Experimental Constructions Lecture Series
Fall 2024
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.
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).
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
House in Santa Rosa
House in Santa Rosa
Side House
Image Credits: Santa Rosa Suburban House(under construction), Ceramic House, and Side House by Alex Spatzier Architects