Mimi Zeiger and Ann Lui will speak on their ongoing work as curators for the the United States pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, titled “Dimensions of Citizenship.” The exhibition at the U.S. pavilion will explore architecture’s impact on the meaning of citizenship from policy to immigration and the lived experience. Future Firm co-founder and School of the Art Institute of Chicago professor Ann Lui, and architecture critic Mimi Zeiger, are curating the exhibition along with University of Chicago architectural history professor Niall Atkinson.

Mimi Zeiger

Mimi Zeiger is a Los Angeles-based critic, editor, and curator. Her work is situated at the intersection architecture and media cultures. She has covered art, architecture, urbanism, and design for a number of publications including The New York Times, Domus, Architectural Review, and Architect, where she is a contributing editor. She is a regular opinion columnist for Dezeen and former West Coast Editor of The Architects Newspaper. Zeiger is the 2015 recipient of the Bradford Williams Medal for excellence in writing about landscape architecture. She has curated, contributed to, and collaborated on projects that have been shown at the Art Institute Chicago, 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale, the New Museum, Storefront for Art and Architecture, pinkcomma gallery, and the AA School. She co-curated Now, There: Scenes from the Post-Geographic City, which received the Bronze Dragon award at the 2015 Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture, Shenzhen. She teaches in the Media Design Practices MFA program at Art Center College of Design and is former co-president of the Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design. She holds a Master of Architecture degree from SCI-Arc and a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Cornell University.

Ann Lui

Ann Lui is a founding partner of Future Firm, a Chicago-based architecture and design research office. She is a registered architect in the state of Illinois. Her work focuses on the role of architecture as an infrastructure for discourse. She holds a B.Arch from Cornell University and a SMArchS from MIT's History, Theory and Criticism program, where her research focused on corporate architecture in the postwar period. Previously, Ann practiced at offices including SOM, Bureau Spectacular, and Morphosis Architects. She recently edited Public Space? Lost and Found (SA+P/MIT Press), a volume on the role of architects and artists in the civic realm with Gediminas Urbonas and Lucas Freeman. Ann was also Assistant Editor of OfficeUS Atlas (Lars Muller, 2015), and co-edited MIT's journal Thresholds (MIT SA+P, 2015).

The Raoul Wallenberg Lecture was initiated in 1971 by Sol King, a former classmate of Wallenberg's. An endowment was established in 1976 for an annual lecture to be offered in Raoul's honor on the theme of architecture as a humane social art.