Nowhere Collective
About
Catherine Baker, FAIA, is the founder of Nowhere Collaborative, a woman-owned and place-based architecture practice formed in 2022 and based in the rural town of Boswell, IN. Through creative, sustained, and hyper-local community engagement, the firm strives for equitable development within the community. With over thirty years of experience in community-based design in Chicago, Catherine’s career is dedicated to inclusive design. Her degrees in architecture and the social sciences allow for non-traditional approaches to built work that is rooted in the intersection of the social and technical disciplines of architecture. Catherine is currently focused on applying her experience to understanding people and problems, making connections, and formulating equitable solutions to the development, design of buildings, and built-environments in a rural context. Catherine is an adjunct professor at IIT, regularly participates on design juries, and has been invited to speak at local and national conferences on housing and community-based design. She was a member of AIA’s delegation to the United Nation’s Habitat III in Quito, Ecuador, was appointed to the Chicago DPD Committee on Design, and she has presented on community-based design at the Danish Architecture Center in Copenhagen, Denmark.
