Ellen Grimes

Ellen Grimes (she/her) is an architectural designer, consultant, and teacher in Chicago. She has taught at the School of the Art Institute since 2007, where she serves as the faculty adviser to the SAIC chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architects. She also mentors students in the BFA architecture pathway as they apply to graduate professional programs; recent students have been admitted to Columbia University, Cornell, Harvard, UCLA, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Michigan. She has taught at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the Illinois Institute of Technology, and the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Grenoble. She regularly serves as a guest critic at schools throughout the US. She has been invited to present her peer-reviewed research at universities in the US, Mexico, Canada, the U.K., Belgium, and the Netherlands.

Currently, she is the Till House Project Director at Blacks in Green, an environmental justice organization rooted in the traditions of African-American land stewardship, and is managing the work required to open the Till House to the public. In addition, she has worked with Bruce Mau Design, Gensler, Garofalo Architects, and Greg Lynn Form on projects in the US, Thailand, China, and Canada. Her work with these firms received substantial recognition, including AIA awards and representation in major museum collections. She is also an editor at large at Flat Out. Her writing and editorial work has appeared in Buildings and Almost Buildings, Bowling, Flat Out, Log, the Journal of Architectural Education, and Contents.

Selected Awards and Grants: The Mellon Foundation, The Monuments Project. Grant, $1.2 million, “Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley House” principal investigator and grant writer. Jan 2024; National Trust for Historic Preservation, African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund. Grant, $150,000, “Organizational Capacity Building,” project lead and grant writer. May 2022; New York Prize. Van Alen Institute. Fellowship, $15,000. “Public Ecologies.” 2008; Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education. Grant, $754,000, “Designing a Professional Practice Curriculum for Cross-cultural Mobility and Community Engagement.” United States Department of Education. principle investigator for a consortium of nine universities in Canada, Mexico and the US. 2002-08.

Selected Publications: Grimes, E., “Thinking and being otherwise: Liberatory environmental justice and the Black Metropolis.” ARENA Journal of Architectural Research. V. 8. I. 1. (2023); Grimes, E. (as the Mortician), “Partially Decomposed.“ Flat Out 4, Spring 20, 31-33; Grimes, E. “Empty.” Area 168, (Milan) February 2020; Bunge, E., Hoang, M., Buildings and Almost Buildings, E. Grimes (ed.), New York: Actar (2019); Dunn, S., and Felsen, M., Grimes, E. (ed.), UrbanLab: Bowling. San Francisco: ORO Editions. (2017); Grimes, E. (as the Muckraker), “Show Me the Money.“ Flat Out 1, Fall 2016, 28-32; Grimes, E., “Say No, But Get It Built: Interview with Stanley Tigerman." Journal of Architectural Education. V. 65. I. 1. (2011); Grimes, E., “Risky Business, Fishy Forms.” Building Systems: Design Society Technology. R. Smith, K. Moe, editors. Oxford: Routledge Press. (2011); Grimes, E., “What/Wow: Interview with R.E. Somol.” a/X. Chicago: School of the University of Illinois at Chicago. (Fall 2007).

Selected Exhibitions: 50 Designers, 50 Ideas, 50 Wards. Chicago Architecture Foundation. Chicago. May-October, 2016. (BirdFront project, with Julie Flohr); Public Ecologies. Van Alen Institute. New York City. August 2008. (solo exhibition)

Her teaching philosophy is grounded in the liberatory practices of Fred Moten and Kerry James Marshall.  

“…study is what you do with other people." (110) “Form is not the eradication of the informal. Form is what emerges from the informal. So, the classic example of that kind of song… is 'What’s Going On?' by Marvin Gaye—and of course the title is already letting you know: goddamn it, something’s going on! This song emerges out of the fact that something already was going on. Then, from a certain limited perspective, we recognize, there are these people milling around and talking and greeting one another—and then, something that we recognize as music emerges from that. But then, if you think about it for half-a-damn-second, you say, ‘but the music was already playing.’ Music was already being made. So, what emerges is not music in some general way, as opposed to the non-musical. What emerges is a form, out of something that we call informality. The informal is not the absence of form. It’s the thing that gives form. The informal is not formlessness. And what those folks are engaging in at the beginning of 'What’s Going On?' is study. Now, when Marvin Gaye starts singing, that’s study too.” (128-129) Fred Moten, quoted in “The General Antagonism: An Interview with Stevphen Shukaitis,” in Harney, Moten, The Undercommons, Fugitive Planning and Black Study, Minor Compositions, 2013, 110, 128-9.

“If you really want to be free, you have to take charge of your capacity to shape the world.” Kerry James Marshall in Kerry James Marshall (video), 17 Oct 2016, New York Times.