“We tend to relate and connect to other people through stories. We can find ways of using narrative to help us empathize with one another,” says architect and UIC instructor Grant Gibson. “I thought my firm needed to be rooted in a premise that understood and advocated for that.” 

After spending more than a decade in L.A. working for boutique design firms, on projects ranging from set design to startup offices, Kelly Bair, 38, moved to Chicago four years ago to take a tenure-track teaching position at UIC. 

 The firm’s 2011 speculative project Farmland World is a chain of agro-resorts-cum-theme parks that allow guests to work on a real farm. For its contribution to the Biennial, Design With Company (Dw/Co.) is entering its own late—very late—scheme for Chicago’s Harold Washington Library Competition, which was held in 1987. 

Paul Preissner, 41, recently made a couple of round, flat-pack tables out of mint-colored Corian. “It was the cheapest way of producing furniture with one of the most expensive materials,” says the architect, who was experimenting with the process to help out a friend who runs MakeTime, a company that lets designers share time on computer numerical control (CNC) machines. 

 Like many architects, Sean Lally is concerned about climate change and how his profession can help address the immense environmental pressures bearing down on the globe—he just has a very singular vision for the solution. With a background in landscape architecture, Lally, 41, is pursuing a field of design in which steel, wood, and concrete are replaced by energy: electromagnetic, thermodynamic, acoustic, chemical. 

The workplace is an ever-evolving design challenge. With continuous upgrades in technology, advances in telecommunications and rising costs of commercial real estate, space for individual employees keeps shrinking'whether for assistants or executives. The average allotment per office worker fell from 225 square feet in 2010 to 176 square feet in 2012, and these days can go as low as 60 square feet. 

The Milanese firm of CLS Architetti, founded in 1993 by Giovanna Cornelio, Massimiliano Locatelli, and Annamaria Scevola, has carved out a reputation for a modish modernismo style. Its portfolio includes fashion boutiques, offices, showrooms, apartments, and the Lia Rumma Contemporary Art Gallery in Milan (2009).