Design Dialogue: A Renewed South Side Community Art Center

Speakers:

• Ann Lui

  

  Ann Lui, AIA is a founding principal of Future Firm, an architecture and design research practice based in Chicago. Future Firm serves clients who are changemakers in their fields, including non-profits, arts and culture organizations, and community-led developers.

  She has held teaching positions across the U.S., including as Cullinan Visiting Professor at Rice University and Baumer Visiting Professor at Ohio State University. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Practice at the University of Michigan. Ann was co-curator of the U.S. Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2018 titled Dimensions of Citizenship.

  She co-edited Public Space? Lost and Found (2015) and Log 54 “Coauthoring” (2022). She was recently awarded the Richard H. Driehaus Community Impact Award in 2025. She is a member of the Steering Committee for the Metropolitan Planning Council’s Zoning and Land Use assessment and the Neighborhood Opportunity Fund’s Advisory Committee. 

• k. kennedy Whiters

  

  k. kennedy Whiters, RA, is a preservation architect, published writer, and educator. She leads wrkSHäp | kiloWatt as principal with over 20 years of experience in architecture, preservation, planning, and project management. She is a graduate of the Master of Architecture and Master of Urban Planning programs at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she completed concentrations in history, preservation, and social justice. kennedy earned licenses to practice architecture in Washington State and New York State. 

  Practicing preservation with the ethos of service, kennedy has led and been part of teams that have supported the preservation of over 50 projects across the US, many of which center storytelling about the diverse spectrum of the Black experience. 

  In addition to wrkSHäp | kiloWatt, kennedy is the principal of studio kW Architecture + Preservation, a New York State-licensed architecture firm. She is also an adjunct professor of historic preservation at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation (GSAPP) and the founder of Black in Historic Preservation. An avid Sudoku player, kennedy views storytelling, both with words and the built environment, as akin to fun mental exercises with life-changing potential for generations. 

• Monique Brinkman-Hill

  

  Monique Brinkman-Hill is a Chicago native and cultural executive dedicated to the preservation and future of Black art and artists. She serves as Executive Director of the historic South Side Community Art Center, the nation’s oldest independently run Black arts institution in its original location, stewarding an 85-year legacy of Black artistic excellence and cultural preservation. 

  Under her leadership, the Center has expanded artist-driven programming, strengthened national and local partnerships, and advanced a major capital restoration and reimagination project known as Black Art Rising, which has raised over $12.4 million to date. Monique is also a collector of Black art with more than 25 years of personal collecting experience. Her work centers cultural stewardship, access, and sustaining Black artistic legacy for future generations.

• Lee Bey

  

  Lee Bey is architecture critic for the Chicago Sun-Times and member of the Sun-Times editorial board where he writes editorials on city governance, neighborhood development, politics and urban planning. Bey is the author of Southern Exposure: The Overlooked Architecture of Chicago’s South Side (Northwestern University Press, 2019), which showcases his architectural photography and social commentary.   

  Bey is an in-demand speaker and media commentator on architecture, urban planning, Chicago history and late 20th century Black history and culture. He is also an adjunct professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology College of Architecture and recipient of the 2021 Julius Shulman Institute Excellence in Photography Award and the 2019 Distinguished Service Award by the Chicago chapter of the American Institute of Architects. Bey’s previous positions include director of media and government affairs for the Chicago office of SOM, executive director of the Chicago Central Area Committee, and deputy chief of staff for architecture and urban planning under Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley. 

  Bey lives in an 1893 rowhouse in Chicago’s historic Pullman community.