Tracing / Traces: Architecture and the Archive 2025

Zehra Ahmed is a researcher and writer based in Chicago whose work focuses on architectural history and culture in the modern Middle East and North Africa. Currently, she is developing an archive of projects and architects to expand knowledge of the Arab city and resurface its overlooked histories, typologies, elements, concepts, and modes of representation for contemporary design. She is a Visiting Assistant Professor at UIC and the 2024–2025 Douglas A. Garofalo Fellow. Prior to joining UIC, she earned an MA in the History and Theory of Architecture, where her research considered the history of postmodernism in a postcolonial context. She served as text editor for the publication Crown Hall Dean’s Dialogues 2012-2017, and her writings have been published in DAr, a journal that investigates the formal architectural values of the Islamic world, and Flat Out, a journal of design criticism on which she also serves as a member of the editorial board.

Anders Nereim is a Chicago architect and educator. He worked with Walter Netsch of SOM on the Algerian State University system, was the first editor of the Chicago Architectural Journal, and was a guest editor of Inland Architect Magazine. After being a partner at Stuart Cohen & Anders Nereim Architects, he opened his own practice Anders Nereim Architects in 1988. In 2009, he was commissioned to do a robotic ceiling lighting system for the the National Center for Supercomputing Applications in Urbana. Since first being awarded the Chicago AIA Young Architect Award in 1987, he has received numerous AIA awards for his architecture. He was the founding chairman of the Master of Architecture program at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he remains Professor Emeritus in the Department of Architecture, Interior Architecture and Designed Objects.

Uthman Olowa is an educator, artist, and designer based in Chicago. Uthman earned his Master of Architecture degree from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), and a Bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering from Binghamton University. Uthman recently worked as an AICAD Teaching Fellow at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, instructing undergraduate and graduate architecture courses. In addition to teaching, Uthman’s practice explores the ways architecture can serve as a tool to design spaces that support and affirm the rich cultural identities of Black and Brown communities.

Drew Ranieri is an architect an educator with over forty-five years of experience both in the US and abroad. As a generalist, he has been involved with a wide spectrum of project types and scales over the years and prefers to be involved on projects from inception to completion. His approach is driven by curiosity, making, and never being afraid to ask questions. How projects need to work and how they should feel are critical elements of making good architecture. He was lucky enough to have two mentors, Belinda Reeder and Olivio Ferrari, early on in his career who nurtured his curiosity and architectural worldview, and he has striven to do the same for his collaborators in the studio and in the shop/field.

Melissa Rovner is a historian, educator, and scholar of the built environment. Her research focuses on intersections between labor management, urban development, and modernity/coloniality in the production of environmental inequalities, and the potential for alternative forms of research, representation, and design to influence inclusive cultural recovery. Her research on labor exploitation and uneven development practices has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Enquiry and the Journal of Planning History, and has been presented at SAH and ACSA conferences. Rovner’s teaching and digital humanities projects have received support from the Mellon Foundation, including a Teaching Innovation Grant at UCLA and a Digital Humanities Fellowship with the Chicago History Museum and Lake Forest College. She received her PhD in the History of Architecture and Urban Design with a certificate in Urban Humanities from UCLA in 2023, and is currently conducting research on equity in heritage conservation as a Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of Chicago.