Ann Lui

A thread emerges across disciplines of the elusive promise of other futures: their resistance to hegemonic conditions of capitalism and colonialism; their catalyzing of new questions and discourses (Delany: "Image first. Then explanation"); their unique ability to express lived experience and collective encounters untold by other mediums. This talk will explore how "futures" can describe a certain mode of architectural practice: an approach which, by necessity, spans across scales and temporalities in Lui's recent work in texts, exhibitions, buildings, and urban design. 

AIA continuing education credits pending

Ann Lui, AIA, is a registered architect and founding principal of Future Firm, a Chicago-based architecture and design research practice. Future Firm designs spaces, big and small, for people to come together in new ways: from pop-up exhibition spaces, to residential and commercial buildings, to urban and territorial speculations. 

Future Firm’s work has been exhibited at Storefront for Art & Architecture, New Museum’s Ideas City, and the Chicago Architecture Foundation and published in The Architect’s Newspaper, Chicago Architect, Mas Context and Newcity. Ann was co-curator of the U.S. Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2018 titledDimensions of Citizenship. She co-edited, with Gediminas Urbonas, of Public Space? Lost and Found (MIT/SA+P Press, 2015) on aesthetic and spatial practices in the civic realm. Currently, Ann also organizes The Night Gallery, a nocturnal exhibition space on Chicago's south side, which features video and film works by artists and architects from sunset to sunrise. Ann was recently named Newcity’s “Designer of the Moment” and Crain’s “40 Under 40.” Previously, Ann practiced at SOM, Ann Beha Architects and Morphosis Architects. She holds an SMArchS from MIT and a B.Arch from Cornell University, where she was awarded the Charles Goodwin Sands Medal and the Clifton Beckwith Brown Memorial Medal.