On June 26, LISC Chicago hosted the 31st annual Community Neighborhood Development Awards at Radius Chicago. Each year at the gathering, the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Community Design Impact Award recognizes an individual architect of color who has demonstrated commitment to design excellence in community development. This year’s $10,000 prize honored architect Ann Lui, Founding Principal at Future Firm, whose projects serve civic changemakers through an ideas-driven approach. Founded in 2015, the practice focuses on mission-driven businesses including nonprofit and arts organizations. Ann recently shared some thoughts about her work.
What inspires you as you begin a new project?
We always start by asking questions. If they’re good questions, they lead to even better ones. Inspiration often comes from our clients, especially from their communities, which can be everyone including staff, leadership, neighborhood residents, elders, or even antagonists, critics, or unexpected allies. We also try to look nationally and globally, outside of Chicago, for great ideas that can work in a new or different way here in our neighborhoods, starting from the belief that we can learn from others and build on their successes.
Personally, I often find inspiration outside of architecture: in media – including fiction, film, and music, and in other disciplines – like landscape and history. New experiences and different forms of cultural expression can surprise, transform, and catalyze alternative ways of seeing the world.
How do you see the role of community in the design process?
Every project is part of the complex network that makes up urban, civic life. No project is an island, and instead, when we look closely, you can see the ways that we’re tied together, both material and relationship-based connections. That means that a project can and should engage community across many scales, from local material and vendor sourcing, to advocacy in the workforce, to creating spaces or platforms for diverse creative voices, to serving as a model or ally for other values-aligned projects. It sounds a bit granola, but this web – built on economic, material, and social ties – connects everyone and we have to engage it consciously so we can work towards building a more equitable, diverse, heterogeneous city that produces the vibrant experiences and economic growth that serves everyone.
What do you see as opportunities for how architects work in communities?
Architecture has too often become a luxury good, only available to select few individuals and institutions. Architecture and architects need to profoundly transform how we deliver projects, engage communities, and dream about a better city if we’re going to be part of making that better city come about. At Future Firm, we believe in looking at projects holistically and supporting our clients as partners, not as service-providers.
That means that architects have to bring to the table the perspective that everything is designed and therefore can be designed for the better. So, our job is not just making sure the exterior wall doesn’t leak (though that is also critical), it’s also challenging policies, practices, or approaches that are considered “status quo” that have led to the current problematic condition of compounding inequality in the built environment.
Describe your vision and consideration of the end user of a project during the design process.
In a pragmatic way, one of the first steps in our design process is to identify different user groups with our clients during programming, and their needs, challenges, and plans for the future. Then we track those user groups through the design process, both considering their needs but also directly checking in with them at different phases of design. This ensures that the iterative process of design is also informed by ongoing feedback and doesn’t get “fixed in time” with a baseline assumption of needs, which can be quickly outdated or wrongly construed.
In a more general way, the name of our practice, Future Firm, comes from a sense of balance that we believe architecture should be both “firm” – functional, durable, and efficient for its users – as well as “future”-oriented – producing spaces which are memorable, exciting, breathtaking, and transformative for its users.
Is there any other information you would like to share?
I am hugely grateful to the Driehaus Foundation for this award, and their support for all community-led projects which are fighting for a more vibrant, equitable Chicago.
The Foundation congratulates Ann and celebrates her commitment to expanding her architectural practice through a holistic, client-centered approach!
