Our exhibition, Architectural Head Games, is a finalist for the AIA Chicago People's Choice Awards! The project brings the magic of the Arts in the Dark parade to the Chicago Architecture Center —showcasing over 40 architectural headpieces designed by architects across the city. Each piece reimagines beloved spaces in Chicago, celebrating the creativity of our architectural community and the city that inspires it.Voting ends September 12th, 2025: https://aiachicago.org/2025-peoples-choice/

Design belongs to everyone, and the Chicago Architecture Biennial brings that ideal to life. This September marks the launch of its sixth edition, SHIFT: Architecture in Times of Radical Change, which explores how design can lead through transformation and open new possibilities for civic life. Led by Artistic Director Florencia Rodriguez, the Biennial invites the public into a citywide conversation about the built environment. Architecture for Public Benefit is proud to be part of this important moment. Our founder, Chana Haouzi, is serving as Associate Curator, leading Chicago Shifts—a platform for civic initiatives, site-specific installations, and public projects that reflect design’s power to shape communities. At the heart of this work is a question we return to often: How can we make architecture more accessible, relatable, and relevant to the public? The Biennial offers a rare opportunity to explore that question in dialogue with communities across Chicago.

Level Up Community Cafe is now open in Bronzeville! What was once a vacant storefront has been transformed into a warm, welcoming coffee shop and mentorship hub designed to support youth development and community connection. Architecture for Public Benefit designed the space in collaboration with Civic Projects Architecture and Level Up. The space reimagines what a neighborhood cafe can be—a flexible, inviting place where people gather for coaching sessions, book clubs, small business meetups, yoga classes, community dinners, and everyday connection.

Architectural Head Games opens today at the Chicago Architecture Center-- Curated by Chana Haouzi and Eve Fineman and designed by Architecture for Public Benefit, the exhibition showcases a collective of architects who have transformed their favorite Chicago spaces into architectural headpieces. Originally created for the Arts in the Dark parade and the inaugural Architects’ Guild, this project now invites visitors to celebrate Chicago’s architectural heritage and see the built environment through a new lens. Chana Haouzi and Mark Kelly developed the Architects’ Guild concept and vision. Architecture for Public Benefit is passionate about making design accessible to all, both in experience and discourse. We think everyone should discuss architecture, not just architects. The show invites people to see the city in a new way to consider how the built environment impacts us. The exhibition is open through May 31, 2025—don’t miss this personal and playful take on Chicago!

The built-environment has the power to shape how we feel, behave, and learn. The emerging field of trauma-informed design is developing the language and tools to create spaces that are healthy, restorative, and responsive to users’ needs. Architecture for Public Benefit partnered with the Trauma-informed Design Society to craft clear, accessible visuals for their newly published handbook. We love how this project shares deep knowledge while remaining grounded in practical, actionable tools for thoughtful design. The book is titled Trauma-Informed Design: A Framework for Designers, Architects, and Other Practitioners, and authored by Christine Ann Awad Cowart, Janet Roche, MDS CAPS, Adrienne Erdman, and J. Davis Harte. We contributed accessible diagrams to illustrate a few of the many design insights shared in the book.

Architecture has a long history of being inaccessible to many. In a world that is increasingly contending with issues of equity, justice, and social impact, we need to ask ourselves if our traditional model of practice matches our design ambitions. At this year’s AIA Illinois Emerging Professional Summit, Chana spoke about benefit corporations as a promising alternative to the standard architecture service model. Benefit Corporations are for-profit entities with a defined mission for the public good. The presentation shared insights from our own practice, which was established as a benefit corporation, and highlighted how we are actively exploring innovative and proactive approaches to serve the public and implement our mission through design.

Then A Memorial was awarded a 2024 Design Excellence Merit of Citation Award from AIA Chicago. Located in North Lawndale, the project highlights how a simple structure can foster community solidarity, build empathy, and celebrate shared histories. Our team facilitated community workshops that invited participants from two interfaith congregations to learn, share, and co-create together. As part of the Chicago Design Sukkah Festival, the space pavilion hosted open and welcoming programming, such as an interfaith dinner and shared worship. Most importantly, it has been designed to take on a second life as a memorial honoring and celebrating the lives of 41 North Lawndale young people lost to violence.

Chana Haouzi and Matthew Okazaki presented our project, A Library Free to All, at the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture Conference in Vancouver. We were one of four presenters who discussed participatory practice and social impact design. Discussion was moderated by Suzanne Lettieri, Assistant Professor at Cornell Univeristy.

Our project, “A Library Free to All,” was featured in the Winter 2023 Chicago Architect Magazine for winning the Roberta Feldman Architecture for Social Justice Honor Award. The award recognizes projects that are “guided by the conviction that access to high-quality architecture is not a privilege, it is a human right.” Read the magazine here.

Chana Haouzi joins John McMorrough and Lucia Allais for a book discussion at the Chicago Thompson Center, hosted by Chicago Architecture Biennial and Columbia University’s Buell Center. The conversation responded to the Buell Center’s most recent publication, “Architecture and Land in and Out of the Americas,” — a book that offers a different view of the relationship between architecture and land and challenges our assumption that land precedes architecture. Read more about the project here.

Our project A Library Free To All brings home two awards at the AIA Chicago Design Night! The project received the Roberta Feldman Architecture for Social Justice Honor Award and an Architecture Design Excellence Merit Citation for our innovative and community-centered design for the Boston Public Library. The Roberta Feldman Award is especially meaningful to us because it is “guided by the conviction that access to high-quality architecture is not a privilege; it is a human right.” Grateful to the American Institute of Architects in Chicago and the AIA Chicago Foundation for this honor. 

The Association for Community Design Conference, which took place at the DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center in Chicago, gathered community design advocates from across the country. In its 46th installment, the conference was titled WAYS and invited participants to reimagine how we can challenge and change design practice to advance racial justice and build equity in our communities. APB principal Chana Haouzi joined Nootan Bharani and Chandra Christmas-Rouse to discuss how they challenge the status quo of design teaching and studio culture. The panel discussion was moderated by Traci Wile and titled “Creating a Demand for Better: Teaching in Place, Chicago.” Read more about it here.

Architecture for Public Benefit and Trent Fredrickson Architecture participate in the Chicago Sukkah Design Festival Roundtable to discuss our design for the Lawndale Christian Community Center and Mishkan Chicago. Moderated by Nekita Thomas, the conversation invited the public to hear more about our participatory design process. Learn more about the festival here. Photo by the talented Norvell Tolbert Photography.

As part of the University of Illinois Chicago’s School of Architecture We@UIC Series, Chana presented the work and philosophy of Architecture for Public Benefit. How can we make good design accessible to everyone? This question guides our practice and drives our creative work. Chana discussed our business model and recent projects, outlining how our benefit corporation was founded and how we find innovative ways to leverage design as a solution to improve lives. 

Chana and Matt presented our work at Harvard University Graduate School of Design Design Discovery. The talk was titled “Design, with” and captured Architecture for Public Benefit’s approach to design. "Design, with" means that design is collaborative and open-ended. It is an invitation that requires the support and consensus of others to flourish. It thrives in creative environments, with partners that listen carefully and design collaboratively. It encourages us to question what is known and push the limits of what is possible– to use creativity and care to respond to the needs of communities and their environment. To infuse beauty and function into every solution and to realize that we have the agency to make a tangible difference in the built environment and to the people that engage with it every day.

APB was selected to participate in this year's Chicago Sukkah Design Festival. We are partnered with Mishkan Chicago and Lawndale Community Church and designing a sukkah to support both faith organizations ongoing collaboration and intertwined histories. After the festival, the structure will relocate to Lawndale Legal Center and serve as a memorial honoring the lives of LCLC youth lost of gun violence. Shown above is a Worm's eye view of our sukkah proposal. The project introduces three thickened walls that act as vessels and provide moments of connection, storytelling and remembering. We look forward to bringing the project to life with our design and fabrication partner Trent Fredrickson Architecture and hosts Could Be Architecture and Lawndale Pop-Up Spot.

Our firm was selected to join a talented group of architects to rethink how typical Chicago housing typologies can meet the needs of our time. We partnered with Peter Rose + Partners to reimagine Chicago’s six-flat housing typology into an affordable, sustainable, and scalable system. With over 10,000 vacant lots and neighborhoods that remain underserved and in need of good quality affordable housing, this initiative is a commitment to create homeownership and wealth-building opportunities, improve our urban fabric, and empower communities. The exhibition is on view until March 26, 2023 and the public is invited to leave feedback on the proposed designs.

Chana has developed a new class for the University of Chicago titled the Life of Buildings. The studio examines what happens to a building after it is designed and built. How do particular design decisions influence human experience and behavior? Which parts of the building align with its intended use, and what are surprising outcomes or changes? How do buildings perform, evolve, and adapt over time? These questions aim to provide students with a deeper understanding of the built environment and the series of decisions that shaped them. For our second class, we visited the Chicago Cultural Center, originally the first Chicago Public Library, and students captured their research and observations in a short film.

We have partnered with YouthBuild Boston to completely reimagine the future of their storefront on Washington St— home to The Designery. YouthBuild's mission is to expose underrepresented youth to the design and construction industry through design programs and construction training. The Designery is a space where young people can design, create, test, prototype, and share their ideas. Our design proposes (1) a new fabrication lab that holds the street corner, (2) an open and flexible gallery and studio space, and a (3) meeting and collaborating room with library and support core. Today is Giving Tuesday. Consider supporting this project and empowering a young generation to shape the built environment and their neighborhoods.

University of Chicago and Smart Museum hosted a panel discussion titled The Life Cycle of Materials. Chana joined Dan Peterman, Alex Enarson, Jack Schroeder, and Luke Joyner as we discussed the future of buildings and materials. This event was part of the Art History Departments’s Architecture Open Studio series which exposes students to ideas and work about the built environment.