History

TIMELINE / MILESTONES

2009 / MAS Context is founded by Iker Gil, and the first meeting included Julie Michiels, Andrew Clark, and Andrew Dribin. Originally an initiative of the Chicago-based architecture and design studio MAS Studio, MAS Context quickly transitions to a nonprofit organization. Within four months of the initial meeting, the first issue of the MAS Context journal is published.

2011 / MAS Context organizes its first public events, including MAS Context: Analog, a one-day gathering that featured talks, small-scale exhibitions by photographer David Schalliol and design studio Plural, and a pop-up bookstore by Golden Age.

2011 / MAS Context collaborates with John Szot Studio to for its inaugural guest edited issue, focusing on Aberration.

2012 / Ethel Baraona Pohl, Alberto Campo Baeza, Pedro Gadanho, Jason Pickleman, Zoë Ryan, and Rick Valicenti for the first Board of Advisors.

2012 / MAS Context, along with JNL graphic design and Corkins Lodge, organizes Corkins Exchange, a gathering in New Mexico to facilitate intellectual exchange between emerging and established practitioners. Since this inaugural edition, a yearly program was established that continues to this day.

2012 / Plural, led by Jeremiah Chiu and Renata Graw, become the art directors of MAS Context, redesigning the website and seven issues.

2014 / Thirst become the art directors of MAS Context, redesigning the process to design each topic-based issue. The effort is led by Rick Valicenti and Bud Rodecker.

2019 / MAS Context begins publishing essays, articles, interviews, and photo essays on its online platform, Observations.

2020 / During the COVID-19 pandemic, MAS Context pivots to offering virtual events and featuring exhibitions online.

2021 / MAS Context publishes its first book, Radical Logic: On the Work of Ensamble Studio.

2021 / Territories of Territory Extraction by Galen Pardee / Drawing Agency becomes the first exhibition at the MAS Context Reading Room.

2022 / MAS Context unveils a new website designed by SPAN, featuring a robust archive of all past publications and events.

2022 / Architectural historian Elizabeth Blasius joins MAS Context as architectural columnist.

2022 / MAS Context publishes its first oral history, featuring architect Margaret McCurry.

2024 / As of August 2024, MAS Context has:

• Collaborated with 808 people and 58 organizations
• Published 33 journal issues, 2 books, 13 Dialogues, and 136 Observations
• Presented 174 events and 16 exhibitions and art installations

Founding and Issues

MAS Context was founded in early 2009 by Iker Gil as an open-access initiative to share relevant work, exchange ideas across disciplines and places, and help strengthen the design community in Chicago.

The first MAS Context meeting took place January 17, 2009, in Chicago, and included Iker Gil, Julie Michiels, Andrew Clark, and Andrew Dribin. Four months later, the inaugural issue of MAS Context’s journal, More, was published with Gil as editor in chief and Clark and Dribin on the editorial team. Dribin continued in his editorial role for the first four issues, while Gil, Clark, and Michiels are still part of MAS Context to this day.

Writer Paul Mougey contributed to the fourth issue, Living, and joined the editorial team for the fifth issue, Energy. Mougey uncovered hidden stories, shared sharp observations and unfiltered comments, invited contributors for short essays, and provided editorial feedback for four years, through the Surveillance issue.

Designer Michelle Benoit joined the editorial team in 2013 and would remain in that role until the Character issue, published in 2020. During those seven years, she provided editorial advising, copyediting skills, and rigor that were key to ensure that voice, grammar, and style were consistent over the years.

While Iker Gil has served as editor in chief since the inaugural issue, MAS Context has worked with numerous guest editors over the years. John Szot (Aberration) was the first guest editor, followed by The Post Family (Production), Klaus and Koldo Lus Arana (Narrative), Luis Mendo (Tokyo), Design With Company (Character), and Germane Barnes and Shawhin Roudbari (Vigilantism).

Graphic Design

Design has always been a key aspect of MAS Context’s work. Andrew Clark was the first art director, defining the overall graphic identity for each issue during the organization’s first three years.

In 2012, starting with the Communication issue, Chicago-based Plural, led by Jeremiah Chiu and Renata Graw, took the reins as art directors and developed a new logo, a new approach to the issue covers, and a new direction for the issue layouts. Plural also guided MAS Context as it moved from print-on-demand to printing locally with Graphics Arts Studio, a transition made possible by early support from the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation and the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. The seven issues that Plural designed worked seamlessly with each topic, and their partnership helped to evolve and strengthen MAS Context’s approach to design.

During the organization’s first five years, issues featured covers designed by Christopher Baker, Anthony Burrill, Jacob Chartoff, Mitch Epstein, Klaus, Jimenez Lai, Andreas E.G. Larsson, Stéphane Massa-Bidal, Larry Mayorga, Jason Pickleman, John Pobojewski, Josef Schulz, Luis Urculo, Chris Ware, and Yosigo.

In 2014, and coinciding with the fifth anniversary of MAS Context, Thirst, a communication design practice based in Chicago, became art directors. This effort was led by Rick Valicenti, Thirst’s founder and design director, and principal designer Bud Rodecker. Thirst provided a set of design guidelines that designers could follow when designing each issue. That approach established a new way for MAS Context to work with designers, making sure there was a consistent structure while allowing each publication to take on a different design approach. MAS Context has since worked with numerous guest designers in this way, including Luis Mendo, Leo Burnett Department of Design, JNL Graphic Design, Normal, Meneo, Jimmy Luu, and Bobby Joe Smith III. In Repetition, the first issue under the creative direction of Valicenti and Rodecker, each contribution was uniquely interpreted by a different Chicago-based designer.

In 2022, Chicago-based design studio Span designed a new identity for the organization. The new logo is influenced by the seminal De Stijl movement of the early 1910s, integrating a visible structure into the letterforms that evolved from the previous version designed by Thirst.

Website

The original MAS Context website, launched in 2009, was a simple online portal with downloadable PDFs of the topic-based issues. While limited, this format reflected MAS Context’s longstanding commitment to openly share work and make it freely available online.

In 2011, MAS Context launched a second version of the website, creating a responsive and graphics-driven web experience that enabled issues to continue to have a life after its publication. Articles could be also cross-referenced, allowing content to relate in new ways, beyond the print issues.

When the design team Plural became art directors in 2012, they created a new website that organized the growing output of MAS Context. During the decade that this version of the website was in use, André Corrêa consistently updated the structure to accommodate the new technical and content needs. As the organization evolved, Corrêa’s behind-the-scenes contributions allowed for new work and ideas to find their place online.

In 2022, MAS Context worked closely with design studio Span to completely redesign and rebuild the website. Today, the website provides a responsive, flexible, and typographically rich home for multiple forms of content, including long-form essays with citations, video, audio interviews, photo essays, and more. The website also functions as a robust, state-of-the-art, and interconnected archive of all past publications, events, and collaborators.

Events

Over the years, MAS Context has organized hundreds of public events, typically offered as part of a broader annual series in the spring or the fall. These events often take the form of lectures, book launches, panel discussions, film screenings, exhibitions, studio visits, and artistic installations, and nearly all are documented with photos, video footage, and/or presentation materials shared on the MAS Context website after the event.

In 2011, MAS Context organized Out of Context, which brought the organization’s collaborative approach to an in-person event for the first time. That same year, MAS Context: Analog was held in Chicago; this one-day event included talks, small-scale exhibitions, and an onsite pop-up bookstore, and has subsequently been replicated over the years in different venues across Chicago.

In 2012, in partnership with JNL Graphic Design and Corkins Lodge, MAS Context organized the first Corkins Exchange, a six-day retreat in the mountains of northern New Mexico. Bringing together a small group of artists, designers, practitioners, and thinkers, the Exchange was created to facilitate intellectual and creative dialogue across disciplines. While MAS Context no longer organizes Corkins Exchange, the retreat continues to be held annually, and has engaged over 150 participants from across the United States.

Some additional recurring events include: the MAS Context: Couplings series, first held in 2016, which asks eight architects or designers based in Chicago to share projects by others that they consider important to their own practice; and Tracing / Traces, an annual exploration of the Ryerson & Burnham Archives at the Art Institute of Chicago, which started in its current format in 2017.

MAS Context has also organized and supported numerous exhibitions and art installations. Exhibitions featuring architecture, photography, cartography, and urbanism have taken place in multiple venues, including such projects as Geometry of Light by Luftwerk in collaboration with Iker Gil at the Farnsworth House in Plano, Illinois and a similar art intervention at the German Pavilion in Barcelona designed by Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich (both in 2019); artistic installations by Germane Barnes (2022) and Design With Company (2023) at the Concéntrico Festival in Logroño, Spain; and “Welcome to Tribuneville: An Imaginary Vision of an Old Chicago That Could Have Been,” a hand-drawn animation by architectural cartoonist Klaus installed on 150 Media Stream’s 150 ft x 22 ft media wall in Chicago (2024).

In 2021, MAS Context established the MAS Context Reading Room, a space in Wicker Park, Chicago dedicated to present project-based exhibitions. The MAS Context Reading Room has since featured the work of Galen Pardee, Noritaka Minami, Virginia Hanusik, Kwong Von Glinow, and Noemí Blager and Tapio Snellman.

Books

In 2021, MAS Context published its first book, Radical Logic: On the Work of Ensamble Studio, documenting the first twenty years of the Boston- and Madrid-based architecture office at a key moment in their career. Through specially commissioned interviews with the architects, guest essays, and photographic documentation of their work by photographer James Florio, the book provided unique insight into the ideas that drive the studio, the ambitions behind their key projects, and their ongoing explorations. Winner of design awards and widespread recognition, the book was also the basis for James Florio to receive the prestigious Julius Shulman Institute’s Excellence in Photography Award in 2022.

Also in 2021, MAS Context published Nocturnal Landscapes: Urban Flows of Global Metropolises that documented and expanded the exhibition of the same name presented in Chicago in 2019. The project observes and analyzes cities at night from an interdisciplinary perspective, with cartographic representations by architects Mar Santamaria and Pablo Martínez of 300.000 Km/s and nighttime photography by David Schalliol. The publication includes essays by Kota Abe, Iker Gil, Ann Lui, Pablo Martínez, Ciro Miguel, Noora Niasari, Craig Reschke, Mar Santamaria, David Schalliol, Olga Subirós, and Sumayya Vally.

MAS Context is currently working on several new books to be published in the near future.

Dialogues

MAS Context began publishing in-depth conversations and oral histories in 2015. With a focus on design and the built environment in and around Chicago, the Dialogues series started with conversations hosted by Stephen Killion and were presented as audio interviews. The series is now presented in text format and its content has evolved from long interviews to oral histories, providing a comprehensive overview of the life and career of architects and designers such as Margaret McCurry, Robert L. Wesley, Dan Wheeler, and Kristine Fallon. The oral histories go beyond the description of projects, exploring early education, influences, motivations behind projects, and personal reflections. In 2023, beginning with an oral history with Chicago architect Margaret McCurry, Dialogues are now donated to the Chicago Architects Oral History Project at The Art Institute of Chicago.

Observations

In 2019, MAS Context debuted its online publishing platform, Observations, which includes original articles, essays, interviews, and photo essays about the built environment and the people and conditions that shape it. This format allows MAS Context to continue to support existing contributors as well expand its network with new voices.

In 2020, Observations became the home to exhibitions that were canceled or shut down early due to the COVID-19 outbreak. The aim was to support and make visible the work that many people had done and that became invisible due to the global pandemic. During that time, MAS Context featured twelve exhibitions from around the world.

With our interest in building long-term relationships with contributors, in 2022, architectural historian Elizabeth Blasius began contributing monthly columns to Observations.

Collaboration

Collaboration lies at the heart of everything MAS Context does. The organization has built a strong network of individuals and organizations locally, nationally, and globally throughout its history, which has enabled it to function as a connective, generative resource for the urban design community.

Since its earliest days, MAS Context has built an ever-expanding network of contributors. MAS Context works to nurture and support its contributors, with relationships that span years and multiple collaborations. For example, after guest editing the Vigilantism issue, Germane Barnes, Shawhin Roubari, and MAS Context collaborated again with the installation Block Party at the 2021 Chicago Architecture Biennial and, in 2022, MAS Context supported Germane Barnes’s Intersect installation at the Concéntrico Festival in Spain. As another example, MAS Context supported visual artist Verity-Jane Keefe as she developed new work and research on “Post Ford Landscapes: Dagenham to Detroit” as part of her Arts Council England / British Council International Development Fund. A key goal of MAS Context’s work is to leverage its structure and network to support the work of contributors through long-term initiatives.

Partnerships with Chicago-based organizations also play an important role in much of MAS Context’s programming. Longstanding, ongoing partnerships include organizations such as the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, IIT College of Architecture, American Institute of Architects (AIA) Chicago, and the Society of Architectural Historians. Other Chicago-based organizational collaborations have included Chicago Architectural Center, Gene Siskel Film Center, The Art Institute of Chicago, and the Instituto Cervantes of Chicago.

Board of Advisors

In 2012, MAS Context established a board of advisors consisting of designers working across disciplines, from architects, graphic designers, and artists, to academics, curators, and publishers. The original board of advisors included Ethel Baraona Pohl, Alberto Campo Baeza, Pedro Gadanho, Jason Pickleman, Zoë Ryan, and Rick Valicenti. Three years later, MAS Context introduced four new members to its board of advisors: Geoff Goldberg, Michel Rojkind, Alisa Wolfson, and Mimi Zeiger. In 2022, MAS Context expanded the board of advisors, with the inclusion of Paola Aguirre, Germane Barnes, and Sumayya Vally.