worked. All the students got a Grasshopper script or the Python script. What was interesting was that these guys, the research assistants and Daniel, used a large language model to edit and augment the original Python script I had given them. So two weeks later, it came back in, and the stuff was starting to change, you know? They were already altering, like, “You guys figure out Python?” “No, we don’t speak Python yet, but we do speak CLT.” We’re able to talk to the genie in the box and start to develop things. HS The code is a way to integrate text-space workflow rather than one that relies on the graphical user interface.

Close up of a section drawing with raised texture hatches. Photo by Jaxon Womack

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“One aspect is to do what has historically been done: make drawings and models. And the other thing is thinking about what being a blind, low-vision designer offers that is new or novel and not a way that we ‘normally’ see the world.” - John Clark

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JC One big aspect is how to “see” or understand the images someone presents to you. Most of our architecture education is looking at pictures, books, and websites of architecture that we can’t visit, things that aren’t in Champaign-Urbana or in Chicago. So how do we learn from images of buildings to get information out of them, especially if we can’t see the image? HS As collaborators, we’re all trying things out, testing them, seeing what works. Something that happens all the time in the studio is, as a student, you come in with the drawing, and then we talk about it, but we also draw in a relationship to it. Daniel and his partner came up with using a 3D printing pen to create an overlay on top of drawings. I think part of the process for us is that we have ideas about things that might work and, through the process, conceive of different approaches we maybe wouldn’t have anticipated. JC Rhino’s not legible to screen readers. Autodesk, AutoCAD, Revit, and Adobe—not legible to a screen reader. All the tools that we normally use aren’t legible. So I’m thinking about how to design a workshop that focuses on a specific goal. How do I fill in a texture inside of a shape? But the flip side is to reconsider what it means to produce a drawing and what traditional deliverables are. We’re thinking about this from both aspects. One aspect is to do what has historically been done: make drawings and models. And the other thing is thinking about what being a blind, low-vision designer offers that is new or novel and not a way that we “normally” see the world.

What tools and techniques do you use most for curriculum adaptation, and what works and what doesn’t?

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Dunes and Swales, Daniel Bein Photo by Jaxon Womack

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How does the development of these specific tools and techniques dovetail with your own spatial awareness of the environment?

DB All of the workarounds we are having to come up with are because perspectives are so hard to adapt, which lines up very cleanly with a deficit I have in experiencing perspective myself because I have no depth perception. Essentially, I’ve never learned to think in perspective. I primarily think in plan and section, which makes orthographic stuff great. It’s intuitive to me. A lot of my classmates have to learn to think orthographically, whereas it’s the easiest to adapt for me. JC We’re used to seeing the world through stereotomy. We have few cones and rods on the back of our eyes, and from those cones, a perspective emerges. When you see the world through stereotomy, learning to see it in abstracted orthography is very difficult. And it’s interesting that with Daniel, the situation is flipped. I think perspective for Daniel is going to turn into something that’s like acoustic mapping or the construction of spatial haptic models.

Close up of hatches Photo by Jaxon Womack

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HS Part of what we’re trying to arrive at is almost a template for outputting drawings so that rather than every output being sort of bespoke, we’re currently coming up with a technique and developing conventions for that technique. That inherently makes serial production or iteration challenging when you’re doing something or trying an approach for the first time. Once we can identify what’s effective and integrate it into a repeatable workflow, we’re going to gain efficiency and be able to work in an iterative way and in something that’s much more fluid. One way we were thinking about the process is that we’re interrogating the design process and looking for gates. We are looking for barriers in the process we are teaching and trying to identify and open those gates. JC This approach means that Daniel can drive any workflow completely independently. The gate would be a moment when he needs to ask for help or have an assistant.

What’s a method or tool you find particularly empowering for your design process? Can you expand on the perspective that you found to be successful?

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What is your advice for someone who’s thinking about becoming an architecture student?

DB The answer to the question is almost in the question itself. To design for blind individuals, I would suggest designing with them. In other words, don’t just read the Americans with Disabilities Act and follow its instructions. That’ll get you some distance; it makes your work navigable, but not much more. When people are missing the primary sense required to experience a design, go talk to them and figure out what in the design impacts how they experience it. I know Chris Downey is one of the well-known blind architects. He was a practicing architect and then lost his vision. So, he just said, “Well, I’m still going to be a practicing architect.” One important aspect that Downey focuses on, and that I encourage everyone to consider, is that if your space is visually alive, it should also be audibly, tactilely, and aesthetically vibrant. Another point is rational navigation routes. Don’t complicate things unnecessarily, as this will make it take longer for people to learn how to navigate your building.

What does inclusivity DB mean to you and what are I think of inclusivity, whether that’s something academic or in your ways of achieving it? practice, as creating an environment where the only thing that should determine someone’s success or failure is how they relate to the actual core competencies of the field. In architecture, or design in general, what’s being tested is your ability to design: to take in information and synthesize it into a working design. What is being tested, but doesn’t need to be tested, is “How well can you draw a picture?” Pictures are how most architects think, so it’s good to learn how to do it. However, there are already architects who can work without drawing a picture. I can think in plan and section, and the only thing stopping me from drawing those plans and sections to show to other people is the fact that I can’t see what I draw. That’s no longer a merit. That’s just an obstacle that can be overcome, and in an inclusive environment, people would help me to overcome it, and that’s what you all are doing. HS Daniel started in my class in ARCH 171, with an assistant in class, Livi Barr. This semester, that assistant is Isaac. Our goal is to put

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Isaac out of a job: we want the curriculum to be fully accessible to Daniel as a designer so he can express himself like an architect and communicate his ideas independently. JC It’s a basic question. Inclusive means everyone. True inclusivity means questioning the ways it has always been and, when possible, coming up with alternatives to broaden people’s ability to engage with the world. Speaking for myself, I believe in the mission of expanding the pipeline and increasing the number of perspectives brought into design studios across the world. Inclusivity means recognizing that everyone is on spectrums of some sort. We are designers, and if we think the world is full of problems waiting to be solved, why not solve them?

This project is evolving quickly in real-time as the capabilities of frontier AI models increase. Since this interview, the team has reworked the codebase with the help of Claude Code (an agentic AI LLM) and now has a fully working prototype of the iterative feedback loop for designing in Rhino via voice and chat. This prototype features a custom, flexible, and adaptable graphical user interface tailored for blind and low-vision users, and it outputs tactile 2D and 3D media for full integration into design studio workflows. AI is integrated at multiple levels to generate geometry, create code for geometry, and describe or query the contents of the digital model. Other tools are part of the blind/low-vision architecture package, including automated photo-to-tactile-graphic conversion pipelines and image/ video descriptions.

“Inclusivity means recognizing that everyone is on spectrums of some sort. We are designers, and if we think the world is full of problems waiting to be solved, why not solve them?” - John Clark

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ILLINOIS SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE Daniel Bein is a legally blind architecture student at the Illinois School of Architecture who is working with Illinois School of Architecture professors to make architecture education accessible for blind and low-vision students.

Isaac Tu is an architecture student, teaching assistant and researcher at the Illinois School of Architecture, focused on accessibility in architectural education through tactile representation. His work explores how visually intensive design tools can be translated into physical and sensory formats, developing tactile drawings, 3D-printed models, wire-based sketching methods, and parametric workflows that support low-vision students in engaging drawing, modeling, and spatial understanding.

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John Clark is a designer and educator working across disciplines of spatial design, object design, fabrication, project management, planning, computation, design research, and teaching. His work examines how tools and workflows shape who can participate in design, with an emphasis on contemporary hybrid digital/analog practices and accessible methods of making, modeling, and representation. He is developing AI-assisted pedagogy and tooling of design processes that support multiple ways of sensing, learning, and working, broadening the scope and reach of architectural practice. He has practiced with international and Chicago-based teams on projects ranging from large-scale master planning and creative consultancy to hands-on design/build architecture and the fabrication of custom furniture and art objects. In addition to teaching at UIUC, he has taught design and fabrication courses at the University of Illinois Department of Landscape Architecture, AIADO (Architecture, Interior Architecture, and Designed Objects) at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois Chicago. He enjoys teaching beginning students contemporary 3D literacy and building confidence through curious, iterative, hands-on experimentation in all mediums.

Hugh Swiatek is a Teaching Assistant Professor in the Illinois School of Architecture. Born in Poland and raised on Chicago’s Southwest Side, he received his Master of Architecture from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His professional experience includes work with the Maine-based design-build firm GO-Logic and Reifsteck Wakefield Fanning in Champaign. His projects have included prefabricated residential homes built to the Passive House standard, a supportive housing community for medically fragile individuals experiencing homelessness, and an addition to the University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine Teaching Hospital. Hugh teaches design studios and serves as co-coordinator of the Foundation design studios. Across both his teaching and practice, he focuses on the relationship between drawing and making. He is a recipient of the Urbana Public Arts Grant, and his work has been exhibited at the Krannert Art Museum. His work has been published in Abitare, MAS Context, and The New York Times. He was a design contributor to the 2025 Chicago Sukkah Design Festival and participated in the 2025 Chicago Architecture Biennial.

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Spring 2026: Intention Outpost Office Lindsay Har kema Lisa Yun Lee studio:indigenous Illinois School of Architecture