Jia Yi Gu
Assistant Professor of Architecture
I am a Los Angeles-based historian, curator, and designer. My research and teachings explore changing definitions of architectural knowledge from the building site to the desktop with a special attention to how architects know and show their histories. I develop exhibitions, publications, and experimental programming and projects investigating cultural techniques in architecture, materials, care work, and institutional practices. I’m Assistant Professor of Architecture at Harvey Mudd College and one half of the design research studio Spinagu.
I teach a wide range of courses about architecture and design through their histories of making, collecting, instituting, and displaying, with a focus on media studies, processes, historiography, and art and science intersections spanning the early modern period to present day.
My research investigates the history of cultural techniques in material experimentation, from modeling practices to the making of new materials. I co-curated the Getty PST Art and Science project Material Acts, an interdisciplinary research initiative, exhibition, publication, and symposium exploring the intersections of architecture, craft, and science through material experimentation and ecologies. My current projects include The Institution is a Proposition, a publication on the mission, histories, and labor economies of small and unusual architecture institutions, and 80 Buildings in the 80s, an exhibition on postmodern Los Angeles with Gary Riichirō Fox and Aurora Tang.
Over the past decade, I have cultivated a research-based curatorial practice centering transdisciplinary and inquiry-based exhibitions, alongside the critique and transformation of institutional practice. Previously, I was director and curator at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House. From 2014-2020, I served as director of Materials & Applications, a Los Angeles based project space for experimental architecture. I am currently a Board member of the Feminist Center for Creative Work.
Courses Taught
(Please refer to HSA Departmental Courses for this semester’s courses.)
- ARCH179A Material Acts
- ARCH179B Architecture and Display
- ARCH179C Campus Architecture
- HSA 10 Architecture and Its Media