Ann Lui

Ann Lui, AIA, is an assistant professor of practice at the University of Michigan and founding principal of Future Firm, a Chicago-based architecture and design research practice. Future Firm designs spaces for changemakers, with a focus on serving nonprofits, community-led developments, and arts and culture organizations. Future Firm was awarded the J. Irwin and Xenia S. Miller Prize in 2021 and has been exhibited at the Shenzhen Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture, Storefront for Art & Architecture, and the Chicago Architecture Center.

Lui’s scholarly work explores the intersection of professional practice and social justice, including exploring access to design services, equitable enforcement of building code, and coauthorship of the built environment. Ann has held teaching positions at multiple universities including as Cullinan Visiting Professor at Rice University. She was co-curator of Dimensions of Citizenship, the 2018 U.S. Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale. She coedited Public Space? Lost and Found (MIT/SA+P Press, 2015) and Log 53, “Coauthoring” (2022). Her current research explores building code as a pathway towards justice, including the recently published “Toward an Office of the Public Architect” (Log 48) and “Building Code as Battleground” (HDM, 2024).

She was a member of Crain Chicago Business’s “40 Under 40” in 2018 and is currently a member of the Steering Committee for the Metropolitan Planning Council’s Zoning and Land Use assessment and a member of the Advisory Committee for the State of Illinois Asian American and Pacific Islander Business Collective (IAAPIBC). She holds a master of science in architectural studies in History, Theory and Criticism from MIT and a bachelor of architecture from Cornell University, where she was awarded the Charles Goodwin Sands Medal and the Clifton Beckwith Brown Memorial Medal.