SOM Foundation and MAS Context are organizing a lecture by Gabriel Cuéllar and De Peter Yi about their ongoing work on the design of building types, alternative property models, and zoning. Ann Lui, architect and founding principal of Future Firm, will be a respondent.
August 4, 2026
MAS Context Reading Room
1564 North Damen Avenue, Suite 204, Chicago, Illinois 60654
Courtyard block plan. © Rebuild Collective.
Can we reimagine the single-family zoned block as a new kind of collective architecture? Making up an estimated 80 percent of developed land in American cities, single-family zoned lots are critical sites to address climate change, housing justice, and evolving demographics, yet few of these are designed by architects and planners. Rather, they are defined by zoning, which has historically created barriers to affordable, quality housing for all. Today, municipalities across North America are implementing zoning reform, rewriting the housing system. To date, however, these changes are largely considered on a lot-by-lot basis. A greater potential lies in cultivating collectives across hardened property boundaries, advancing common goals in society and environment through dense, welcoming, and lively housing options.
Drawing on work supported by the SOM Foundation, this talk shares design-research and architecture design studio teaching that synthesizes the design of building types, alternative property models, and zoning toward more collective futures.
A series of strategies aimed at overcoming the minimum lot size zoning ordinance and designing across lot lines. © Gabriel Cuéllar.
Courtyard block board game. © Rebuild Collective.
“What’s Next A2? Housing, Livability, and Property at the Scale of the Urban Block,” Ann Arbor, 2025. © Gabriel Cuellar.
Gabriel Cuéllar co-directs Cadaster with Athar Mufreh and is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Michigan. His practice develops design frameworks in collaboration with local governments and community-based organizations, advancing systemic spatial transformation through collective land stewardship models and restructured property systems. His writing, exhibitions, design projects, and teaching explore how spatial creativity can support social movements, particularly in relation to land, housing, and urban and environmental matters. Prior to establishing Cadaster—recipient of the Architectural League Prize in 2018—Cuéllar worked as a designer with Philippe Rahm architectes, Studio Anne Holtrop, and Gramazio & Kohler. He is currently a doctoral researcher in the Borders & Territories research group at Delft University of Technology.
De Peter Yi is the founder of the research and design studio Rebuild Collective, and an Assistant Professor in Architecture at the University of Cincinnati. His research uncovers how individual acts of building scale to create collective impact. His recent work includes writing, workshops, and design projects that advance new housing models, land use approaches, and building repair and reuse. Previously, he was a cofounder and co-director of 1+1+ Architects in Detroit and a designer with Studio Gang Architects in Chicago. He has also taught at the University of Michigan as a lecturer and as the Walter B. Sanders Research Fellow. He is the author of Building Subjects (Standpunkte, 2020), a book on collectively adapted housing typologies in China.
Ann Lui is an architect, principal of Future Firm, and Associate Professor of Practice at the University of Chicago. Previously, she practiced at SOM, Ann Beha Architects, and Morphosis Architects. 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 (MIT/SA+P Press, 2015) on critical and aesthetic practices in the civic realm. Ann was recently named Newcity’s “Designer of the Moment” (2018) and Crain’s “40 Under 40” (2018). She holds an SMArchS from MIT and a BArch from Cornell University, where she was awarded the Charles Goodwin Sands Medal and the Clifton Beckwith Brown Memorial Medal.
This project was made possible thanks to the SOM Foundation’s 2023 Research Prize.
