Housing Futures

• Sunday, April 19, 2026 @ 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm

• National Public Housing Museum, 919 S. Ada Street, Chicago, IL 60607

• Free
• Register

Join the interdisciplinary team from the Housing Futures Initiative (HFI) as they present a housing scheme that reevaluates the design, manufacturing, zoning, and legal frameworks of urban dwelling.

Held on the closing day of the National Public Housing Museum’s exhibition BREAKTHROUGH: Housing Futures, this conversation responds to and expands on the lessons of a historic HUD program known as Operation Breakthrough.

For more than a century, housing layouts have catered to the nuclear family and bourgeois stereotypes, its materials and construction techniques have largely remained unchanged, and regulatory frameworks have intentionally stifled affordable housing in the United States. Therefore, the HFI aims at a radical rethinking and remaking of collective urban living and the politics and economies that surround them. 

This event features short presentations by the HFI team: curator and designer Alexander Eisenschmidt, designer Kelly Bair, lawyer Allison Bethel, and planner April Jackson, who all teach at the University of Illinois Chicago.

FREE, but space is limited. Please register in advance.

Support

Lead support for BREAKTHROUGH and related programming is provided by the Alvin H. Baum Family Fund. Through innovative grants and collaborations, the Fund helps ignite new ideas and promote solutions to ensure healthier, more equitable, and peaceful communities.

Additional support for the Housing Futures Initiative’s demonstration project is provided in part by Alphawood Foundation Chicago, University of Illinois Chicago, and Sterling Structural.