Jia Yi Gu

is a Los Angeles-based architecture researcher, writer, curator, and designer. Her projects explore changing definitions of architectural knowledge from the building site to the desktop. Recently, she co-curated Material Acts, an interdisciplinary research initiative, exhibition, publication, and symposium exploring the intersections of architecture, craft, and science through material experimentation.

She is Assistant Professor of Architecture at Harvey Mudd College and one half of the architecture and research studio Spinagu. She develops exhibitions, publications, and experimental programming and projects.

Over the past decade, she has cultivated a research and curatorial practice centering on transdisciplinary and inquiry-based exhibitions, alongside the critique and transformation of institutional work. Previously, she was director and curator at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House. From 2014-2020, she served as director of Materials & Applications, a Los Angeles based project space for experimental architecture. She is currently a Board member of the Feminist Center for Creative Work.

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Projects

Material Acts is an interdisciplinary research initiative, exhibition, publication, and symposium exploring the intersections of architecture, craft, and science through material experimentation. Initiated as part of Getty PST ART: Art and Science Collide and co-organized with co-curator Kate Yeh Chiu, Hilary Huckins-Weidner and strat coffman, with support from Getty Foundation, Graham Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Entourage is an exhibition of contemporary architects whose work confronts and expand on the ways bodies serve as units of measure for architecture. MAK Center for Art and Architecture, June 1 — September 15, 2024.

VALIE EXPORT: Embodied is the first solo presentation of the artist in Los Angeles. MAK Center for Art and Architecture, February 16, 2024.

Subject Studies: Reorientations attends to administrative and care-taking practices of the institution and its publics. Initiated with Rosario Talevi and takk architecture. The program was awarded the PICE A/CE Grant and California Council for Arts Grant, Winter 2022.

Schindler House: 100 years in the Making investigates the fabrications of a modernist house.
With Gary Riichirō Fox and Sarah Hearne, MAK Center for Art and Architecture, September 2022—January 2023.

Staging Construction
With M&A Program Board. Materials & Applications, 2019.

Privacies Infrastructure, a public program interrogating the physical structures of privacy and privatization in Los Angeles. With Aurora Tang. Materials & Applications, July 21-September 2018

The Institute of Placemaking, a knowledge exchange center. With Valentina Karga, Rosario Talevi, Pieterjan Grandry. Eme3 Festival. Barcelona. 2012

Teaching
Instituting

Assistant Professor of Architecture (tenure-track) Department of Humanities, Social Sciences and the Arts, Harvey Mudd College, 2024—present

Director and Curator MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House, 2020—2024

Director and Curator
Materials & Applications, 2014—2020

Eugene MacDorman Visiting Professor Graduate Program in Architecture, UT Austin, 2021

Visiting Artist Graduate Program in Architecture / History Theory Experiments, California College of Arts, 2019-2021

D. Kenneth Sargent Visiting Critic School of Architecture, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, 2019

Teaching Fellow University of California, Los Angeles, Cluster Program History of Modern Thought, 2020

Associate Director Summer Institute, Department of Architecture and Urban Design, University of California Los Angeles, 2015-2017

Writing
Publishing

Material Acts (the publication) In collaboration with Kate Yeh Chiu, Craft Contemporary and e-flux architecture

Living Systems: From the Geologic to the MetabolicEssay for More Than Human at the Design Museum, London. Thank you Justin McGuirk for the invitation, 2025.

Contribution to 100 Words for Water: A VocabularyEdited by Eva Franch i Gilabert, Mireia Luzárraga, Alejndro Muiño, 2025.

A Conversation on Open Letters & Spreadsheets, exploring the formats of open letters, spreadsheets, and list-making as sites of digital vigilantism unfolding in architecture.
In MAS Context: Digital Vigilantism, 33

The Budget, an essay on the politics, poetics and pragmatics of exhibition budgets e-flux architecture’s Solicited: Proposals, edited by Nick Axel and James Taylor-Foster.

Haptic instruments in Ivan Sutherland’s Sketchpad Exhibition catalogue of The Architecture Machine, curated by Teresa Fankhänel, Munich Architecture Museum.

Formats of Care
Log 48: Expanding Modes of Practice, edited by Bryony Roberts, Winter 2020.

Presenting
Organizing
Engaging

Major Repairs: A Conference on Reparative Practices, exploring spatial and architectural responses to wildfire. Organizer, presented by LA Forum for Architecture and Urban Design, hosted by Metabolic Studio, April 26, 2025.

On Transliterations: Helen Liu Fong on PaperPaper presented at Bright Constellations: WDA Conference at Princeton University, February 28, 2025.

Material Acts Book Presentations at e-flux, Columbia GSAPP, and UIC with MAS Context in fall 2024 and spring 2025.

Material Acts: A Symposium with Kate Yeh Chiu, USC, February 2025.

Surfacing Work Under the Influence 004: Spinagu and Langaritta Navaro, LA Forum for Architecture and Urbanism, February 25, 2024

Researcher-in-Residence With Iker Gil, established the research fellowship at the MAK Center with SOM Foundation, Summer 2023.

Paris Design FocusParticipated in a curatorial forum for global design curators, by invitation of the French Institute, 2021.

Architecture as Cultural Exchange with Gilly Karjevsky, Rosario Talevi, and Aurora Tang, a curatorial exchange with support from Checkpoint Charlie Fund.

Minor Spaces/Major Repairs
Presentation, CARE-WORK: Space, Bodies, and the Politics of Care, on institutional practices through data-rich details, including spreadsheets, exhibition budgets and systems of accounting. Invited by Brittany Utting, Assistant Professor, Rice Architecture, March 2, 2021.

Tour as Format
Organizer, Curatorial Workshops, MAK Center for Art and Architecture, 2021.

Exhibition-Making in Modern HousesOrganizer, Curatorial Workshops, MAK Center for Art and Architecture, 2021.

Backstage of the Global Histories Survey: Slow Looking, Translating, Listening, ActivatingCo-organized with Esra Akcan, Associate Professor, Cornell University, and Rafico Ruiz, Director of Research, Canadian Center for Architecture, SAH/GAHTC Teacher-to-Teacher Workshop. March 20, 2021.

Method Acts: techniques for graduate students Co-organized Jonah Rowan and Jessica Varner, SAH Graduate Student Advisory, January - February 2021.

Can We Teach an Anti-racist Architectural History?
Co-organized with Irene Cheng, Charles L. Davis II, Ana María León, and Mabel O. Wilson. GAHTC Workshop and Roundtable.

Cardboard Knowledge: Problem Solving and Perception in Saarinen's TWA Simulations Paper presentation in the panel Utopias of the Self. Session chairs: Victoria Bugge Øye, Princeton University, and Larry Busbea, University of Arizona, April 14, 2021.

Problem Solving in Saarinen's Office Presented at the Doctoral Colloquium organized by gta Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture at ETH Zürich in September 28, 2021.

Dark Matter UniversityCo-organiazer with a democratic network of architecture and design educators dedicated to anti-racist pedagogies, 2021.

ACLS Emerging Scholar Invited to American Council of Learned Societies Intention Foundry as Emerging Scholar, 2021.

Surfacing Work
Lecture at University of Toronto on projects by Spinagu, Nov. 25, 2020.

Conversations on CareConversaton with Ana Miljacki in MIT Critical Broadcasting Lab + WAWD? Radio, May 5, 2020.

Analogue Models and Cardboard Cutters in Eero Saarinen & Associates, 1956-1959 Doctoral Talks, ETH Zürich, Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (July 23, 2020).

Understanding the Architectural Model Invited participant in the Getty Research Institute working group. Organized by Maristella Casciato, Gary Fox, Emily Pugh at the Getty Research Institute, March 10-11, 2020.

The Institution Is a Proposition Architecture Lecture Series, California College of the Arts, Oct. 7, 2019.

Curator’s ForumInvited participant, organized by EXPO Chicago and ICI with Chicago Architecture Biennale, 2019

Toolkit Research Residency Canadian Center for Architecture, Doctoral Students Program.

Formats of Care: Reclaiming Feminist Social Practice Working SymposiaInvited Panelist, Universität der Künste, Berlin, June 14, 2019.

Bogosian Fellowship Exhibition Talk Invited speaker with Michael Speaks and James Leng, Syracuse University, School of Architecture, May 3, 2019.

The Work of a Small Architecture InstitutionLecturer/Presenter in Midday Talks, University of Toronto, Daniels School of Architecture, February 13, 2019

Bergfried: Activating the Ground Floor Guest Speaker with Atelier Fanelsa, MakeCity Festival of Architecture & Urban Alternatives, Berlin, June 24, 2018 (Thanks to Rosario Talevi)

Making a Living in the New Culture Industries Moderator and Presenter, Berlinische Gallerie with MakeCity, Berlin, June 22 2018

The Institution is a Proposition Curatorial Talk, Media Design Practices, Art Center, March 22 2018 (Thanks to Mimi Zeiger)

Collective Correctives #1: On/Off Co-organizer, M&A / 2426 SET, October 2017

New Forensics: Scenarios and Simulated Environments, Co-organizer with Laida Aguirre, M&A / 2426 SET, August 19, 2017

Common Field ConveningCo-organizer with HR, FCCW, CLUI. Los Angeles, November 2–5, 2017

Institutions, Installations, Instruments Lecture, TU Berlin Architecture, June 16 2017

Can A Building Own Itself? A Blockchian Workshop Co-organizer, M&A / Navel, May 11, 2017

Zoning & Its Applications M&A / Los Angeles Poverty Department and Rosten Woo, March 2017

Advising
Mentoring
Jurying

Board of Directors: Feminist Center for Creative Work July 2024—present

Advisory Board: homeLA
May 2024—present.

Jury: Architecture League Prize with Behnaz Assadi, Rayshad Dorsey, Liz Gálvez, Miles Gertler, Mario Gooden and William O’Brien Jr., 2025

Nominator: US Artist Fellowship
US Artist Fellowship, Architecture and Design, 2021

Jury: Artadia Awards
Artadia, 2023

Jury and Mentor: SOM Foundation Robert L Wesley Prize
SOM Foundation Robert L. Wesley 2021—present

Jury: Artist Relief
Artist Relief, 2021

Graduate Student Advisory Committee Society of Architectural Historians, 2017-2020.