Brett Bloom, Julio Castro, Rikke Luther, and Cecilia Wendt have been 34 35 working together since 2004. Through their collaborative art projects, they develop strategies for putting common materials to creative new uses that address problems within the built environment. These projects model inexpensive, concrete, and sometimes playful ways that people anywhere can employ renewable or waste materials to improve the quality of their lives. They devise methods to gather and use these materials, making drawings, models, posters, and sculptural structures to test their ideas and share their processes and designs with others. Each member has gained recognition for prior work with other artists' groups. Bloom is one of the founders of the American artists' group Temporary Services; Castro is cofounder of the Mexican group Tercerunquinto; and Luther and Wendt are cofounders of the Scandinavian group N55.

During a residency in Japan in 2004, Learning Group developed a process, which they call a Collecting System, to gather waste paper and cardboard. They collaborated with students and community members to turn this material into several projects, including a 1:1 scale model of a domed cardboard dwelling called Learning by Sea Urchin, which has since been recycled. The project is represented in the exhibition through a Learning Poster and drawings.

In 2005, the group set up another Collecting System in squatted lands on the outskirts of Monterrey, Mexico. In collaboration with residents, and in response to the specific needs and resources of the site, Learning Group developed a system to turn discarded plastic bottles into building material. For this exhibition, they produced a 1:1 scale model made from cardboard and plastic bottles collected from the University of Chicago's waste stream and other Chicago sources. The structure can be broken down into small components for easy assembly as the exhibition travels. A Learning Poster and several drawings show other parts of the process.

Learning Group has also proposed a project for growing mushrooms in cavelike spaces tunneled beneath houses. Given legal restrictions, such a project would have to be underground in both the literal and figurative senses: a subterranean network of urban agriculture. The unrealized project embodies Learning Group's ideas about self-sufficiency and its belief in the need to make creative, productive use of overlooked spaces and resources. The proposal is part of their series of Connecting Systems and is represented in the exhibition by a small model, a Learning Poster, and drawings.