Faculty spotlight: Associate Professor Florencia Rodriguez and Visiting Instructor Igo Kommers Wender, who led the concept, development, and exhibition design for—and serve as curators of—Inhabit, Outhabit at the 2025 Chicago Architecture Biennial; and Professor Alexander Eisenschmidt, curator and organizer of BREAKTHROUGH: Housing Futures at the National Public Housing Museum and associate curator of Inhabit, Outhabit.
In its closing weeks, SHIFT will host a Housing Summit that brings together practitioners, researchers, policymakers, and cultural producers to reflect on housing as one of the Biennial’s central fields of inquiry. Developed in collaboration with the National Public Housing Museum and building on the research presented in the Inhabit, Outhabit capsule, the Summit unfolds across two sites: a morning session at the Museum, followed by an afternoon gathering at SHIFT’s exhibition venue at 840 N Michigan Avenue.
Through panels and discussions, the program frames housing not only as a spatial and architectural challenge, but as a political, social, and ecological question—and concludes with a poetry reading that opens space for reflection beyond disciplinary boundaries, underscoring SHIFT’s commitment to multiple forms of knowledge and expression.
SHIFT Housing Summit, Morning Session:
Feb 13, 2026, 9 am–12:40 pm
National Public Housing Museum
919 S Ada St., Chicago, IL 60607
The morning program centers Chicago as a living laboratory for housing futures, convening civic, legal, and cultural perspectives to consider what it means to build housing systems grounded in equity and public responsibility. Discussions move across scales, from policy frameworks to the institutional and spatial conditions that shape access, stability, and belonging. The session combines reflections with design-centered case studies that explore alternative models for affordability, shared living, and cooperative development including a conversation on breakthrough moments in Chicago’s housing history and the role of cultural institutions in shaping what comes next.
Schedule:
9 am: Coffee
9:30 am: Welcome by Lisa Lee (National Public Housing Museum), Florencia Rodriguez (Chicago Architecture Biennial), Nora Daley (Chicago Architecture Biennial)
Ideas for Chicago
9:45 am: Marisa Novara (Chicago Community Trust)
10:05 am: Allison Bethel (Fair Housing Legal Clinic)
10:25 am: Lisa Lee (National Public Housing Museum)
10:45 am: Break
11am: Matthew Messner (JIGZIBIK) and Shelly J. Tucciarelli (Visionary Ventures)
11:20 am: Rafi Segal, Ernst Valery, and Marisa Morán Jahn (Carehaus)
11:40 am: Discussion moderated by Lisa Lee (National Public Housing Museum)
12:10 pm: Conversation on the Museum’s BREAKTHROUGH exhibition, Lisa Lee, and exhibition curator Alexander Eisenschmidt.
12:40 pm: Close
More info and registration about the Morning Session can be found here.
Lead support for BREAKTHROUGH and related symposium programming at the National Public Housing Museum is provided by the Alvin H. Baum Family Fund.
SHIFT Housing Summit, Afternoon Session:
Feb 13, 2026, 2:30–6:15 pm
840 N. Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL 60611
The afternoon session shifts to the Biennial’s exhibition context, opening with a framing of the “Inhabit, Outhabit” premises and the Summit’s guiding questions. The program then unfolds through a series of short presentations followed by moderated dialogue and public conversation. Housing Design and Ingenuity highlights design practices that treat housing as a site of experimentation, rethinking domestic space through adaptive typologies, ecological building systems, feminist urbanism, and collective models of care. Across geographies and scales, the session asks how new housing futures might emerge.
Schedule:
Housing Design and Ingenuity
2:30 pm: Inhabit, Outhabit general premises, Igo Kommers Wender (CAB), Florencia Rodriguez (CAB), and Alexander Eisenschmidt (UIC); speaker introductions, Chana Haouzi (CAB)
2:45 pm: Alejandro Saldarriaga, alsar-atelier
3:15 pm: Anda French, French 2D
3:45 pm: Break
4 pm: MASS group
4:30 pm: Natalia Dopazo
5 pm: Final conversation moderated by Juan Du
Poetry reading and final toast
6:15 pm: Close
More info and registration about the Afternoon Session can be found here.
Figure credits:
French 2D, Bay State Cohousing, 2023. © Naho Kubota.
BREAKTHROUGH: Housing Futures, installation view, 2025, National Public Housing Museum. Photo by Joe Nolasco.
Inhabit, Outhabit, installation view, 2025, Chicago Architecture Biennial. Photo by Bob. (Robert Heishman + Robert Salazar).