Archinect - Features

'Architecture Education as an Active Project': A Conversation with Mariana Ibañez, Chair of UCLA's Department of Architecture and Urban Design

2023-11-13T11:05:00-05:00

Academic leaders have the demanding task of steering and shaping a school's culture and pedagogy. Not only are they responsible for overseeing an institution's administrative affairs, but they are also charged with fostering environments for students and faculty to thrive.

Since 2013, Archinect's Deans List series has provided in-depth conversations with architecture and design leaders (Deans and Department Chairs), giving us invaluable perspective on their pedagogical stances, the institution’s curriculum, and academic environment. For this Deans List interview, I chatted with Mariana Ibañez, Associate Professor and Chair of UCLA's Department of Architecture and Urban Design.

UCLA AUD's M.Arch Research Studio Explores Speculative 'Future Histories' of Los Angeles

2022-12-15T13:57:00-05:00

The latest installment in Archinect's Studio Pin-Ups series presents graduate student work from one of UCLA Architecture and Urban Design (AUD)'s Research Studio Seminars. The studio, titled "Future [Hi]Stories of the City," is led by Kutan Ayata, AUD's Vice Chair, Associate Professor, and co-founder of Brooklyn-based architecture practice Young & Ayata.

This research-based studio encouraged M.Arch students to explore and document "speculative future histories of Los Angeles through the design of episodic instances. In pairs, students choose an issue that currently pressures and influences the development of LA; the task is to document the state and impact of these issues towards the Year 2062."

A Bridge to Architectural Education: Exploring UCLA Architecture and Urban Design’s Summer Programs with Julia Koerner

2021-05-13T11:32:00-04:00

With summer right around the corner, high school students, young professionals, and individuals looking to explore new disciplines seek programs that spark their interests while learning new skills. With virtual learning practices adopted globally, the opportunity for students to participate in notable summer school programs from any part of the world is readily available.

This summer, UCLA Architecture and Urban Design's notable summer programs welcome individuals interested in exploring design and learning introductory skills in architecture in a new virtual format. By offering two programs created for high school students and adults, the Teen ArchStudio and JumpStart programs provide participants with a glimpse into studio culture at one of the leading public universities in the world in addition to earning University of California (UC) course credit. This year's summer program welcomes Assistant Adjunct Professor Julia Koerner as its newly appointed Summer Programs Director. Wit...

X-WORLDS: UCLA's 2020 IDEAS Summer Studio Transforms Their Summer Programming Into an Incubator for Remote Exploration

2020-11-15T12:59:00-05:00

Summer 2020 proved to be a season of tackling the unknown as the pandemic impacted architectural academia. With nearly all summer programs pivoting and transitioning to remote learning, popular summer programs aimed to find a way to motivate students during such challenging times with online experiences that allowed them to explore digital possibilities within architecture.

UCLA's IDEAS Summer studio shares with Archinect, "This year's IDEAS Summer Studio "X-WORLDS" marked the first entirely virtual introduction to the one-year Master of Science in Architecture and Urban Design (M.S.AUD) program at UCLA Architecture and Urban Design. The six-week program provided an immersion into the intersecting worlds of each of the four M.S.AUD research studios: Entertainment, Mobility, Technology, and Urban Strategy."

Archinect connected with the team from UCLA's IDEAS Campus Summer Studio to learn about the program's goals and highlight the work of student participants created during their s...

Architectural Memory and Film with UCLA's Alekya Malladi, Gesthimani Roumpani, and Yanrong Yang

2020-07-29T13:11:00-04:00

Architecture and it's ability to frame visual narratives has impacted film and entertainment for decades. With the evolution of design techniques and software, a new form of digital storytelling can aide how architecture is used to test design process and pedagogy. University of California Los Angeles Architecture and Urban Design M.Arch students Alekya Malladi, Gesthimani Roumpani, Yanrong Yang use film to dissect architecture and AI in their project, Incognito.

Advised by UCLA's IDEAS Entertainment Studio advisors Natasha Sandmeier and Nathan Su, the group explains how their film "serves as an exposé on memory, spatial reconstruction, and the role of contemporary media in delivering fact and fiction." Archinect connected with the trio as they share their perspectives on working through the pandemic and what their future holds as they enter professional practice. "Our interactions with professionals in the architecture industry have shown us that establishing a clear identity and i...

UCLA's Chinmayi Suri, Xinran Ge, and Xue Zhao Reshape LA's Mountaintops

2020-07-17T13:17:00-04:00

The iconic hills of Los Angeles not only play a role in the city's eccentric history, but also shape its land use trends over the decades. Chinmayi Suri, Xinran Ge ,and Xue Zhao are students in UCLA Architecture and Urban Design's Master of Architecture II (M.Arch.II program). Archinect connected with the trio to discuss their final project, Third Mountain. Studying within the school's IDEAS - Urban Strategy program led by Associate Adjunct Professor Jeffrey Inaba, Gillian Shaffer, and David Jimenez Iniesta, the students explore a the addition of new urban fabric for the city of Los Angeles. According to the group, "These new sites [Third Mountain project] create a different identity for Los Angeles’s urban fabric, inspiring new glamour and ideas of building with earth and landscapes."

The research-based projects at UCLA's IDEA's campus, according to the educators, push students to not only conceptualize possible outcomes through data and prototyping but also to foster solutions fo...

UCLA AUD's Akshada Muley, Neha Oswal, and Aishwarya Rajasekar Narrativize Plastic Waste

2020-07-14T12:57:00-04:00

Archinect recently connected with Akshada Muley, Neha Oswal, and Aishwarya Rajasekar, recent graduate students of UCLA Architecture and Urban Design's Master of Architecture II program. Together we unpack their final project: FOREVER. With the proposal, the trio aims to address the issues of plastic use and waste by creating a new narrative to counter the "anthropocentric way we often describe the city." By anthropomorphizing how a city and its waste can be described, they portray how the "world is shared with many other non-human entities, each with their own tendencies and dispositions."

Archinect connected with Muley, Oswal, and Rajasekar as they explain their use of film as a medium to explain their project. They add, "our story makes plastic viscerally and emotionally present in the city. Here plastic is no longer the much-maligned victim, the neglected creature made to serve us, and discarded when no longer needed." Advised by Natasha Sandmeier & Nathan Su of UCLA's IDEAs Ent...

UCLA's Chunsu Ouyang, Tianyi Song, and Xianrui Wang on Unpacking Architecture Through Video Game Narratives

2020-07-01T10:00:00-04:00

This week Archinect connected with Chunsu Ouyang, Tianyi Song, Xianrui Wang to learn more about their final project - INNERMOST. The trio of recent graduate students of UCLA Architecture and Urban Design's Master of Architecture II discuss their project's use of video game narratives in architecture, working remotely, and their outlook on finding a job after graduating.

Advised by Natasha Sandmeier & Nathan Su of UCLA's IDEAs Entertainment Studio program, the students work towards "conceiving a game that can make a metaphor of people growing up/self-developing while collaborating with others, in order to explore the possibility of a game as a new social medium."

Archinect's Spotlight on 2020 Thesis Projects: 2020 has been an extraordinarily challenging year for architecture graduates. Students were displaced as schools shut down, academic communities had to adapt to a new virtual format, end-of-year celebrations were canceled or changed dramatically, and now these students are gradu...

UCLA AUD Master of Architecture II Students Interrogate the Climate Risk of LA Real Estate

2020-06-23T09:00:00-04:00

Wenhan Dong, Linyi Zhang, and Xiyan Wang are students in UCLA Architecture and Urban Design's Master of Architecture II (M.Arch.II program). Archinect caught up with Dong, Zhang, and Wang to discuss their final project within the school's IDEAS - Urban Strategy program. Led by Associate Adjunct Professor Jeffrey Inaba, Gillian Shaffer, and David Jimenez Iniesta students unpack the city of Los Angeles and the effects climate change will have on land-use and development in the year 2050.

UCLA Thesis Students Investigate LA's Iconic Bunker Hill

2020-06-11T12:51:00-04:00

Gaurav Puri, Jingyi Wang, Ruchi Singhania, and Yuxuan He are students in UCLA Architecture and Urban Design’s Master of Architecture II (M.Arch.II program). Archinect was able to connect with Puri, Wang, and Singhania to explore their final project within their IDEAS - Urban Strategy program. Recognized as an institution focused on its research-based approach and student-faculty collaborations, UCLA's IDEA's programming enables students to explore topics that focus on issues and solutions whose application can be actualized.

Together, the team, under the instruction of Associate Adjunct Professor Jeffrey Inaba, Gillian Shaffer and David Jimenez Iniesta, explore Los Angeles's iconic Bunker Hill and its historical transitions with regards to land-use. By breaking down the area's topographic and land transformations, the group works together to explore new design methods to create a more substantial "foundation for post-disaster urban life." In addition to their exploration of land-use...

Developing a Better City With UCLA's IDEAS Urban Strategy Studio

2020-02-27T14:30:00-05:00

How do we go about shaping a better city? How can land use and urbanism be explored to create solutions for pressing urban problems? Can multidisciplinary approaches to urban planning help create new ways of defining and shaping urban growth?

In Los Angeles, ubiquitous and challenging land development conditions have positioned the University of California, Los Angeles Department of Architecture and Urban Design to unpack these topics and explore them like perhaps no other school of design can. An institution that focuses on collaborative research between its students and faculty, UCLA AUD strives to create learning environments fueled by experimentation and discovery. As a means to highlight the initiatives being focused on at the school, Archinect spoke with Associate Adjunct Professor, Jeffrey Inaba, and lecturers David Jimenez Iniesta and Gillian Shaffer of UCLA AUD's IDEAS Urban Strategy Studio. The studio is one of four research topics: Entertainment (studio previously covered...

Neil Denari On Balancing Practice, Teaching, and Experimental Design

2019-12-14T07:30:00-05:00

In 2019, Neil M. Denari was awarded the 2019 Educator of the Year award by the American Institute of Architects Los Angeles chapter, an award that caps a three-decade long career situated at the intersection of practice and teaching.

In light of the award, Archinect caught up with Denari to discuss his career in academia and his perspectives on education.

Exploring the Future of Narrative in Architecture with Natasha Sandmeier and Nathan Su of UCLA's IDEAS Entertainment Studio

2019-11-14T20:30:00-05:00

Narrative, drama, and fiction have always played a key role in the production of architecture.

During the 19th Century, for example, architects like Louis Sullivan and McKim Mead & White mixed organic and formal languages to tell stories about the activities that took place within the buildings they designed, while Modernist architect Le Corbusier often worked through episodic vignettes while designing buildings and urban plans alike. In the 1980s, Jon Jerde mixed these approaches to create his trademark "experience architectures," precedents that architects like Rem Koolhaas and Zaha Hadid melded with an urban focus to create buildings that extend the street indoors and create seamless collections of spaces that blur the distinction between inside and outside.

In recent years, architecture's narrative turn has largely focused on a variety of digital fronts, where virtual and augmented reality experiments, filmic approaches, and sophisticated visualizations are creating yet another ...

The Candid Musings of a Seasoned Observer: A review of Craig Hodgetts' 'Swimming to Suburbia'

2019-03-13T12:00:00-04:00

In his collected book of essays, Swimming to Utopia, Craig Hodgetts appears to be a proud writer, though his career never seems to have depended on it. Throughout the book one finds writing written purely for the thrill of it, and that is precisely why it is arguably more pleasurable than so much other architectural criticism.

Archinect Outpost is hosting Swimming to Suburbia on Saturday, March 16th, from 7-9pm. You can preorder a copy of his book here and RSVP to the event here. Craig will be speaking about the book, followed by a book signing.

UCLA's A.UD Places Architecture at the Heart of Contemporary Culture, Says New Chair of the Department, Heather Roberge

2018-04-03T09:00:00-04:00

The UC system's Los Angeles location has long been one of the United States' leading public universities, consistently ranking as one of the best public schools for higher education in the country. The Department of Architecture and Urban Design—offering one professional graduate program, a post professional program and granting three additional academic degrees—is no exception. Their graduate program recently placed sixth, and first among public institutions, by Design Intelligence’s 2018 annual survey on the top Architecture Graduate Programs.

At UCLA's Year-End Reviews, a Diversity of Impressive Student Work Makes for a Loud 'Rumble'

2017-06-28T13:29:00-04:00

As summer begins and the academic year comes to a close, all the rooms and narrow corridors of UCLA’s Perloff Hall are overflowing with models and drawings, celebrating the hard work of the students with the annual exhibition-style event, Rumble.

Screen/Print #54: Galen Cranz on Why We Need to Rethink the Chair

2017-04-28T12:04:00-04:00

Besides buildings (obviously), chairs are probably architects favorite things to design. There’s Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona chair and Gerrit Reitveld’s Zig-Zag chair; Arne Jacobson’s Model 3107 and Frank Llloyd Wright’s Peacock chair. Today, the tradition continues, with architects from David Adjaye to Rem Koolhaas to Zaha Hadid all designing places to perch. Yet, for all their formal grace and beauty, these chairs rarely break the mold. Invariably, they are designed around an upright individual sitting at a right angle. And, according to Galen Cranz, a Professor of Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, such traditional chair designs just don’t cut it—and they're even harming our health.

Designing the Hyperspace: UCLA studio imagines Hyperloop's future in California

2015-04-01T09:01:00-04:00

Walking into the enormous Hercules building on UCLA’s IDEAS campus, in the tech-infused suburb of Playa Vista, feels a bit like a traveling through a rip in space-time. The Hercules building is a giant airplane hangar – now, it’s neighbor to YouTube’s offices and a twin hangar where film studios stage scenes for steroidal Hollywood blockbusters like Transformers and Avatar, and formerly, it housed Howard Hughes’ Spruce Goose. And since last fall, the hangar has played host to another audacious promise of transportation technology: the Hyperloop.