Urban Edge Symposium: On Housing, the single-family Lot and the American City

Paul Andersen is the founder and director of Independent Architecture. He shapes the office’s agenda and practice, working on design projects in professional and academic contexts. He teaches at the University of Illinois Chicago and has previously been on the architecture faculties of the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, and Cornell University. He was appointed a Fulbright Specialist in Architecture and has exhibited and curated work at the Venice Biennale, the MCA Denver, The Great Poor Farm, and the Chicago Architecture Biennial. He has written and edited several books, including Bricks (Extra Credit Books), The Same Something for Everyone (Park Books) and The Architecture of Patterns (W.W. Norton).

Ashley Bigham is an Associate Professor at the Knowlton School of Architecture and co-director of Outpost Office. She has been a Fulbright Fellow in Ukraine, a MacDowell Fellow, and a Walter B. Sanders Fellow at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. At The Ohio State University, she is an affiliate faculty member of the Center for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies. In addition, she is a collaborative partner and visiting faculty at the Kharkiv School of Architecture in Ukraine.

Ashley’s creative work and writing engage architecture through a study of consumption and domesticity, focusing on architecture’s entanglement with the production and fulfillment of consumer desire. She is the editor of Fulfilled: Architecture, Excess, and Desire (Applied Research + Design, 2022). Her writing and work has appeared in publications such as MAS Context, Dialectic, The Architect’s Newspaper, Metropolis, Mark, CLOG, and Surface.

Erik Herrmann is an Associate Professor of Architecture at the Knowlton School and co-director of Outpost Office. He was previously the Walter B. Sanders Fellow in Architecture at the University of Michigan and a German Chancellor’s Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. He holds a Master of Architecture from Yale University and a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Tennessee where he was awarded the faculty thesis prize. Erik’s work and research interrogate how the biases and tendencies of digital technologies alter the design process, with a focus on the shifting role of the architect. His work has been published in Log, Perspecta, and PLAT, and has been exhibited at venues including the Chicago Architecture Biennial, the Milwaukee Art Museum, and the Tallinn Architecture Biennale. Before co-founding Outpost Office, Herrmann practiced with Trahan Architects in Louisiana and Gray Organschi Architecture in New Haven, CT.

Jennifer Bonner, born in Alabama, is a recipient of the 2021 United States Artist Fellowship, Architectural League Prize for Young Architects + Designers, Emerging Voices Award (AIA/ Young Architects Forum), Progressive Architecture (P/A) Award and Next Progressives (Architect Magazine). Her creative work has been published in architectural trade publications including Architectural Review, Metropolis, Gray, Azure and Wallpaper*, as well as, more experimental journals including a+t , DAMN, PLAT, Offramp, Room One Thousand, Flat Out and MAS Context. She is editor of Blank: Speculations on CLT (with Hanif Kara), author of A Guide to the Dirty South: Atlanta, faculty editor of Platform: Still Life, and guest editor for ART PAPERS special issue on architecture and design of Los Angeles. Bonner has exhibited work at the Royal Institute of British Architects, National Building Museum, WUHO gallery, HistoryMIAMI, Yve YANG gallery, pinkcomma gallery, Armstrong Gallery at Kent State, Yale Architecture Gallery, Istanbul Modern Museum, Boston’s Rose Kennedy Greenway, and the Chicago Architecture Biennial.

Adrienne Brown is Associate Professor in the Departments of English and Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity at the University of Chicago and the Director of Arts + Public Life, a hub for artistic exploration, expression, and exchange that fosters neighborhood vibrancy on Chicago’s South Side. She is co-editor with Valerie Smith of the volume Race and Real Estate (2015) and the author of The Black Skyscraper: Architecture and the Perception of Race, winner of the 2018 First Book Prize from the Modernist Studies Association, and The Residential is Racial: A Perceptual History of Mass Homeownership, published by Stanford University Press in 2024.

V. Mitch McEwen is principal of Atelier Office in Harlem and one of ten co-founders of the Black Reconstruction Collective. McEwen teaches at Princeton School of Architecture, where she directs the research group Black Box, exploring automated processes with organic building materials and soft stuff. Her work has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale of Architecture, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Istanbul Design Biennial, Storefront for Art and Architecture, and the Museum of Modern Art.

Ashley Bigham is an Associate Professor at the Knowlton School of Architecture and co-director of Outpost Office. She has been a Fulbright Fellow in Ukraine, a MacDowell Fellow, and a Walter B. Sanders Fellow at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. At The Ohio State University, she is an affiliate faculty member of the Center for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies. In addition, she is a collaborative partner and visiting faculty at the Kharkiv School of Architecture in Ukraine.

Ashley’s creative work and writing engage architecture through a study of consumption and domesticity, focusing on architecture’s entanglement with the production and fulfillment of consumer desire. She is the editor of Fulfilled: Architecture, Excess, and Desire (Applied Research + Design, 2022). Her writing and work has appeared in publications such as MAS Context, Dialectic, The Architect’s Newspaper, Metropolis, Mark, CLOG, and Surface.

Erik Herrmann is an Associate Professor of Architecture at the Knowlton School and co-director of Outpost Office. He was previously the Walter B. Sanders Fellow in Architecture at the University of Michigan and a German Chancellor’s Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. He holds a Master of Architecture from Yale University and a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Tennessee where he was awarded the faculty thesis prize. Erik’s work and research interrogate how the biases and tendencies of digital technologies alter the design process, with a focus on the shifting role of the architect. His work has been published in Log, Perspecta, and PLAT, and has been exhibited at venues including the Chicago Architecture Biennial, the Milwaukee Art Museum, and the Tallinn Architecture Biennale. Before co-founding Outpost Office, Herrmann practiced with Trahan Architects in Louisiana and Gray Organschi Architecture in New Haven, CT.

Laura Salazar-Altobelli is an Assistant Professor at Pratt Institute and serves as Intermediate Design Coordinator in the Undergraduate Architecture program. A Peruvian architect and cofounder of the collaborative practice salazarsequeromedina, her work spans civic projects engaging diverse communities to publicly-funded affordable housing. Having completed built work in Peru, Spain, South Korea, and the US, Salazar has earned international recognition. Her practice was awarded the Architectural League Prize 2025 and achieved Outstanding Project recognition for the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize for Emerging Practice 2024. Through practice and teaching, her research addresses the environmental impact of building and aims to establish a dialogue with the as-found.

Salazar has previously taught as a Visiting Critic at Syracuse University and as a Visiting Scholar at Montana State University. She is a graduate of Princeton University, where she received a Master of Architecture in 2017.

Pablo Sequero is an architect and cofounder of salazarsequeromedina, a collaborative architecture practice founded in 2020 with work in Peru, Spain, Korea and the US. He is a Visiting Critic at Syracuse University School of Architecture, and a Visiting Professor at Arquitectura PUCP – Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru. His work has been recognized with awards in several design competitions, specializing in cooperative housing and public infrastructure projects. Most recently, together with Salazar and Medina, he has been the recipient of the Architectural League Prize 2025 and achieved Outstanding Project recognition for the MCHAP Emerging Practice award 2024.

Previously, Sequero has been a Visiting Critic at Cornell AAP (2021-2022) and a Visiting Scholar at Montana State University (2023). Sequero holds a Master of Architecture degree from the ETSAM, Technical University of Madrid, where he graduated in 2015. He is a licensed architect in Spain.

Sam Schuermann is an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Architecture and Urban Planning where she coordinates Design III, teaches in the core sequence, and delivers option level studios. Prior to her position as Assistant Professor, she served as the 2022-23 SARUP Architecture Fellow. Her teaching has been recognized via the ACSA 2024-25 New Faculty Teaching Award. Schuermann is a designer, maker, and researcher whose work explores the objects, conventions, and material implications of domestic labor. By leveraging the aesthetics of domesticity, and working within the lineage of home economics education, Schuermann’s work questions and subverts a variety of socio-political and socio-economic constructs associated with the typical single-family home and lot. Her scholarship has been disseminated through a variety of venues including ACSA, STOA, MONU, Wisconsin Architect Magazine, and a residency at Art Omi, among others.

Jonathan Tate is principal of OJT (Office of Jonathan Tate), an architecture and urban design practice in New Orleans. Along with their conventional architectural practice, the office engages in numerous design-related activities, including applied research, opportunistic planning, and strategic development. Their work has received numerous awards, including National AIA Housing Awards and the National AIA Honor Award in Architecture. The office has been recognized as an Emerging Voices by the Architectural League of New York, a Next Progressive by Architect Magazine, and a finalist for the international Architecture Review Emerging Architect Award. Tate is the recipient of the Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Tate is a graduate of Auburn University, where he was a participant at the Rural Studio, and Harvard University Graduate School of Design. In addition to his role at OJT, he is a Professor of Practice of Architecture at Tulane University School of Architecture and Built Environment in New Orleans, Louisiana USA.

Jesús Vassallo is a registered architect and a professor of architecture at Rice University. Based in Houston and Madrid, his work for private clients and institutions ranges from buildings to urban design, with a consistent emphasis on construction and design excellence. Areas of expertise include affordable housing, low-carbon construction, and adaptive reuse. His projects have been published and exhibited internationally, including in the Venice and Chicago Biennials.

Vassallo studied architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design (MArch II) and Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid (Diploma and PhD). In 2004 Vassallo became a licensed architect in Spain, where he worked in the office of Mansilla + Tuñón Arquitectos as a project architect from 2006 to 2012. He is currently a licensed architect in the State of Texas, and has active projects across Spain, the United States, and Mexico.