Analog 2016

Lucas Daniel is a Partner at gravitytank. With over 10 years of consulting experience, Lucas has a passion for problem solving and involving others in the innovation process. In 2011, he saw a need for holistic or systems-level thinking in food innovation and built a team and practice focused on Food Experience Design. Prior to his work with gravitytank, Lucas received his Master of Design degree from the Institute of Design, IIT. He has a diverse background in interaction design, publishing, and cultural anthropology. He holds a BA in Anthropology from UC Berkeley.

José Esparza Chong Cuy is the new Pamela Alper Associate Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Esparza was most recently based in Mexico City, where he was the Associate Curator at the Museo Jumex. In 2013, Esparza was curator of the New Publics program at the Lisbon Architecture Triennial titled Close, Closer. José aims to connect art with contemporary and historic world events, to situate it within a larger social, economic, and political discourse.

Jeanne Gang is the founding partner of Studio Gang, an international architecture and urban design practice. Known for a distinctive approach that expands beyond architecture’s conventional boundaries, she creates striking places that connect people with their communities and the natural environment. Her diverse portfolio across the Americas and Europe includes an expansion to the American Museum of Natural History, a new United States Embassy in Brazil, and the Global Terminal at O’Hare International Airport. A MacArthur Fellow and a Professor in Practice at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Jeanne has been named one of TIME Magazine’s most influential people in the world. Her studio’s new monograph, Studio Gang: Architecture, is available now

Martin Kastner founded Crucial Detail in 1998, shortly after his arrival in the US. He was born in the Czech Republic, trained as a blacksmith and spent some time restoring historical metalworks at a castle in Western Bohemia before moving on to natural materials design and sculpture. He. He is best known for his Alinea serviceware concepts, which landed him on The Future Laboratory’s list of 100 most influential individuals in contemporary design.

Thomas Kelley was raised in Canberra, Berlin, Warsaw, Tegucigalpa, Oxford, Lima, and Washington D.C. Thomas is the recipient of the Peter Reyner Banham Fellowship from SUNY Buffalo and the Rome Prize in Architecture from the American Academy in Rome. He is currently a Clinical Assistant Professor at the UIC School of Architecture and operates an architecture collaborative with Carrie Norman under the pseudonym Norman Kelley. The practice has been awarded the 2014 Young Architect’s Prize by the Architectural League of New York and their design work is currently represented by Volume Gallery in Chicago. Their recently designed Aesop boutique opened a few weeks ago in Wicker Park.

Klaus is an architectural cartoonist active since the early 2000s. Focused on the critique of the architectural star system, the revision of the radical visions of the ’60s and ’70s, and the reinterpretation of the icons of architectural history, both within the discipline and the media, his cartoons have been published in magazines such as Architectural Design, Architectural Review, Arq, Arq'a, eVolo, Clog, Conditions, Domus, Harvard Design Magazine, J–A Jornal Arquitectos, MAS Context, STUDIO, The New City Reader, Volume, as well as several books. He has been a regular contributor to German magazine Uncube (“Numerus Klausus,” 2013–2016), A10: New European Architecture (“Interchange,” 2014–2016), and Arquine, where he writes and illustrates his section “ArquiNoir” since 2013. His work has been exhibited in cities such as Naples, Venice, Santiago (Chile), Mexico D.F., and Chicago, among others. In his other life he is also Luis Miguel (Koldo) Lus Arana, Associate Professor in the Theory and History of Architecture at the University of Zaragoza, where he teaches and writes about the intersections of architecture, media, and popular culture.

Founded by Ann Lui and Craig Reschke in 2015, Future Firm designs spaces for clients who are change-makers in their own communities. Their work spans diverse scales: from events to residential and commercial buildings to urban and territorial speculations. Future Firm also currently operates 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.

Noritaka Minami is a visual artist based in Chicago. Minami uses photography to examine spaces that exist as anachronisms in the landscape and are overlooked for their significances in understanding contemporary society. He received a BA in Art Practice from the University of California, Berkeley and an MFA in Studio Art from the University of California, Irvine. He is a recipient of grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Illinois Arts Council Agency, Santo Foundation, and Center for Cultural Innovation. Minami’s works are held in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, UCLA Architecture and Urban Design, Museum of Contemporary Photography Chicago, and Center for Photography at Woodstock. In 2015, Kehrer Verlag published his monograph titled 1972 – Nakagin Capsule Tower, which received the 2015 Architectural Book Award from the Deutsches Architekturmuseum in Frankfurt, Germany. In 2022, he was commissioned by the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University to document the architectural works of John Andrews for its forthcoming publication Architect of Uncommon Sense. He is currently an Associate Professor of Fine Arts at Loyola University Chicago. He has also taught photography at Harvard University, Wellesley College, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, UC Berkeley, and UC Irvine.

Zoë Ryan is Daniel W. Dietrich, II Director of the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania. She joined the ICA in November 2020. Prior to this, she was the John H. Bryan Chair and Curator of Architecture and Design at the Art Institute of Chicago. Her research explores the sociopolitical impact of the arts on society. Recent exhibitions include In a Cloud, in a Wall, in a Chair: Six Modernists in Mexico at Midcentury (2019) and Past Forward: Architecture and Design at the Art Institute (2017–ongoing). In 2015, she cocurated Making Place: The Architecture of David Adjaye. In 2014, Ryan was the curator of the second Istanbul Design Biennial, The Future Is Not What It Used To Be. Ryan has taught graduate seminars on curatorial studies and design history and theory at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is a member of the Design Trust International Advisory Council, Hong Kong and on the Executive Committee of the International Confederation of Architecture Museums.

Rick Valicenti is a producer, director, and collaborator working with a wide network of designers and artists. Formerly the founder and design director of Thirst, a venerable Chicago design studio, Valicenti is a recipient of the American Institute of Graphic Artists (AIGA) Medal, 2006, and the Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt National Design Award, 2011. Rick is also an invited member of AGI (Alliance Graphique Internationale). His complete works are recently archived at the Newberry Library, and the Letterform Archive in San Francisco. Large selections of Valicenti’s work are at the Ryerson Library at The Art Institute of Chicago, The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, the Lubalin Center at Cooper Union, and the Hoffmitz Milken Center for Typography at Art Center in Pasadena, California.

After 13 years of working at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, where she was Associate Curator, Tricia Van Eck left to focus on 6018North. Founded in May 2011, 6018North is an artist-centered, sustainable, nonprofit platform and venue for innovative art and culture. It is located in a dilapidated mansion, at 6018 North Kenmore in Chicago’s Edgewater neighborhood. All of their installations create unique, intimate encounters between art and audiences, a hallmark of Van Eck’s programming.

Alisa Wolfson is the EVP Head of Design at Leo Burnett, Chicago. She founded and currently oversees the agency’s Department of Design. In 2012 she received the inaugural D&AD White Pencil for her work on Recipeace, a social movement that brings people of conflict together over food. When not at work, Alisa is an active part of the Chicago design and cultural scene. She is the Design Director at Lampo, a nonprofit organization that presents experimental sound art. Alisa is also a mentor, volunteer, lecturer, and mom.