Fred Scharmen teaches architecture and urban design at Morgan State University’s School of Architecture and Planning. His work as a designer and researcher focuses on how architects imagine new spaces for speculative future worlds and who is invited into those worlds. His first book, Space Settlements, from Columbia Books on Architecture and the City, was published in 2019. His second book, Space Forces was published by Verso in 2021. Scharmen has spoken and exhibited internationally, at venues like the Canadian Centre for Architecture, the Graham Foundation, the Strelka Institute, the Venice Architecture Biennale, and the Museum of the Future in Dubai. Recent projects, with the Working Group on Adaptive Systems, include a mile-and-a-half long scale model of the solar system in downtown Baltimore (in collaboration with nine artists), and a pillow fort for the Baltimore Museum of Art based on Gottfried Semper’s Four Elements of Architecture.