The Housing Futures Initiative is a platform for research, design, building, and action to radically reimagine housing as a collective practice (a think- and do-tank devoted to the architecture of affordable urban living). Founded and led by Alexander Eisenschmidt, it became a non-for-profit in 2026. The interdisciplinary team of core collaborators include architect Kelly Bair, lawyer Allison Bethel, planner April Jackson, and engineer Bob Magruder, who all teach at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and today form HFI’s Board of Directors.
Alexander Eisenschmidt is a designer, writer, and Professor of architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He leads the Housing Futures Initiative and directs the architecture and urban design practice Studio Offshore. He has published extensively, and his work has been exhibited internationally. He is author of The Good Metropolis , editor of At Home with the Collective, Félix Candela from Mexico City to Chicago, and Chicagoisms (with Jonathan Mekinda), and guest-editor of City Catalyst. His writings have appeared in publications ranging from Grey Room and The Journal of Architectural Education to The Architect’s Newspaper, the Zeitschrift für Zeithistorische Forschungen, and chapters in numerous anthologies. In addition, Eisenschmidt has curated and his research and design work have been exhibited in venues such as the International Architecture Biennale in Venice, the Art Institute of Chicago, the International Biennale on Urbanism in Shenzhen, China, the Lisbon Architecture Triennale in Portugal, the Druker Design Gallery at Harvard’s GSD, and the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism in Korea. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, an M.Arch. from Pratt Institute, and a Diploma in Architektur und Städtebau from the HTWK in Leipzig, Germany.
Kelly Bair is a designer, Associate Professor, and Associate Director of Graduate Studies at the School of Architecture, University of Illinois at Chicago. She is a partner at BairBalliet, a joint design venture invested in architectural research in the form of both speculative and built projects, and a co-founder of Possible Mediums, a collaborative interested in shaking up the context and format in which architecture is taught, produced, and engaged. Bair is also co-author of the book Possible Mediums (Actar, 2018). BairBalliet’s work has been exhibited internationally in the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale and in various locations in the United States, including New York (MoMA, as a finalist for the 2018 MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program), Los Angeles (the Architecture and Design Museum), Detroit (the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit), Chicago (The Night Gallery), New Haven (Yale University Gallery), and Pittsburgh (Miller Gallery / Carnegie Mellon University). She holds a Bachelor of Environmental Design from the University of Colorado Boulder and a M.Arch. from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Allison Bethel is a lawyer, Clinical Professor, and Director of the Fair Housing Legal Clinic at the School of Law, University of Illinois at Chicago since 2008. She previously worked in the private sector in Florida, specializing in civil trial work and in 1996 joined the Florida Attorney General’s Office (“Office”). In 2000, she was appointed Director of Civil Rights for the Office and supervised the development and litigation of civil rights cases with a focus on housing and racial justice issues and legislative initiatives. Professor Bethel is AV rated, which is the highest rating a lawyer may receive by the Martindale-Hubbell rating system. Her leadership positions include service as President of the Virgil Hawkins Florida Chapter of the National Bar Association, Chair of the Legal Education and Competence Committee and the Alternative Dispute Resolution Section Council of the ISBA, Co-Chair of the Clinical Section of the American Association of Law Schools, and service as a Member of the Board of Governors of the Florida Bar. She is a Chicago native and received her undergraduate degree from Northwestern University and her law degree from the University of Florida.
April Jackson is a planner and an Associate Professor in the Department of Urban Planning and Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a Research Affiliate with the Voorhees Center at CUPPA and the National Initiative on Mixed-Income Communities at Case Western Reserve University. As a community-engaged scholar-practitioner her research explores how to enhance planning practice and the built environment by promoting plans with a focus on equitable, inclusive, and just communities. Her work examines place-based, neighborhood-level affordable housing strategies that seek to embed racial equity and reparations in spatial plans and policies, highlighting inclusive planning processes that aim to improve communities of color. Her current research explores how Choice Neighborhoods Initiative (CNI) facilitates racial equity in implementation of the built environment, community building practices, and neighborhood change in Chicago, IL. She holds a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, dual Master degrees from the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee in Architecture and Urban Planning, and earned her Ph.D. in Urban Planning and Policy from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Bob Magruder is a structural engineer and an Adjunct Professor at the School of Architecture, University of Illinois at Chicago. His career began at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and design leadership roles at the Chicago office of A. Epstein & Sons on large-scale projects at McCormick Place and Midway Airport. He has led structural design teams at Perkins and Will and Thornton Tomasetti for high-rise buildings, sports arenas, office, and residential projects, as well as small-scale design-intensive institutional projects. In 2008, Magruder joined Kurt Goodfriend to form Goodfriend Magruder Structure, a structural design firm offering creative and innovative solutions to engineering challenges that are sensitive to the aesthetics and constructability of the design. Their work has been recognized numerous times, including with the AIA Distinguished Building Award, granted for the McDonald’s Chicago flagship—the first building in Chicago to use cross-laminated timber for the roof structure. Magruder holds a Bachelor in architecture and architectural engineering from the University of Kansas and a Master degree from the Illinois Institute of Technology.
If you would like to collaborate, support our mission, or donate, please contact info(at)housingfuturesinitiative.org.