Jia Yi Gu

is an architectural scholar, curator, and designer working on histories of knowledge production through the lens of media studies, cultural techniques, and material cultures (i.e. how we know and show our histories). Her research and courses explore changing definitions of architectural knowledge from the building site to the desktop. She is Assistant Professor of Architecture at Harvey Mudd College and one half of the architecture and research studio Spinagu. She develops exhibitions, texts,  and experimental programs and projects.
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Jia Yi Gu
 is an architectural scholar, curator, and designer working on histories of knowledge production through the lens of media studies, cultural techniques, and material cultures (i.e. how we know and show our histories). Her research and courses explore changing definitions of architectural knowledge from the building site to the desktop. She is Assistant Professor of Architecture at Harvey Mudd College and one half of the architecture and research studio Spinagu. She develops exhibitions, texts,  and experimental programming and  projects.
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Bio
Recent Activities 
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Website Under Construction

Architecture and Media


This course explores the relationship between architecture and media through an investigation into architecture’s tools and instruments. While the term media typically conjures images of screens, electronic circuits, and machinic devices, this course understands media in relation to a specific set of practices that architects engage in: writing, drawing, transporting, typing, accounting, scanning, quantifying, computing and interfacing. Media systems construct specific forms of knowledge, embody historical and political ideologies, and shape human agency, relationships, labor, value systems, and thought. By examining how architecture's relationship to media extends beyond “new” objects, tools, and technologies, we  construct an understanding of how media determines procedures, processes and practices inside and outside architecture.


University of Toronto, Daniels School of Architecture, Fall 2020.


Drawing a circle seems like a self evident practice in architecture. We don’t think about drawing circles as something that is mediated. But there are many instances in architectural history where architects have tried to grapple with the gap or ‘distance’ between ideation and realization by constructing a specific set of techniques to close that gap, with consequences following such closure.