UCLA Architecture and Urban Design

UCLA Architecture and Urban Design is now welcoming applications to AUD’s Master of Architecture (MArch), Master of Science in Architecture and Urban Design (MSAUD), and MA/PhD programs, with an application deadline of January 6, 2025 for Fall 2025 matriculation.

Visit the link in our bio for guidance and tips on preparing your application to UCLA AUD’s graduate programs, and don’t forget to join us for our upcoming admissions events!

This week, we’re showcasing the final project from Matt Conway’s Summer MSAUD Studio, “Exquis Sunset”. The project aims to re-represent Sunset Strip by proposing a new architecture that samples found architectural objects in Los Angeles. Using an ‘Exquisite Corpse’ approach, teams of students created individual segments that were later merged into one continuous, horizontally extended elevation. The result is a dynamic composition that evolves from flat planes to complex, curved surfaces, teaching students to navigate developable and non-developable geometries, visual scripting tools, and various digital fabrication techniques.

Video by Chufeng Wu
Photos by Chufeng Wu, Ming Yan, and Zhiyan Chen

Today, we are looking at a project by Riley Hammond (MArch ’24) for Julia Koerner’s Research Studio, “Fit for the Future 2.0: 3D Printed Sustainable Building Skins”.

By researching aerenchyma — a remarkable adaptation found in certain plant species — Riley developed “Tripartite: Cellular Morphologies”, a distinctive and functional building facade design. This design translates the unique capabilities of aerenchyma into a three-layer facade, with each layer addressing structural capacity, sunlight adaptation, and functional aesthetics.

Riley’s project for this course was awarded with one of UCLA AUD’s Best Project Awards at RUMBLE 2024. Click the link in our bio to see more from this project!

This week, we are featuring one of our recent graduates, Xinyi Li , a visionary designer who’s pursued dynamic, innovative hybrids throughout her studies.

Xinyi graduated with a dual MArch/MSAUD degree, having joined the MSAUD program’s Entertainment Studio in her third and final year. Her customized AUD journey follows suit from her previous studies and interests–which, while diverse, have convened around communication, whether the medium is space, image, or word.

Xinyi earned the MSAUD program’s Best Project Award with Yu Shi (MSAUD ‘24) for “LINEWOMEN,” which brings viewers to an imaginary future context in which the Earth’s magnetic field has been disrupted by human exploitation.

“I believe that the work I create on screen can influence real-life architectural trends, inspiring new ideas and approaches in the field,” Li says. “By doing so, I hope to bridge the gap between fictional and real-world architecture, creating a lasting impact on both.”

Hit the link in our bio to see more from Xinyi’s profile!

1-3: Li’s final project, with Pingting Li [MArch ‘24], for second-year MArch core studio, with Narineh Mirzaeian

4-6: Stills from LINEWOMEN, Li’s award-winning final project for the MSAUD Entertainment Studio [with Yu Shi, MSAUD ‘24]

7-8: Work from Li’s final project for first-year MArch core studio, “House to Housing,” with Yara Feghali .yara , Spring 2022

UCLA Architecture and Urban Design is pleased to share our Fall 2024 Event Series, all free and open to the public!

All events are held at AUD’s Perloff Hall on UCLA’s Main Campus in Westwood and begin at 5:30pm, unless noted otherwise. For the full 2024–25 Event Series, visit the link in our bio.

Book talk: Alfredo Thiermann presents Radio-Activities
Thursday, October 10, 2024
Professor of History and Theory of Architecture, EPFL, Lausanne

Lisa Iwamoto
Thursday, October 17, 2024
Professor and Chair, Department of Architecture at University of California, Berkeley, and Founding Partner, IwamotoScott Architecture

Skylar Tibbits
Thursday, October 24, 2024
Associate Professor, MIT Department of Architecture, and Co-Director, MIT Self-Assembly Lab

Book talk: Ferda Kolatan presents Misfits & Hybrids: Architectural Artifacts for the 21st-Century City
Monday, October 28, 2024
Associate Professor of Architecture, University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design, and Founding Director, SU11 Architecture+Design

Marion Weiss
Monday, November 18, 2024
Graham Chair Professor of Practice, University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design, and Cofounder, WEISS/MANFREDI

Lyndon Neri and Rossana Hu
Monday, November 25, 2024
Hu is Founding Partner, Neri&Hu Design and Research Office, and Chair and Miller Professor of the Department of Architecture, University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design; Neri is Founding Partner, Neri&Hu Design and Research Office

Takaharu Tezuka
Monday, December 2, 2024
President, Tezuka Architects, and Professor, Tokyo City University

Thank you to all who joined us for Rumble 2024, the 16th edition of AUD’s year-end reviews and student show. This year, we welcomed over 60 guest jurors to Perloff Hall to observe and consider the projects and research that AUD students produced during the 2023-2024 academic year. Join us as we honor our students’ work and potential, and visit the link in our bio for an expanded look at the projects on view at this year’s Rumble.

On April 22nd, UCLA cityLAB and UCLA AUD hosted noted architect Tatiana Bilbao for an evening lecture, followed by a cityLAB Block Party celebrating Bilbao’s lecture as well as some of cityLAB’s recent work — and its new visual identity.

cityLAB presented an interactive exhibition at Monday’s Block Party, which showcased four ongoing projects: Educational Workforce Housing, Semel HCI-BEWell Parklet, Pathways to Autonomy, and Urban Humanities Initiative. The exhibition featured content on mobile pegboard stations that highlighted the process of radical research methods and participatory design strategies conducted by the cityLAB team with the next generation of scholars and practitioners.

Click the link in our bio to see more from this event!

Work by Isabella Molina-Sanchez (MArch ‘24) for “Normative Buildings/Extreme Environments”, an Advanced Topics Studio taught by Kevin Daly.

Desert Air 24 presents a groundbreaking approach to housing in the challenging climate of Joshua Tree’s Pioneertown, where scorching summers and freezing winters prevail. Drawing inspiration from modular shipping containers and the iconic airstreams ubiquitous in the region, this project presents a modular design that minimizes its ecological footprint through elevated pilotis, allowing for harmonious integration with the landscape.

Click the link in our bio to see more from this project!

Some photos from a recent studio trip to Denmark, Finland, and Sweden with Heather Roberge and Lori Choi’s Advanced Topics Studio, “Climate Caravan”. This studio is working to decouple home and land from its associated notions of permanence by proposing prefabricated housing systems designed for future mobility and new organizations of community. Students were able to learn about prefabricated construction and efficient building from Nordic countries at the forefront of sustainable design.

1)Guided tour of Aalto University Undergraduate Center in Espoo, Finland
2)Visiting Studio Aalto (Alvar Aalto’s Office) in Helsinki, Finland
3)Group photo outside of Alvar Aalto’s House in Helsinki, Finland
4) In front of Arne Jacobsen’s Bellavista Estate in Klampenborg, Denmark
5)Visiting Dortheavej social housing project by BIG in Copenhagen, Denmark
6)Visiting the Danish Architecture Center in Copenhagen, Denmark

Congratulations to AUD Alumnus Frederick Fisher (MArch ‘75) and his eponymous LA-based office, Frederick Fisher and Partners, on winning the AIA California Firm Award for 2024! One of AIA California’s most prestigious awards for individuals and firms, the Firm Award is given to those who have “consistently produced distinguished architecture for a period of at least 10 years.” Click the link in our bio to learn more about FF&P and to see the full list of AIA California Awards for 2024.

.fisher

1) Renderings of Vassar College’s Heartwood Inn and Salt Line Restaurant, part of FF&P’s recent work on Vassar’s Institute for the Liberal Arts.
2) FF&P’s Colby College Museum of Art.
3) FF&P’s City Hall East Building, which exceeds Santa Monica’s current sustainability standards and has set international records as the first municipal structure to receive Living Building Challenge Certification as a Net Zero Water and Net Zero Energy building.
4) Frederick Fisher (MArch ‘75), Founding Partner of Frederick Fisher and Partners.
5) Caplin House, a model of street facade, Venice, California, 1978 by Frederick Fisher. Done while working at Gehry Partners.
6) Fisher meeting with colleagues at FF&P’s LA office.

Today, we’re looking at “Fungus Among Us” — an adaptive reuse project by M.Arch students Yitao Gu and Kinamee Rhodes for “NEXT-CYCLE”, a two-quarter long Comprehensive Design Studio advised by Simon Kim.

The project is a mycelium research center that utilizes a series of column modules that pe*****te through the mass, wrap around the mass, or even become a part of the mass to invoke the feeling that these modules are “here, anywhere, and everywhere”. Click the link in our bio to see more of this project!

Taking a moment to appreciate some of the beautiful projects from last week’s final reviews ☻ Spring Break is in full swing, but mark your calendars for some of our upcoming events : In-person Open House on April 11th, and IDEAS after IDEAS on April 18th! Link in bio for more details.

Congratulations, admitted First Year Students!

Tag us and use the hashtag so we can meet you and celebrate the news.

Whether you'll be joining us in UCLA Architecture and Urban Design, UCLA Department of Art, UCLA Design Media Arts, or the UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, we can't wait for you to join us on campus next fall and to experience the incredible contributions you will bring to our Bruin community!

UCLA AUD’s alumni community is remarkable, and we were pleased to celebrate together last week with a gathering at LA’s A+D Museum. The event offered an opportunity to toast decades of friendship and collaboration while looking toward the department’s current priorities and future interests.

Special thanks to those who joined us last week, and to A+D Museum for hosting. We can’t wait for the next one – details to come! Additional photos from this event are available at the link in our bio :)

In what we hope will become more than a spinoff of the New York Review of Architecture, the Los Angeles Review of Architecture’s first issue was launched in February. Edited by LA’s own Mimi Zeiger and Samuel Medina, LARA Issue 1 was celebrated at Bestor Architecture, supercharged with architects, students, and creative professionals. Several AUD students are featured as writers in the first issue, including Katie Angen (“You Do You?”), Kay Wright (“Smash the Table”), and Shane-Reiner Roth (“City of Memes”). Click the link in our bio to learn more about this special issue of and to get your hands on a copy!

Today, we’re looking at four projects for Valeria Ospital’s Undergraduate Studio entitled “Tangled Home”. Acknowledging the power and decadence of the Single Family House as a housing model, this studio aims to develop a typology of two intersecting dwellings where the need for retreat and socialization are complementary aspects of housing. See this link in our bio for more information about each project!

1-2: James Fu presenting during final reviews
3: James Fu’s Coexistent House
4: Mika Sadrosadat’s Intersecting House
5: Phap Nguyen’s Butterfly Peak House
6: Beatrice Xu’s Knot House
7: Final Reviews Display
8: Mohamed Sharif inspecting a model during critique

Last week, AUD’s second-year MArch cohort enjoyed a site visit at Victory Wellness Center, an award-winning project in North Hollywood designed by AUD’s Georgina Huljich and her Los Angeles-based office, Patterns .work. Huljich is Principal of Patterns alongside Marcelo Spina, who founded Patterns in 2002. Their Victory Wellness Center transforms a truss warehouse into a wellness campus, earning it the prestigious 2023 AIA-LA Honor Award in Adaptive Reuse/Renovation/Historical Preservation. 

Huljich led a tour alongside AUD faculty Kutan Ayata and Miroslava Brooks, who are coordinating this year’s second-year core studio, NEXT–CYCLE, which asks students to imagine the next cycle of existing building sites, grounds, cities, and territories. 

The Victory Wellness Center project was profiled in the February 2024 issue of Architectural Record, and Huljich and Spina joined the magazine’s DESIGN:ED Podcast to discuss the project further. Check out these features via the link in our bio!

Last night, we welcomed Michael Maltzan to the Perloff Hall podium to share a diverse range of projects done across the span of his career, from single family housing and permanent supportive housing to cultural institutions and city infrastructure. Thank you, Michael, for sharing your expertise and insights with the UCLA community during your engaging lecture!

If you missed the in-person event, no worries -- all of our winter lecture recordings are available on our YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbnsTpgUhcOc4ZaVlLyMY_xriGP7JvO4u&si=Z59WOCGgXEJOTx9C

This Thursday, Professor Dana Cuff will be presenting at Schoenberg Hall as UCLA’s 135th Faculty Research Lecturer. Celebrated as the 2020 AIA-LA Educator of the Year, her impactful three-decade journey at UCLA has shaped architectural discourse and public perception.

From co-founding cityLAB in 2006 to co-authoring transformative California Assembly Bills, Cuff’s influence extends far beyond the classroom. Click the link in our bio to see a timeline of Dana’s career, and join us on March 7th for her lecture “Architecture’s Promise: Designing Equitable Futures”!

UCLA AUD has officially joined TikTok! Go like and follow to see some exclusive videos of student experiences, studio culture, and life at Perloff Hall!

https://www.tiktok.com/

Last Friday, Perloff Hall was abuzz with excitement as we hosted dozens of architecture and design firms for our annual Career Fair. A big thank you to the incredible companies and firms, both local and from afar, for joining us to network and present exciting career opportunities to the AUD Community. Your participation made our Career Fair an outstanding success!

.create .interiors .mac

Let’s play a choose your own adventure game - with architecture!

LA’s Killscreen Gallery opens the interactive exhibition “Santa Monica” on Thursday, February 22, based on Yara Feghali’s Fall 2023 advanced topics studio at UCLA AUD of the same title. The installation kicks off with a 6:00 pm reception on February 22 at Killscreen Gallery (5511 W Pico Blvd, Los Angeles), and is on view through March 2.

“Santa Monica” uses game engines to craft an interactive narrative for a mixed-use block in Santa Monica, with each user decision generating a new design for the urban block. Participants start from an existing urban block and design the future of it through new construction, gentrification, and market driven development. Inspired by so-called “choose your own adventure” games, the project uses branching narrative logic as a tool for world building, inviting the audience to play an interactive game and design the future of a Santa Monica city block.
Participants collectively design these variations by simultaneously playing an interactive game, where multiple scenarios play out as users piece together a plan, a physical model, and an 8-bit style game.

Like Feghali’s Fall 2023 studio, the exhibition asks: What happens to a neighborhood when we design a building within it? Architectural design is an intricate process that involves many factors, and we tend to investigate each of them separately. In this studio and exhibition, designers study micro-urban narratives through understanding design as a participatory process.

UCLA Architecture and Urban Design: Choose your own adventure with Killscreen exhibition/game "Santa Monica," by Yara Feghali's Fall 2023 UCLA AUD Studio UCLA Architecture and Urban Design is a champion of ideas and their articulate expression.