Common Chicago

Paola Aguirre Serrano (Mexico) and Dennis Milam (United States) are partners at Borderless Studio, an architecture and urban design practice based in San Antonio and Chicago guided by spatial justice and equitable design values, and rooted in research, collaboration, and meaningful exchanges. Founded in 2016, Borderless’s work centers in reimagining spaces collectively, fostering multicultural, multidisciplinary teams to drive collaborative design with tangible outcomes while cultivating civic leadership by design–through design. Borderless has been a contributor to the Chicago Architecture Biennial (2019, 2021) and recognized by the MacArthur Creative Placemaking Award (2022), the Architectural League of New York Emerging Voices (2022), the Americans for the Arts Pérez Prize in Public Art & Civic Design (2022), and the United States Artist Fellowship (2025).

Civic Projects is a hybrid architecture practice based in Chicago that takes a participatory approach to designing, building teams, and working collaboratively with communities and organizations to develop projects that address their needs. Their goal is to expand the role of architecture, utilizing incremental approaches in conjunction with long-term strategic thinking to bring thoughtfully considered solutions to their clients. Their projects reflect what is unique about each client and each project’s context. Civic Projects has extensive experience in designing Academic Buildings, Not-For-Profit Institutions, Retail and Commercial Spaces, Multi-Family Residential Buildings, and Museum and Exhibition Spaces. Projects include the Obama Presidential Center Museum, Yollocalli - the National Museum of Mexican Art’s education outreach program in a converted fire station and the upcoming Sunshine Community Center. Civic Projects Architecture is a Minority-Owned and Women-Owned Business.

Converge Architecture is dedicated to bringing design-forward thinking to empower important projects and the communities they serve. By merging creative, yet pragmatic design with a deep understanding of our clients’ mission, they create spaces that are authentic and place community at their core. They are a collaborative studio grounded in these shared values: openness, curiosity, challenge-taking, precision, and responsiveness. They are fortunate to have amazing projects and clients including the Sankofa Village Wellness Center, It Takes A Village Leadership Academy, The Roof Crop, the MAAFA Center for Arts & Activism, Beloved Community Family Wellness, the Chicago Sukkah Design Festival, and the African Heritage Hut. Converge Architecture is based in the Pilsen neighborhood in Chicago, Illinois.

Could Be Design creates seriously playful spaces that initiate participation, companionship, and solidarity among multiple communities. Directed by Joseph Altshuler and Zack Morrison, the Chicago- and Urbana-based design practice imagines the built environment as an animate being with agency of its own. From exuberant interiors to interactive public spaces, the practice positions architecture as an active character in the world, enacting a built environment full of vibrant color, shapely form, and intimate encounters. Could Be Design is a curatorial partner for the 2024–25 cycle of Exhibit Columbus and the Artistic Director of the Chicago Sukkah Design Festival, a community-driven public art and architecture exhibition in the North Lawndale neighborhood. Could Be Design’s work at the intersection of architecture and public art has been featured at Exhibit Columbus, Chicago Architecture Biennial’s fifth edition, Miami Art Week, the Milwaukee Art Museum, and the Elmhurst Art Museum. Could Be Design was awarded the 2024 Roberta Feldman Architecture for Social Justice Award by the AIA Chicago Foundation and the 2023 Architectural League Prize by The Architectural League of New York. Joseph is assistant professor of architecture at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; Zack is a frequent guest critic at architecture schools throughout the Midwest.

Drumlin PLLC is a Chicago-based architecture firm. Formed in 2023 by partners James Holland, AIA, NOMA, LEED AP and Matthew Messner, AIA, after nearly twenty years of informal collaboration, Drumlin serves a broad set of clients. Recent work includes cultural projects with Native American nonprofits and African American Labor Museums, as well as housing projects across Chicago’s South Side. Holland is current President of the Illinois Chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA) and a member of the Chicago Council on High Rise Buildings (CCHRB) and the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH). As an architect, writer, critic, and educator, Messner has published nearly 500 articles and has taught at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee and the Illinois Institute of Technology. His design work and writing has been featured in international galleries and publications, including Architectural Review, the Architect’s Newspaper, Architectural Record, the Storefront for Art and Architecture, the Graham Foundation, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Art House of Zagreb, the Chicago Architecture Biennial, and the Venice Biennale. Drumlin is minority and veteran-owned, and actively supports Black, Native, and veteran communities through advocacy, design, and mentorship.

Future Firm is a Chicago-based architecture and design research office, whose projects serve civic changemakers through an ideas-driven approach. Founded by Ann Lui and Craig Reschke in 2015, the practice spans diverse spatial scales with a focus on arts and culture organizations, non-profit facilities, and mission-driven businesses. Future Firm operates on the core belief that architecture and design should focus on building a more equitable and thriving city for everyone. To this end, our approaches are built on the idea that design is a process, not an end result, which seeks to improve outcomes through iteration, testing, and discussion. In order to tackle these urgent questions in the built environment, Future Firm’s practice is modeled after a mountain climbing team, focusing on elevating diverse points of view and interdisciplinary approaches to solve complex challenges. Notable projects and clients include Revolution Workshop, the Art Institute of Chicago, Nike, Mobile Makers Chicago, Bronzeville Winery, and Kimball Art Center. Future Firm’s work has been exhibited at Exhibit Columbus, Storefront for Art & Architecture, Shenzhen Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Architecture/Urbanism, New Museum’s Ideas City, and the Chicago Architecture Center. The practice has been published in The Architect’s Newspaper, Architect Magazine, and Wallpaper.

JGMA is a progressive architecture and design practice committed to active community involvement and the enrichment of lives through the attentive and dynamic organization of space and materiality. They believe quality design has the unique ability to influence civic life, inspire innovation, and transform communities. With offices in Chicago, Milwaukee, and Houston, JGMA is devoted to serving a diverse range of neighborhoods—making them incomparable places to live, work, and visit. This mission emerged from the realization that discrepancy exists in the allocation of resources across our cities. They actively work to address these inequities by designing spaces that uplift and empower all communities. Their work has earned recognition from national and international institutions, including the Architecture MasterPrize, Architizer, Architect Magazine, Landmarks Illinois, and Richard H. Driehaus Foundation. Esteemed organizations such as the AIA, the Association of Licensed Architects, and HACIA have acknowledged their design excellence and leadership. Some of their most notable projects include Northeastern Illinois University – El Centro, Humboldt Park Health Wellness Center, Kleo Art Residences, and Pioneer Bank Development.

KOO is a Chicago-based architecture, interior design, and urban planning firm. They craft buildings and interior environments that create a unique identity for each project. They create space and atmosphere. They embrace the new, temporal, and experimental while staying mindful of the technical rigors that experimentation requires.

Latent is a Chicago based award-winning architecture and urban design firm founded in 2010 with a commitment to social and spatial justice. Their collaborative co-design process allows them to fully integrate all aspects of project into a comprehensive implementation strategy that maintains timeline, budget, and design excellence. Their diverse team is ideally suited to listen, analyze, and define integrated building strategies that address accessibility, sustainability, and economic vitality. They support you to create spaces for people to tell their story to work, live, and thrive.

Since 1987, LBBA has collaborated with socially minded organizations and developers to identify the goals, needs, and issues within communities while navigating the architectural process. Through these lasting partnerships, they design sustainable, affordable housing and community spaces that thoughtfully empower neighborhoods from within. They utilize their creative and technical skills, industry connections, and environmental expertise to approach each project in a way that provides lasting value. Architecture is their profession, but building community is their passion.

Norman Kelley is an architecture and design collaborative based in Chicago and Cambridge, MA. Founded in 2012 by Carrie Norman and Thomas Kelley, the practice revises objects to examine history, measure attention span, and complicate authorship. Built works operate at the scale of buildings, furniture, and industrial design objects. The collaborative has taught design studios at Yale University, Harvard University, and Syracuse University; contributed work to the 14th Venice Architecture Biennial (2014), the Chicago Architecture Biennial (2015, 2017), and the Whitney Biennial (2019); and is a recipient of the Architectural League Prize (2014) and a United States Artists Fellowship (2018). Thomas Kelley is a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome (FAAR ’13) and Associate Professor at the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). Carrie Norman is a registered architect and Assistant Professor and Director of Undergraduate Major and Minor Programs at MIT School of Architecture and Planning.

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.

Since 1935, Perkins&Will has believed that design has the power to make the world a better, more beautiful place. That’s why clients and community members on nearly every continent partner with them to design healthy, happy places in which to live, learn, work, play, and heal. They are passionate about human-centered design, and how design can impact our lives through sustainability, resilience, well-being, diversity and inclusion, and mobility. They are committed to advancing design through research. Their team of 2,500 professionals provides worldwide interdisciplinary services in architecture, interior design, branded environments, urban design, landscape architecture, and more, and includes their partners Portland, Nelson\Nygaard, Genesis Planning, and Pierre-Yves Rochon (PYR).

Resolver Studio is a design practice based in Chicago and led by Claudia Ansorena (Cuba) and Rogelio Cadena (USA). The practice is grounded in the Cuban spirit of resolver—to make do with what is around—as an attitude towards material reuse and contextual thinking. The work intends to bring visibility and activation to underused spaces that have been affected by disinvestment and gentrification to instead support communities through projects that provide a platform for agency, ownership, and neighborhood development. The duo met while studying architecture at the University of Miami. In Miami, they collaborated on projects that include Casa Florida (2021)—a five-unit apartment building that addresses the city’s missing middle housing—and Neushop (2017)—a flagship store and community space. Claudia went on to receive a Master of Architecture from Yale University, where she was the editor of Retropecta 44. Rogelio went on to receive a Master in Architecture and Urban Design from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, receiving the Urban Design Thesis Prize for his research on the historic Chicago Park Boulevard System. More recently, their work in Chicago includes activations along the Boulevard, such as Piñatas on the Blvd (2024).

Ross Barney Architects, led by Carol Ross Barney, FAIA, HASLA, who was honored with the 2023 American Institute of Architects Gold Medal, is a visionary architecture, urban planning, and landscape architecture design firm. They passionately believe that excellent design should be accessible to everyone, viewing it as a fundamental human right rather than a privilege reserved for a few. Their work emphasizes public buildings and spaces that improve daily life, resulting in distinctive and culturally meaningful structures. Notable projects include the Oklahoma City Federal Building, which replaced the bombed Murrah Federal Building, as well as the Chicago Riverwalk, flagship restaurants for McDonald's in Chicago and Disney World, the Searle Visitor Center at Lincoln Park Zoo, JRC Synagogue, CTA Cermak and Morgan Street Stations, the University of Minnesota Duluth Civil Engineering Building, and the Multi-Modal Terminal at O’Hare International Airport. Additionally, they designed the NASA Aerospace Communications Facility, Railyard Park in Rogers, Arkansas, and Chicago’s new DuSable Park. Their innovative and impactful work has garnered over 200 major awards, including the AIA Gold Medal, Cooper Hewitt National Design Award, fourteen AIA Honor Awards, two AIA COTE Top Ten Project Awards for sustainability, and more than 45 AIA Chicago Awards, reflecting their significant influence in the field.

Site Design Group is a nationally award-winning landscape architecture and urban design firm based in Chicago. Since our founding in 1990, they have built a reputation for innovation and design excellence in the creation of vibrant public spaces that are immersive, inclusive, and full of life. They are a multidisciplinary team of sixty professionals who are committed to shaping more inspiring places to live, work, and play. They work closely with their clients and communities, prioritizing equity, functionality, and collaboration in every project. Their approach combines imaginative, context-driven planning, functional systems, and “out of the box” strategies, to create spaces that excite and engage users, improve the pedestrian experience, strengthen community ties, enhance the site’s unique natural features, and push the boundaries of innovation and resiliency. From large-scale urban design to intimate neighborhood parks, they bring time, care, and a deep understanding of human scale to every project. Their design process emphasizes clear communication, attention to detail, and a thoughtful consideration of the past, current, and future needs of a given community to ensure lasting, meaningful impact.

Studio Becker Xu is a Chicago-based architecture and design studio founded by Robert Becker and Sharon Xu that explores placemaking as a plural practice. Through diverse scales and types of design, the studio investigates plural curiosities, tests plural processes, activates plural contexts, and oAers plural perspectives to engage the plural public. In 2024, their design of a rural residence—Dogtrot House—was awarded the NCModernist George Matsumoto Prize. In 2023, their reimagining of the urban two-flat—Won’t You Be My Neighbor—was selected as a finalist in Chicago’s Missing Middle Infill Housing competition and exhibition. Their work has appeared in Architectural Record, Dezeen, Dwell, The Architect’s Newspaper, and Wallpaper. Sharon received a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from MIT and a Master of Architecture from Princeton University. Robert received a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from University of Illinois Chicago and a Master of Architecture from Princeton University. Alongside practice, they are also educators at Illinois Institute of Technology and University of Illinois Chicago.

Studio Gang is an international architecture and urban design practice founded and led by Jeanne Gang. Based in Chicago with offices in New York, San Francisco, and Paris, the Studio works as a collective of over 100 architects, designers, and planners who create places that connect people with each other and the natural world. Studio Gang’s award-winning projects range from museums and community centers to urban green spaces and tall buildings. Notable among them are the reimagined Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts in Little Rock; an expanded campus for the California College of the Arts in San Francisco; and two public boathouses on the Chicago River. The office is currently designing cultural, civic, and educational projects across Europe and the Americas, including the new United States Embassy in Brasília and an expansion of the Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock. In conjunction with built work, Studio Gang also develops research, publications, and exhibitions that push design’s ability to create public awareness and give rise to change—a practice the Studio calls “actionable idealism.” The office has been honored with numerous awards, including AIA California’s 2025 Firm of the Year and Fast Company’s Most Innovative Company in Architecture.

Tom Lee Studio is an architecture and design practice based in Chicago. Thriving on projects with latent complexities and tensions, the studio seeks to craft solutions that appear simple yet are thoughtful and rigorous compositions of space, materials, and experience, reflecting the unique circumstances of each project. Ideologically, the studio endeavors to create architecture that is true to our time and place, prioritizing integrity over style, narrative over aesthetics, quality over quantity, preservation over demolition, natural over artificial, and the timeless over the fashionable. The work negotiates the fluidity of life with precision in craft and attention to detail, seeking a poetic pragmatism that aspires to endure and age gracefully over time. This approach allows the studio to undertake work across a wide range of scales and typologies. Founded in 2023 by Tom Lee, whose work has appeared in numerous publications and has won multiple design awards, including the Chicago Prize for his entry in the Chicago Architectural Club’s Thompson Center Competition. Notable projects include Leavitt House, House with a Hole, a net-zero advanced manufacturing facility, House in Three Parts, and a Buddhist cultural center, among others.

UrbanLab is an architecture and urban design firm founded by Martin Felsen and Sarah Dunn. UrbanLab blends design and research to produce progressive, site-specific buildings, spaces and places. Our projects set in motion new lifestyles, vibrant spatial experiences, and more sustainable environments. UrbanLab’s projects span scales, from large urban designs to small residential projects. Our primary interest is in forward-looking projects that speculate on a more resilient and resourceful tomorrow. UrbanLab brings invention and collaboration to each design project. We view challenges as opportunities to create memorable buildings and places that are both beautiful and surprising. We routinely assemble talented multidisciplinary teams with the highest levels of expertise and experience to realize architecture and urban design projects. Our design process is characterized by deep inquiry and collaborative exchange; design work is informed by intensive research and an experimental approach. We strive to invent innovative, environmentally responsible design solutions and create spaces that establish healthy connections between people and their environments. Built work to date includes mixed-use commercial buildings, housing, houses, restaurants, art galleries, large-scale resilient infrastructural projects, recreational landscapes, and cities.

UrbanWorks Ltd, is an acclaimed architecture, planning, and interior design firm in Chicago. The firm has won over fifty-five local and national design awards for projects including the Esperanza Health Center, Acero Veterans Memorial Campus, West Pullman Senior Housing, Big Bold Visionary Groundplanes for Gary Indiana, La Casa Student Housing, and Galewood School. Their designs have been on exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago, National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago Athenaeum, and the National Building Museum in Washington DC. The firm’s ethos lies in the intersection of urban cities, social impact, innovation, and unwavering optimism. Mindful of materiality, UrbanWorks also focuses on sustainable sourcing and environmental stewardship. They believe that well-designed spaces and places galvanize urban transformation, and their work is evidence that design solutions can be societal solutions. UrbanWorks’ portfolio exhibits a passion for cities, neighborhoods, and especially the most vulnerable sections of cities and their populations. They’ve completed dozens of large-scale city planning projects, with a strong focus on community engagement; 3,500+ units of affordable housing; and over 100 educational projects, spanning K-12 and higher education. UrbanWorks has also designed medical facilities, commercial and recreational spaces, offices, places of worship, and transportation projects.

Born in Chicago on August 16, 2008, Vladimir Radutny Architects multidisciplinary architecture practice is grounded in the belief that architecture is an art form—one with the power to initiate meaningful change and the ability to shape how we live, feel, and interact with the world around us. Founded by Vladimir Radutny, the studio is recognized for its poetic yet rigorously disciplined approach to design, where light is treated not merely as an element, but as a condition that defines space, building form, and experience. Guided by an ethos of clarity, restraint, and material integrity, the studio transforms everyday programs into experiential environments that challenge convention and heighten spatial awareness. Whether designing private residences, reimagining existing structures, or exploring conceptual ideas, each project is approached with intellectual curiosity and sensitivity—resulting in work that is timeless, unexpected, and quietly radical. The studio’s efforts have been recognized with numerous accolades, including Architectural Record’s Design Vanguard (2020), Dezeen, and Azure Awards. Vladimir Radutny Architects has also received multiple AIA Design Excellence Awards from both the National and Chicago chapters, underscoring the firm’s commitment to architecture that transcends function, engages the senses, and stirs the imagination.

Based in Chicago, Wheeler Kearns Architects (WKA) is a collective practice of architects that brings optimism, dignity, and design excellence to enrich lives and strengthen communities. The 19-person firm is dedicated to creating meaningful and impactful buildings, interiors, and landscapes—regardless of their size or complexity. As a result, its portfolio is diverse and richly varied, spanning educational, residential, institutional, commercial, and community-focused projects. Since its founding in 1987, WKA has twice been named AIA Chicago’s Firm of the Year by a national jury. WKA has placed community at the center of its work for more than three decades. Notable projects include the Broadway Youth Center (National AIA/AAH Healthcare Design Award winner), the North Lawndale Employment Network (AIA Illinois Greatest Impact Award winner), Nourishing Hope Sheridan Market (Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Award for Architectural Excellence in Community Design – First Place winner), Marwen Expansion (National SEED Award winner for Excellence in Public Interest Design), and Inspiration Kitchens Garfield Park (National Rudy Bruner Gold Medal Award winner). Other significant projects include The Alice at Goodman Theatre, Common Pantry, Lookingglass Theatre’s Lobby, Chicago Children’s Theatre, the Art Institute of Chicago’s Ryan Learning Center Renovation, and The Night Ministry.

Woodhouse Tinucci Architects is an award-winning architectural, planning and interior design firm. Their projects for Chicago’s most notable universities, institutions, and governments comprise a distinguished body of work that has earned them the Firm of the Year Award from the Chicago Chapter of the American Institute of Architects and several national AIA project awards, including the prestigious COTE Top Ten Award. Based in Chicago, the firm was founded in 1990 as David Woodhouse Architects, becoming Woodhouse Tinucci Architects in 2014. Their practice is guided by an ideal: the work that matters most is that which matters to the most people. Their optimism about public architecture serving our communities through authenticity, access, and progressivism has drawn them into partnership with institutions that share this mission and represent the forefront of educational, cultural, and recreational life. The challenges posed by the complexity of their needs, the necessity of their programming, the bounds of their resources, and the diversity of their audiences are a strong spur toward the creation of an architecture that makes a difference. Their projects for local municipalities, park districts, and universities have activated parks, restored civic landmarks, nurtured learning, and connected community—all while drawing people into a meaningful and sustainable relationship with the natural environment.

The trajectory of X’s practice is an exploration of the human interface between our built environment, technology, history, futurity, our own self-relevance, and how we navigate this relationship to construct our notions of order. As an Indigenous Futurist, he believes art can transcend representation and become something sacred that embodies life. He believes that through a multiplicity of creation and being, our knowledge can be embedded into the landscape providing access for future generations of prosperity. His work directly engages the notions of a post-human world but actualizes to activate the possibility of our own prosperity by painting our self-constructed limitations and deconstructing them. Nilay Mistry is a landscape architect and urban designer based in Chicago with several years of experience in design practice and education in the United States, Africa, and Asia. Raised in an immigrant family, he is fascinated with calibrating parks, streets, and informal settlements as shared spaces for all participants in the city. Nilay attended Chicago Public Schools and earned a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture degree from the University of Illinois before pursuing a Master of Landscape Architecture in Urban Design degree from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Nilay is the Interim Program Director of the Master of Landscape Architecture + Urbanism Program (MLA+U) and Professor-in-Practice in the Illinois Institute of Technology College of Architecture. Chicago Public Art Group (CPAG) is an internationally recognized coalition of professional artists working to produce public artwork with community involvement. For the past half-century, CPAG has produced nearly 1,000 projects, including murals, sculptures, earthworks, playgrounds, and mosaics throughout the Chicagoland area. CPAG is committed to enhancing public space and public engagement in all of Chicago’s neighborhoods through community-based art. This work is rooted in the principle that everyone deserves to see great art, that every community deserves a voice, and that artmaking and public art encourage community investment.