This post is brought to you by the Interior Architecture Department at Woodbury University School of Architecture

Returning to Los Angeles, the Unmentionables Symposium holds its second symposium event on April 6th. Organized by the Interior Architecture Department at Woodbury School of Architecture the symposium brings together a broad range of notable thinkers and designers drawn from architecture, film, art, philosophy, and interior design. As a space and event, the 2019 Unmentionables Symposium will question the meaning of performance and its application to design and the built form. This year the symposium will feature keynote speakers Jane Rendell, Director of Architectural History and Theory, The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, and Joel Sanders, Principal of JSA and Director of the M.Arch II Program at Yale School of Architecture. 

Sanders will be presenting his highly anticipated project Stalled! during the symposium. "Stalled! takes as its point of departure national debates surrounding transgender access to public restrooms to address an urgent social justice issue: the need to create safe, sustainable and inclusive public restrooms for everyone regardless of age, gender, race, religion and disability. Stalled! was formed in 2015 to address the design consequences of this pressing social equity problem." Rendell will be discussing her practice of site-writing and "the discussion of inner and outer spatialities and subjectivities through references to the scene of the psychoanalytic setting and confessional construction as a kind of architecture."

View the symposium's list of notable participants and some of their works below:

Lauren Amador, AIA
Principal, Amador Architect
Lauren Amador, AIA, founded Amador Architecture in 2019. Their interests in progressing conversations around queer representation, space versus program, and historical erasure in architecture are at the forefront of AA in LA, while exploring high-craftsmanship in the design details of hooks and crannies - balancing between the realm of concept and reality. Amador is amidst an incipient stack of projects in both built and conceptual; and currently, designing and developing the only lesbian bar here in Los Angeles! 

Matthew Gillis
Principal, G!LL!S; Adjunct Faculty, Woodbury University
Matthew Gillis is an architectural designer and educator. He founded G!LL!S, a design studio of architecture and interiors in Los Angeles, in 2012. He was a Los Angeles Forum for Architectural and Urban Design board member and editorial contributor. Matthew has taught at SCI-Arc, OTIS College of Design and was a Visiting Assistant Professor in Interior Architecture at Woodbury University. 

Amy Campos
Principal, Amy Campos Architect; Associate Professor and Chair of Interior Design, California College of the Arts
Amy Campos is Associate Professor and Chair of Interior Design at California College of the Arts. Her work focuses on durability and design with special interest in the impermanent, migratory potentials of the interior. The work spans a variety of scales and platforms from inhabited urban and architectural spaces to object and furniture design as well as writing. 

Jennifer Meakins
Visiting Lecturer, UCLA and Cal Poly Pomona; Adjunct Faculty, Woodbury University
Jenny Meakins is an exhibition and immersive environments designer. Her work focuses on the convergence of textiles, large-scale interior interventions, and traditional craft. Originally from Utah, Jenny moved to LA following many years in Chicago where she received a Masters in Architecture from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Jenny is currently a visiting lecturer at UCLA and Cal Poly Pomona. She recently taught at Woodbury University.

Emily Pellicano
Assistant Professor, Marywood University School of Architecture
Emily Pellicano is a practitioner and educator based in Upstate New York.  She is currently Assistant Professor in the Interior Architecture Department of the Marywood University School of Architecture where she teaches interior and architectural design studios and elective courses in representation and color, engaging theories and practices of representation with a focus on the architectural interior.  

Bryony Roberts
Founder, Bryony Roberts Studio; Adjunct Assistant Professor, Columbia University
Bryony Roberts is an architectural designer and scholar. Her practice Bryony Roberts Studio, based in New York, integrates methods from architecture, art, and preservation to respond to complex cultural sites. She has been awarded the Architectural League Prize, the Rome Prize, and the Miller Prize, as well as support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Graham Foundation, and the MacDowell Colony. 

Cathrine Veikos
Professor of Architecture, California College of the Arts
Cathrine Veikos is an architect, professor, and author of the book, Lina Bo Bardi: The Theory of Architectural Practice (2014) and of catalogue essays for Lina Bo Bardi and Albert Frey: Search for a Living Architecture (Palm Springs Museum), and Lina Bo Bardi 100 (Architekturmuseum, Munich). She has published work on Bo Bardi in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (JSAH), Journal of Architectural Education (JAE) and in the Brazilian publication, ArqTEXTO. 

Deborah Schneiderman 
Principal/Founder, deSc: architecture / design / research Professor of Interior Design, Pratt Institute
Deborah Schneiderman is Professor of Interior Design at Pratt Institute and principal/founder   of deSc:architecture/design/research.  Schneiderman’s scholarship and praxis explore the emerging fabricated interior environment and its materiality. Her research includes the books Inside Prefab: The Ready-Made Interior (Princeton Architectural Press, 2012), The Prefab Bathroom: An Architectural History (McFarland, 2014), Textile, Technology and Design: From Interior Space to Outer Space (co-edited with Alexa Griffith Winton, Bloomsbury, 2016) & Interiors Beyond Architecture (co-edited with Amy Campos, Routledge, 2018). 

Annie Coggan
Principal, Coggan + Crawford Architecture + Design; Adjunct Associate Professor of Interior Design, Pratt Institute 
Annie Coggan is a designer, educator and principal at Coggan + Crawford Architecture + Design in Brooklyn, NY. Coggan was educated at Bennington College in Vermont graduating in 1986 and her received her M. Arch from the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), Los Angeles, in 1991. She is an Adjunct Associate Professor at Pratt Institute and on the faculty at School of Visual Arts (SVA). Her furniture, textile and theoretical practice focuses on crafting “Didactic Decorative Objects” thereby investigating historical narratives via objects.

Igor Siddiqui
Associate Professor and Program Director for Interior Design, The University of Texas at Austin
Igor Siddiqui is an associate professor of architecture and interior design at The University of Texas at Austin, where he a fellow of the Gene Edward Mikeska Endowed Chair and Program Director for Interior Design. He is a registered architect and principal of ISSSStudio, a design practice founded in Brooklyn in 2006.

Rossen Ventzislavov
Associate Professor of Philosophy, Woodbury University
Rossen Ventzislavov is a philosopher and cultural critic focusing on aesthetics, architectural theory, literature, popular music, and performance art. His work has appeared in the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Deleuze Studies, Contemporary Aesthetics, and the Journal of Popular Music Studies. Rossen originated the ongoing Boxing Philosophical debate series at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in Los Angeles and is currently Associate Professor of Philosophy at Woodbury University.

The Unmentionables Symposium takes place on April 6th from 10am - 7pm at the WUHO Gallery MC'd by Rossen Ventzislavov. A Happy Hour bar installation and speciality drinks will be provided by Lauren Amador and her bar The Finger Joint. 

For tickets and more information click here.