Ann Lui, AIA is a registered architect and founding principal of Future Firm, a Chicago-based architecture and design research practice. Her work focuses on spaces of collectivity and the role of architecture in producing and intervening in paradoxical conditions of belonging. Future Firm designs spaces for clients who are changemakers in their own communities. The practice spans diverse scales including residential, commercial, and cultural buildings and urban and civic speculations. Future Firm’s design research work on landscapes and cities has been exhibited at the Shenzhen Bi-city Biennale of UrbanismArchitecture, Storefront for Art & Architecture, New Museum’s Ideas City, and the Chicago Architecture Center. In 2019, the practice was featured in Architect Magazine’s “Next Progressives” series and has been published in The Architect’s Newspaper, Chicago Architect, and Mas Context.
Lui was co-curator of the U.S. Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2018 titled Dimensions of Citizenship. She co-edited, with Gediminas Urbonas and Lucas Freeman, Public Space? Lost and Found (MIT/SA+P Press, 2015) on aesthetic and spatial practices in the civic realm. Currently, Lui also organizes 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. Lui was recently named Newcity’s “Designer of the Moment” and Crain’s “40 Under 40.” Previously, Lui practiced at SOM, Ann Beha Architects, and Morphosis Architects. She holds an SMArchS in History, Theory, and Criticism of Architecture and Art from MIT and a B.Arch from Cornell University, where she was awarded the Charles Goodwin Sands Medal and the Clifton Beckwith Brown Memorial Medal.
