Join us at the CAC to celebrate the official public launch of the Alternative Practice project.
Special Launch of Alternative Practice
Mobile Makers Chicago workshop and makerspace, located at the Kimball Arts Center in Humboldt Park. Photo by Tom Harris.
Join us at the CAC to celebrate the public launch of Alternative Practice, a project conceptualized and stewarded by Maya Bird-Murphy, Kaleb Germinaro Megan Simmons, and Verda Alexander.
Event Schedule
- 5:30 p.m.: Meet-and-greet & lecture hall opens
- 6:00 p.m.: Program begins
- 7:15 p.m.: Reception
What Is an alternative practice?
An “alternative practice” operates outside traditional modes both in its structure and approach to design problems across disciplines that shape the built environment, including architecture, development, preservation, interior design and industrial design. It strives to challenge conventional client work by centering and elevating efforts like community organizing, education, research or advocacy.
These new strategies are emerging because the status quo isn't enough. As climate change and growing inequities reshape how we live, the world needs radical design solutions and alternative practices are helping lead the way.
About the project we’re celebrating
Alternative Practice is a digital repository of innovative methodologies, stories of cultural preservation, scholarly research and business resources.
This first-of-its-kind project, conceptualized and stewarded by Maya Bird-Murphy, Kaleb Germinaro, Megan Simmons and Verda Alexander, documents and builds accessible, place-specific monographs on alternative practices in the United States.
In-person gatherings deepen the value by bringing practitioners, urbanists, artists and leaders together to share bold ideas, best practices, dreams and action items, creating a collective visioning exercise for a more liberatory built environment.
Hosts
Maya Bird-Murphy is a Chicago-based architectural designer, educator and cultural producer. At the age of 25, while working full-time and completing her Master of Architecture, she launched Mobile Makers, an award-winning nonprofit that makes design education accessible through workshops, community engagement, public installations and pop-ups hosted out of a retrofitted mail truck.
Bird-Murphy’s practice centers on expanding access to design education, empowering people to see themselves as agents of change in the spaces they inhabit, as well as advocating for change in the built environment. Her work challenges the gatekeeping that often defines the profession and has welcomed thousands of children and community members to engage with architectural discourse. Bird-Murphy loves designing spaces but excels at creating new systems that explore architecture beyond four walls.
She was named a 2023 Harvard GSD Wheelwright Prize Finalist, 2024 United States Artists Fellow, and 2025 Lori Healey Rising Leader Awardee.
Verda Alexander has spent 30 years in the design industry redefining the workplace and looking ahead to the future of work itself. Combining a multi-disciplinary career with a passionate commitment to improving lives through design, her typical contribution to a project is to question received wisdom, test basic assumptions, and look beyond conventional solutions to a more creative path.
Over the past decade, she’s focused on experimental projects: installations, activations, interactive exhibits and a mobile design lab that engaged with communities across California. Her current work focuses on expanding the conversation around design, social justice, climate activism and art.
Verda is the Editor-at-Large for Metropolis Magazine, the co-founder of Studio O+A, and co-host of “Break Some Dishes.” She holds a Master of Fine Arts from San Francisco Art Institute and attended Harvard University Graduate School of Design and University of California, Berkeley, and earned her Master in Landscape Architecture.
With the aim to institute theory into action, Kaleb Germinaro works in community with folks to address issues of equity, justice and space. In addition to his responsibilities as a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, he stewards Estelita's Library, a small social justice library and bookstore. Kaleb’s current investigations include Black and Disability theory, methodological and theoretical contributions to community-based design research and ethnography, as well as the impact of the built environment on learning and education in relation to social, spatial and environmental justice.
Kaleb received his PhD in Learning Sciences & Human Development from the University of Washington. He attended the University of Pennsylvania, earning his Master of Science in Human Development and his Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, with a focus on Urban Studies.
Megan Simmons is an architect, design researcher and educator who creates spaces, strategies and experiences that engage and empower communities. With a degree from Washington University in St. Louis in both Architecture and Education, she combines these disciplines in Chicago, where she collaborates with students, faculty and administrators to design and plan spaces that inspire Pre-K-12 learners.
Her previous experience includes: co-building an innovation division at a large architecture firm to better understand the needs of space users and to evaluate projects from both human-centric and data-driven perspectives; teaching Innovation & Entrepreneurship at the University of Bristol; designing higher education spaces around the US; founding and leading an award-winning architecture education nonprofit, Building Opportunities for Student Success that creates clear accessible pathways into the design field for youth in Wisconsin; and leading design strategy, qualitative and quantitative research efforts for complex public sector and healthcare projects across Europe.
About the host
Maya Bird-Murphy is a Chicago-based architectural designer, educator, and founder of Mobile Makers, an award-winning nonprofit bringing design and skill-building workshops to underrepresented communities.
She is a 2023 Harvard GSD Wheelwright Prize Finalist, a 2024 United States Artists Fellow, and recipient of the Chicago Architecture Center's 2025 Lori Healey Rising Leader Award.
Maya hopes to make her mark by helping the world become a more equitable place to live.
