In 2013, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) closed 50 schools mostly serving African American and Latinx students. The schools were, CPS claimed, 'failed' and under-enrolled. Officials revealed plans to sell surplus schools. Yet most of the schools remain unsold and other decommissioned schools sold but empty. The project represents our adaptive reuse conceptual design for Overton Elementary School—one of the shuttered schools on the largely Black South Side. Specifically, the project becomes a way to operationalise design to promote activism and reflexive citizenship outside the normative parameters of 'the school.' Further, the project connects Overton’s historic Bronzeville neighbourhood to adjacent communities with diverse racial and socioeconomic demographics.