Experimental Constructions Lecture Series

Architects wear multiple hats. Beyond the literal sense of wearing a construction hat for “quality control,” architects also engage in a wide array of activities such as drawing, specifying, emailing, communicating, photographing, and negotiating, situating speculative labor within the larger knowledge systems that are often tacit and challenging to articulate. Can construction become political? How should architects position themselves in this context? What does collaboration truly mean? How can a design process be structured to navigate the entanglement of resources, labor, quality, and concepts that often seem unresolved?

The “Experimental Construction” conversation series explores the construction site as a design tool that may offer architects a new opportunity to engage with the processes, issues, and agencies in and around construction. It sees the construction process as an opportunity for design and questions the singularly authored, one-way understanding of architecture produced by a strict sequence from design to construction. The series is organized by Assistant Professor Alex Yueyan Li, who will moderate the discussions.


Spring 2025 Series

Pedro Magnasco

Tuesday, February 18, 1:30 - 2:30 p.m., CAP Room 490

Pedro Magnasco leads PM, an architectural practice based in Buenos Aires. Pedro studied architecture in the faculty of architecture, design and urbanism (fadu/uba) and technology, politics and culture in the center of advanced studies (cea/unc). He works independently and cooperatively in different practices and institutions producing buildings, aggregations, interiors, landscapes, installations, landscapes, texts, publications and concepts.

A yellow JetVac truck parked inside a large garage with three men standing beside a steel structure.
Close up view of an aluminum wall.

Charlotte von Moos

Tuesday, March 18, 1:30 - 2:30 p.m., CAP Room 490

Charlotte von Moos is a practicing architect and researcher. Together with Florian Sauter, she is the co-founder of the architectural practice Sauter von Moos based in Basel, Switzerland, and Miami. The studio engages in work on all scales, both in theory and practice. Von Moos holds a Master’s degree from the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, where she taught with Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron at ETH Studio Basel for many years. She co-edited achtung: die Landschaft, and is the author of In Miami in the 1980s: The Vanishing Architecture of a ‘Paradise Lost’ and Some Fragments. Von Moos was a visiting professor at the Technical University of Munich, workshop leader at Porto Academy, and Design Critic at Harvard GSD. Since 2018, she is Assistant Professor at the University of Miami School of Architecture.

Charlotte von Moos' House with a Tree, a two-story home with faded wood paneling on one side of the house and concrete exterior on the other side of the house.
A model of a white house set in front of a palm tree.

[1] Sauter von Moos, House with a Tree, Basel, realized, 2012-2013
[2] Sauter von Moos, Coconut Grove Park No. 2 / Miami, ongoing, 2023

Adam Caruso

Tuesday, April 8, 1:30 - 2:30 p.m., CAP Room 490

Adam Caruso was born in Montreal and studied architecture at McGill University. He established Caruso St John Architects with Peter St John in 1990. The practice has offices in London and Zurich and has built throughout Europe, undertaking projects that range in scale from major urban developments and cultural projects to intricate interventions in complex historic settings. Caruso St John won the RIBA Stirling Prize in 2016 for the Newport Street Gallery and represented Britain at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. Since 2011 Adam Caruso has been Professor of Architecture and Construction at the ETH Zurich.

A city view of the Studio House at Sawn Yard.
Exterior of the Sawn House focusing on its blue panels.
Interior of an office space with a hole above the work table and an orange design and shelf in the front.

[1]Caruso St John, Studio House, Sawn Yard, 1993-1994. Photography: Hélène Binet
[2]Caruso St John, Studio House, Sawn Yard, 1993-1994. Photography: Hélène Binet
[3]Caruso St John, Studio House, Sawn Yard, 1993-1994. Photography: Hélène Binet

Rick Sommerfeld

Tuesday, April 29, 1:30 - 2:30 p.m., CAP Room 490

Erik “Rick” Sommerfeld is the Director of ColoradoBuildingWorkshop, the design-build program at the University of Colorado Denver. Since founding ColoradoBuildingWorkshop in 2009, Rick has worked with his students to design and build projects for not-for-profits and government agencies focused on the environment, arts, and education. These structures are often located in sensitive remote environments requiring innovative design strategies. His pedagogical vision for design build is heavily focused on integrated project delivery. This requires students to work closely with clients, engineers, and consultants at the earliest stages of design, testing their ideas against contextual and programmatic constraints.

Exterior of the ColoradoBuildingWorkshop project Nakai Residence.
Exterior of ColoradoBuildingWorkshop project Cottonwood Cabins.

Fall 2024 Series

Ran Huo

Tuesday, September 3, 2 - 3pm, CAP Room 470

Founded in 2023 by Ran Huo and Shenghui Mao, Office Moments is a design and research architectural studio based in Shanghai, providing inter-disciplinary design services ranging from architecture design, interior design, installation design and furniture design. Office Moments grows out of TeamRH of THDL. We were selected in HUA-STAR Young Emerging Architects in 2021, and awarded Chinese Young Architecture Firm by Position in 2021 and 2022. Since founded, the practice has won many professional awards, including First Prize of Youth & Sea Xiangshan Trailscape Invitational Competition; Second Prize of Longquan City Balcony Architecture and Landscape Design Invitational Competition; Honorable mention of Architecture Master Prize (AMP).

Dashahe Riverside Teahouse exterior.
Dashahe Riverside Teahouse render

Image Credit: Dashahe Riverside Teahouse by Office Moments

Alex Spatzier

Tuesday, September 17, 2 - 3pm, CAP Room 470

Alex Spatzier is an architect based in Oakland, California, serving as the principal architect of ASA (Alex Spatzier Architects) and a partner at ALTO, where he collaborates with Tommy Haddock on larger scale projects. He taught design studios at UC Berkeley, where he also earned his M.Arch. He previously worked at First Office in SF/LA and SITU Studio in NYC. Before architecture, he did research in geology and astrophysics, and has BAs in Physics and Mathematics from Oberlin College. 

Alex's work focuses on combining building science with a conceptual approach to architecture,  measuring projects against simultaneous desires to be both practically radical and radically practical.
Ceramic House by Alex Spatzier
Ceramic House
House in Santa Rosa by Alex Spatzier
House in Santa Rosa
House in Santa Rosa by Alex Spatzier
House in Santa Rosa
Side House by Alex Spatzier
Side House

Image Credits: Santa Rosa Suburban House(under construction),  Ceramic House, and Side House by Alex Spatzier Architects

Holly Deichmann

Tuesday, October 8, 2 - 3pm, CAP Room 470

Holly Deichmann is an Associate Principal at Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R). She was the Project Architect of the United States Olympic & Paralympic Museum in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and the Project Director for the adjoining Park Union Bridge, a curved steel structure connecting the museum campus to the adjacent America the Beautiful Park. Before joining Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Holly worked with Peter Gluck Architects (now Gluck+) as Project Manager for the Lakeside Retreat in the Adirondacks of New York. Prior to her time at Gluck+, Holly worked at OMA Rotterdam in the Netherlands and OMA Beijing in China, where she was the Project Architect of the CCTV Headquarters. Holly’s previous roles also include Project Architect at Istanbullu Architects for the City of Los Angeles Westchester-Loyola Village Branch Library.

USOPM building

Image Credit: USOPM, Photo by Jason O'Rear

Kwong Von Glinow

Tuesday, October 29, 2 - 3pm, CAP Room 470

Kwong Von Glinow (KVG) is an award-winning architecture practice founded in 2017 by Lap Chi Kwong and Alison Von Glinow, both of who are visiting critics at Rice University School of Architecture. Their delivered projects range from single-family homes to multifamily residential buildings, public and cultural spaces, exhibitions, and designed objects. Their work translates forward-looking architectural concepts into playful designs with broad appeal. Taking an optimistic and explorative approach, KVG focuses on creating innovative living environments, places for cultural engagement, urban public space, and contemporary workspaces.

Ardmore House
Ardmore House exterior
Image Credit: Ardmore House, Kwong Von Glinow

DAVIDSON RAFAILIDIS

Tuesday, November 12, 2 - 3pm, CAP Room 470

Stephanie Davidson and Georg Rafailidis are co-founders of DAVIDSON RAFAILIDIS. The interest underlying much of their work is the friction between the original design intentions for spaces and buildings, and the much richer built reality and unpredictable lives that buildings inevitably have. In most of their work, they study existing built conditions—sometimes these studies evolve into built works and sometimes the studies take the form of documentation (drawings, photographs, writing).

The duo was recognized with the Emerging Voices award from the Architectural League of New York in 2018. The realized work of DAVIDSON RAFAILIDIS embraces frugality; projects are accomplished on lean budgets and are seen as case studies in financially accessible architecture: space for everyone.
Exterior of the Together Apart Cat Cafe
Exterior of a green house.

College of Architecture and Planning

CU Denver

CU Denver Building

1250 14th Street

2000

Denver, CO 80202


303-315-1000

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