The 3D Textbook: How Maya Bird-Murphy Built a Sanctuary for Design Activism

All photography by Tom Harris

A nonprofit known for teaching design out of a retrofitted USPS van, Mobile Makers Chicago just parked in a permanent home. But it’s not your average education space/office. It’s a former loading dock turned creative sanctuary where design is accessible for all.

Architect and educator Maya Bird-Murphy founded Mobile Makers in 2017 because she saw a lack of diversity in architecture. Her goal was to provide more opportunities for underrepresented youth to learn about design and advocate for meaningful change in the field and the built world. Soon enough, Maya moved Mobile Makers out of the van and into a new space on Chicago’s West Side that could accommodate all of its programming.

“This first phase of work left us with a beautiful 1,800-square-foot shell made of cinder block, brick, exposed metal trusses, and concrete. We used the space in this form for a couple of years [until] we completed the full build-out [in 2024],” explains Maya, who adds, “Everything about our space was informed by this industrial past. Even the corridor follows the line where the new and old concrete meet.”

This new creative hub has five distinct areas: an oversize, double-height lobby; a makerspace; a conference room; a flex workshop area with a kitchenette and library; and an office mezzanine. Momentum and Fomcore donated product to Mobile Makers’ renovation. The Tiered Learning Lounge and Library Nook feature expressive patterns from the Yinka Ilori x Momentum collection to bring energy and optimism for presentations and guest speakers.

Maya highlights a unique design detail of her company’s branding, which includes shapes that symbolize the foundations of spatial learning. “These shapes appear as window decals and murals, and in the lobby as pegs that can be moved around a giant pegboard,” she explains. “We built large-scale 3D shapes that we use as furniture and sculptural objects.” The kid-friendly space also exposes the "guts" of the building so visible systems serve as a 3D textbook for their students.

But more than just housing educational and practical youth programming—such as architecture and design workshops and special events—this is also a design haven. Maya says, “Our space is a safe environment for play, collaboration with others who are different from ourselves, and collective dreaming about what liberation in the built environment might look like.”

Everyone—from 8-year-olds to adult board members—is welcome here. The layout is a "flex" masterpiece. One minute, it’s a high-energy makerspace for teens building community models. The next, it’s a professional workplace or a party venue with a DJ set. It’s all about agency and giving people a space where they feel they belong.

—Louis Noha