Jia Yi Gu is a Los Angeles-based architectural curator, scholar, and educator with a special interest in critical and alternative practices in architecture. She is director and curator at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture and co-director of Spinagu. She develops exhibitions, texts, public programs and experimental projects.
Over the past decade, she has developed a pedagogical and curatorial practice centering on transdisciplinary and research-based exhibitions and the production of situations and environments, alongside the critique and transformation of institutional practices. Her research work focuses on histories of knowledge production and display practices in art and architecture.
She is currently director and curator of MAK Center for Art and Architecture. From 2014-2020, she served as director of Materials & Applications, a Los Angeles based project space for experimental architecture, where she curated exhibitions of works by Figure, LADG, stock-a-studio, and EXTENTS, amongst others. In 2016, she co-founded the architecture studio Spinagu with Maxi Spina.
She holds a B.A. in Visual Arts from the University of California San Diego with Honors and a Master of Architecture degree from the University of California Los Angeles where she graduated with distinction and received the Alpho Rho Chi medal. She is currently completing her dissertation in the UCLA Critical Studies in Architecture. Her doctoral research investigates the use of models for research and development in the postwar architecture office of Eero Saarinen. She has presented her research at colloquiums and conferences at ETH Zurich, Society of Architectural Historians, and The Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture. Her scholarship has received support from UCLA, Bentley Library, Canadian Center for Architecture and Society of Architectural Historians.
She has taught graduate and undergraduate programs nationally as Visiting Artist in Experimental History Theory program at the California College of Arts, D. Kenneth Sargent Visiting Critic at Syracuse University, and Eugene MacDorman Visiting Professor at UT Austin School of Architecture. She has held teaching positions at UCLA, USC, SCI-Arc, University of Toronto, and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Prior to Los Angeles, she has worked internationally in Berlin, Barcelona, and Anyang with raumlaborberlin, Something Fantastic, and Kyong Park.
She has contributed written work to LOG, e-flux Architecture, Offramp and MAS Context. Her projects have been recognized and supported by UCLA, Getty Foundation, Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Checkpoint Charlie Foundation, Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, Los Angeles County Arts Commission, Pasadena Arts Alliance, Bentley Library at the University of Michigan, and the Canadian Center for Architecture.
Over the past decade, she has developed a pedagogical and curatorial practice centering on transdisciplinary and research-based exhibitions and the production of situations and environments, alongside the critique and transformation of institutional practices. Her research work focuses on histories of knowledge production and display practices in art and architecture.
She is currently director and curator of MAK Center for Art and Architecture. From 2014-2020, she served as director of Materials & Applications, a Los Angeles based project space for experimental architecture, where she curated exhibitions of works by Figure, LADG, stock-a-studio, and EXTENTS, amongst others. In 2016, she co-founded the architecture studio Spinagu with Maxi Spina.
She holds a B.A. in Visual Arts from the University of California San Diego with Honors and a Master of Architecture degree from the University of California Los Angeles where she graduated with distinction and received the Alpho Rho Chi medal. She is currently completing her dissertation in the UCLA Critical Studies in Architecture. Her doctoral research investigates the use of models for research and development in the postwar architecture office of Eero Saarinen. She has presented her research at colloquiums and conferences at ETH Zurich, Society of Architectural Historians, and The Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture. Her scholarship has received support from UCLA, Bentley Library, Canadian Center for Architecture and Society of Architectural Historians.
She has taught graduate and undergraduate programs nationally as Visiting Artist in Experimental History Theory program at the California College of Arts, D. Kenneth Sargent Visiting Critic at Syracuse University, and Eugene MacDorman Visiting Professor at UT Austin School of Architecture. She has held teaching positions at UCLA, USC, SCI-Arc, University of Toronto, and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Prior to Los Angeles, she has worked internationally in Berlin, Barcelona, and Anyang with raumlaborberlin, Something Fantastic, and Kyong Park.
She has contributed written work to LOG, e-flux Architecture, Offramp and MAS Context. Her projects have been recognized and supported by UCLA, Getty Foundation, Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Checkpoint Charlie Foundation, Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, Los Angeles County Arts Commission, Pasadena Arts Alliance, Bentley Library at the University of Michigan, and the Canadian Center for Architecture.