Tracing / Traces: Architecture and the Archive 2024

Sarah Blankenbaker teaches at the University of Illinois Chicago School of Architecture, where she currently serves as the Associate Director of Graduate Studies. Previously, she was the 2015–16 Garofalo Fellow. Her teaching and research focus on measure and challenges to standardization across a range of topics, including perspectival and axonometric drawing, the translation of photographic ideas into architecture, the depiction of mass-produced objects by twentieth-century architects, open plans, and sporting regulations. This work has appeared in exhibitions in Chicago and Los Angeles and as writing in Log, Future Anterior, Time + Architecture, and Flat Out.

Akima Brackeen is a Bay Area-born and Chicago-based architectural designer and educator. Akima’s research challenges the racial perceptions, values, and culture of waterscapes by translating and spatializing Black narratives through music and the built environment. Akima is currently the inaugural Rowe Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT).

Susan Conger-Austin is both an educator and practicing architect. As principal of S. Conger Architects, she has worked on institutional, commercial, and residential projects. Most recently, one of her residential projects was published in Architectural Record, “Featured Houses.” Her teaching approach derives directly from her career in professional practice, adhering to the same collaborative process and high standards. Prior to starting her firm, Susan was a founding partner of STL Architects and Studio Head /Associate Partner at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Chicago. Since 2000, Professor Conger-Austin has collaborated with universities and faculty throughout the world in various educational workshops, seminars, and exchanges. Awarded Fulbright Specialist Scholar grants, she has taught in Chile, Brazil, and Spain. In 2019, Professor Conger-Austin received the Excellence in Teaching Award at the College. Susan received her Master’s in Architecture at Princeton University and her Bachelor of Arts in economics and art history at Stanford University.

Alexander Eisenschmidt is a designer, theorist, and Associate Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s School of Architecture. He directs the Visionary Cities Project, a research-based platform devoted to the contemporary city and speculations on new forms of architectural urbanism and collective housing, and he leads the architecture and urban design practice Studio Offshore. Eisenschmidt has published extensively, is the author of The Good Metropolis (2019), the editor of City Catalyst (2012), and numerous other volumes. His research and design works have been published and exhibited at international venues such as the Venice Biennale (2012), the Art Institute of Chicago (2014), the Lisbon Architecture Triennale in Portugal (2016), the Druker Design Gallery at Harvard’s GSD (2018), and the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism (2019).

Cofounded by Sharon Xu and Robert Becker, Studio Becker Xu practices architecture and design to search for meaningful ways of shaping our shared experience in the built environment. The studio engages in design across scales and contexts, asking how design can cultivate a sense of place and activate different scales of community. Locally, the practice contemplates, speculates, and engages the community through projects like a reimagined two-flat for Chicago Come Home Initiative’s exhibition on missing middle infill housing and Lawndale Gathering Tree, a playscape for the forthcoming One Lawndale Children’s Discovery Center for Chicago’s West Side. The practice is informed by past experience in the building of cultural spaces, social housing, and workplace design. Sharon and Robert both hold Master of Architecture degrees from Princeton University. Alongside practice, they are also educators at Illinois Institute of Technology and University of Illinois Chicago.