Flat Out is an independent print magazine that enacts multiple genres of architectural criticism through fifteen recurring, fictitious characters. These characters are positioned to produce surprising points of view and expand the range and terms of critical writing for architecture. In each issue readers will find a series of columns—essays, exposés, memoirs, letters, pitches, illustrations, conversations, vignettes, and polemics—authored by a rotating cast of undercover writers and designers. Character portraits by a different artist are commissioned for every issue. Published twice a year, Flat Out takes its time as fast as it can, providing distance from the present tense. We invite the brave, the curious, and the skeptical alike—architects, artists, critics, curators, designers, illustrators, journalists, scholars, students, and lovers of design culture in general—to participate in untimely dialogues across diverse positions and personalities in order to expand the audience and effects of architectural criticism.

Zehra Ahmed is a doctoral candidate in the history and theory of architecture at Princeton University. Previously she was visiting assistant professor at the UIC School of Architecture, where she taught architectural theory and history. Her work focuses on the intersection of architecture, economics, and politics—an approach that mines relations between the discipline and its surrounding institutions. She is coeditor of the publication Crown Hall Dean’s Dialogues 2012–2017 and a contributing editor at Flat Out. She holds a joint master's in architecture and master's in design criticism degree from UIC, and a bachelor's in economics from the University of Chicago.

Penelope Dean is associate professor at the UIC School of Architecture. Her research focuses on contemporary architectural culture with an emphasis on the exchanges between architecture and the allied design fields. Dean's writings have appeared in Architectural Design, the Journal of Architectural Education, Harvard Design Magazine, Log, hunch, Praxis, and Flat Out, and her research supported by a visiting scholar’s residency at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal. She holds a PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles, previously worked as an architect for the Dutch office MVRDV, and has served in various editorial capacities for hunch, Content, KM3, and Crib Sheets. She is founding editor of Flat Out.

James Goggin is a graphic designer and educator from London via Sydney, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Auckland, Arnhem, and Chicago. He received his master's in graphic design from the Royal College of Art and founded his design practice in London upon graduation in 1999. He is on the faculty of the bachelor's and master's graphic design programs at Rhode Island School of Design. He is currently art director and editorial board member of Flat Out, and previously worked as consultant to Tate Modern and Tate Britain; art director of the avant-garde British music magazine The Wire; and director of design and publishing at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. He previously taught at Werkplaats Typografie in Arnhem, the Netherlands, and at Ecole cantonale d'art de Lausanne (ECAL) in Switzerland. He contributes writing to a range of international publications and journals, and is a member of Alliance Graphique Internationale.

Ellen Grimes is associate professor of architecture at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and editor-at-large at Flat Out. She has worked with Bruce Mau Design, Garofalo Architects, DLK, and Greg Lynn Form, and is a principal in FlohrGrimes. Her writing and editorial work have appeared in Buildings and Almost Buildings, Bowling, Flat Out, Log, the Journal of Architectural Education, and Content. She was awarded the Van Alen Institute's New York Prize for Public Ecologies and holds an master's in architecture from the University of Illinois at Chicago, as well as an MBA and bachelor's from the University of Chicago.

Jayne Kelley is an editor and writer based in Chicago. She is currently a visiting assistant professor at the UIC School of Architecture and managing editor of publications for the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize. From 2013 to 2017, she worked at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, most recently as managing editor in the publications division. She is a coauthor of The Western Town: A Theory of Aggregation (Hatje Cantz, 2013) and an editor of The Museum Is Not Enough (Canadian Centre for Architecture/Sternberg Press, 2019). Her writing has also appeared in Clog, MAS Context, the Journal of Architectural Education, and Flat Out, where she is content and copy editor and a member of the editorial board.

R. E. Somol has been director of UIC’s School of Architecture since 2007. A design critic and theorist, he is the editor of Autonomy and Ideology and has served on the editorial boards of Any and Log. His writings have appeared in publications ranging from Assemblage to Wired, and will appear in his collection of essays, Nothing to Declare. In 2015, Somol was named a fellow at UIC's Institute for the Humanities, where he will complete his book manuscript, This Will Cover That: Writing and Building from the Death of Corbusier to the End of Architecture. He has also served as the Baumer Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Ohio State University.

Lauren Van Damme is managing editor of Flat Out. Previously she was assistant director of the UIC School of Architecture, where she served on various committees including the Proposal Design Committee for the UIC/North Lawndale bid for the Obama Presidential Library. Prior to UIC, Van Damme was the public programs coordinator at the Chicago Architecture Foundation, and worked in the Fine Arts Program of the US General Services Administration in Washington, DC. She is coeditor of Preserve and Play National Conference Proceedings, and a/X volumes 3 and 4. She holds a bachelor's in art history from Boston University and an master's in American Studies from the George Washington University.

Flat Out Inc. is organized exclusively for literary and educational purposes and conforms to section 501(c)3 of the Internal Revenue Code. Its mission is to expand dialogues about contemporary architecture and design culture in America's Midwest and beyond through publishing the magazine Flat Out. The magazine seeks to increase public understanding of architecture and design culture through a collection of essays, letters, conversations, illustrations, and pitches. It is distributed to the general public nationally and internationally twice per year in spring and fall through online and bookstore sales.