MAS Context is a quarterly journal that addresses issues that affect the urban context. Each issue delivers a comprehensive and critical view of a single topic through the active participation of people from different fields and different perspectives who, together, instigate the debate over urban issues that affect the way we live and design. MAS Context shares the most remarkable design ideas and work with the public. It is produced by designers for people interested in the future of the place where they live. It embraces collaboration, explores new formats of distribution, and thinks in a critical way about the issues that influence how we live. At the same time, it works to generate a collaborative culture of design in the city where it is produced, Chicago.

Iker Gil is an architect, editor-in-chief of the design journal MAS Context, and director of MAS Studio, a collaborative architecture and urban design firm. He is the editor of the book Shanghai Transforming (ACTAR, 2008), and curator of the exhibitions Shanghai Transforming and Synchronizing Geometry. Since 2010, he has been the director of the architecture series at the Instituto Cervantes, Chicago. His project Inside Marina City, produced with photographer Andreas E. G. Larsson, was exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago and pinkcomma gallery in Boston. He is the recipient of the 2010 Emerging Visions Award from the Chicago Architectural Club, as well as grant support from the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation. Gil is licensed as an architect in Spain and obtained his MArch from the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is currently a PhD candidate at the School of Barcelona.

Andrew Clark, contributing editor, is an experience designer at MINIMAL, focusing on the design of products, experiences, and visual communication. His current work includes the brand design and development of LUNATIK products. Prior to MINIMAL, Clark worked at Bruce Mau Design in Toronto and Chicago, completing a wide spectrum of communications, brand, social media, vision, architectural and experience design projects for academic institutions, global brands, and corporations. Clark's interest in visual communication and information is featured in the publication and exhibitions Shanghai Transforming (Actar, 2008), as well as GOOD's transparency website for Work Review.

Julie Michiels, contributing editor, is a licensed architect at Perkins + Will, and works in their interiors department. She is also a collaborator at the design office MAS Studio, where she has participated in award-winning entries to international competitions such as Cut. Join. Play, which will be exhibited in the official U.S. Pavilion at the Thirteenth International Venice Architecture Biennale and Festival in Barcelona.

Michelle Benoit, contributing editor, is a designer and researcher interested in exploring the intersections between architectural history and current architectural practice. Recent projects include working in rural Rwanda with MASS Design Group, and investigating urban redevelopment programs in Istanbul. She especially enjoys discovering the personal aspect of architecture, through documenting buildings and the people who inhabit them.

Paul Mougey, editor, helps companies tell better stories. A writer and brand strategist living in Chicago, he started out in the film world, working in New York for the director Martin Scorsese. Who better to mentor the art of storytelling? Mougey has created winning and persuasive narratives for Coca-Cola, Samsung, Daimler-Chrysler, Kraft, IBM, State Farm, Trek, and many others, and is presently at work on his first novel.

Plural, art director, is a Chicago-based creative studio practice founded in 2008. With a focus on pursuing meaningful projects, Plural explores new approaches within the design process, experimenting in a wide range of media including print, web, video, sound, interactive design, and installation. They have received recognition from the Art Directors Club, AIGA, the Type Directors Club, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, Communication Arts magazine, Print magazine, and How magazine, among others.

The mission of MAS Context, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization founded in 2011 and based in Chicago, is to advance the fields of architecture and design through the dissemination and sharing of ideas from different disciplines to address in a critical way specific issues of our built environment. It does so through a quarterly publication as well as a series of public lectures and events.