About
Jia Yi Gu is a Los Angeles-based historian, curator, and designer. Her scholarly research and teaching center on material culture, the history of museums and exhibitions, and the history of knowledge production in architecture. She develop exhibitions, publications, and experimental projects investigating cultural techniques in architecture, materials, care work, and institutional practices. She is Assistant Professor of Architecture at Harvey Mudd College and one half of the architecture and research studio Spinagu.
In 2024, she co-directed Material Acts, an interdisciplinary research initiative, exhibition, publication, and symposium exploring material experimentation in design and architecture at the intersections of architecture, craft, and science, supported by the Getty PST Art and Science and presented at Craft Contemporary. Her current projects include The Institution is a Proposition, a publication on the mission, histories, and labor economies of small and unusual architecture institutions, and Unknowing Los Angeles, an exhibition on Los Angeles architecture and its social history in the 1980s with Gary Riichirō Fox and Aurora Tang.
Over the past decade, she has cultivated a practice attending to small and unusual art and architecture institutions. Previously, she was director and curator at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House, and curated Schindler House: 100 Years in the Making, Subject Studies: Reorientations, VALIE EXPORT: Embodied, and Entourage. From 2014-2020, she served as director of Materials & Applications, a Los Angeles based project space for experimental architectur. She is currently a Board member of the Feminist Center for Creative Work.
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 modeling procedures and material thinking in the postwar office of Eero Saarinen & Associates. 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.
Her projects have been recognized and supported by UCLA, Getty Foundation, Getty PST ART, National Endowment for the Arts, 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.
Jia Yi Gu is a Los Angeles-based historian, curator, and designer. Her scholarly research and teaching center on material culture, the history of museums and exhibitions, and the history of knowledge production in architecture. She develop exhibitions, publications, and experimental projects investigating cultural techniques in architecture, materials, care work, and institutional practices. She is Assistant Professor of Architecture at Harvey Mudd College and one half of the architecture and research studio Spinagu.
In 2024, she co-directed Material Acts, an interdisciplinary research initiative, exhibition, publication, and symposium exploring material experimentation in design and architecture at the intersections of architecture, craft, and science, supported by the Getty PST Art and Science and presented at Craft Contemporary. Her current projects include The Institution is a Proposition, a publication on the mission, histories, and labor economies of small and unusual architecture institutions, and Unknowing Los Angeles, an exhibition on Los Angeles architecture and its social history in the 1980s with Gary Riichirō Fox and Aurora Tang.
Over the past decade, she has cultivated a practice attending to small and unusual art and architecture institutions. Previously, she was director and curator at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House, and curated Schindler House: 100 Years in the Making, Subject Studies: Reorientations, VALIE EXPORT: Embodied, and Entourage. From 2014-2020, she served as director of Materials & Applications, a Los Angeles based project space for experimental architectur. She is currently a Board member of the Feminist Center for Creative Work.
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 modeling procedures and material thinking in the postwar office of Eero Saarinen & Associates. 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.
Her projects have been recognized and supported by UCLA, Getty Foundation, Getty PST ART, National Endowment for the Arts, 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.