AUD announces Spring 2022 public program

The Department of Architecture and Urban Design (AUD) at UCLA’s School of the Arts and Architecture (UCLA Arts) is pleased to announce its spring 2022 public program of talks and lectures. AUD’s spring program represents the department’s interest in global contexts and practices, interdisciplinary questions, and engagement with creative industry and production. Alongside lectures by noteworthy designers, the program offers a presentation from James Chinlund, production designer of the recently released The Batman, and a book launch for Reinier de Graaf’s first work of fiction, The Masterplan. AUD celebrates the close of its academic year with the annual student fair, RUMBLE.

We are happy to note that AUD’s Perloff Hall and IDEAS campus will welcome guests from UCLA and beyond, with proof of Covid vaccination or a negative Covid test required; please view UCLA’s current policies, subject to change. We also hope to welcome audiences from around the world via virtual settings as possible. All event details are subject to change; please visit aud.ucla.edu for updates, especially as events are added to the program.

AUD’s Spring 2022 public program includes:

Monday, April 4, 6:30–8pm PST
Mauricio Pezo & Sofia von Ellrichshausen: PEZO VON ELLRICHSHAUSEN
Perloff Hall DeCafe and Online

Pezo von Ellrichshausen is an art and architecture studio founded in 2002 by Mauricio Pezo and Sofia von Ellrichshausen. They live and work in southern Chile, both in Concepción City and a farm at the foot of the Andes Mountains. (Zoom registration)

Monday, April 18, 6:30–8pm PST
Book Launch: Reinier de Graaf, The Masterplan
Perloff Hall Courtyard

The Masterplan is the first work of fiction by architect Reinier de Graaf, the author of the critically acclaimed Four Walls and a Roof: The Complex Nature of a Simple Profession. Chronicling the trajectory of an architect craving recognition, The Masterplan unfolds as a fictional reconstruction of an architectural dream blown to dust by bigger forces.

Monday, April 25, 6:30–8pm PST
Chris Reed: “Staging”
Perloff Hall DeCafe and Online

Chris Reed is Professor in Practice of Landscape Architecture and Co-Director of the Master of Landscape Architecture in Urban Design Program at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He is also Founding Director of Stoss Landscape Urbanism. “Staging” will frame how Reed and colleagues at Stoss Landscape Urbanism tackle today’s challenges through collaboration, strategic design practice, and the pursuit of critical social, cultural, and environmental agendas. (Zoom registration)

Friday, April 29, 7–9pm PST
James Chinlund
IDEAS Campus and Online

James Chinlund is an award-winning production designer who has been building worlds for feature film and television for over 25 years, with credits including Requiem for a Dream (2000), The Avengers (2012), and, most recently, The Batman (2022). (Registration)

Monday, May 16, 6:30–8pm PST
Bryan Young, Young Projects
Perloff Hall DeCafe and Online

Bryan Young founded Young Projects in New York in 2010, with work including buildings, interiors, objects, material prototyping, and furniture. The studio explores a variety of methods: breaking traditional techniques for fabrication, hand pulling plaster, growing crystals and burning things, to name a few; geometry, pattern, texture and spatial complexity play a significant role in creating an ambiguous architecture. Copies of Young Projects’ first monograph will be available for purchase at the event. (Zoom registration)

Thursday, May 19, 6:30–8pm PST
Book Launch: Ayala Levin, Architecture and Development: Israeli Construction in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Settler Colonial Imagination, 1958-1973
Perloff Hall DeCafe

In Architecture and Development, Ayala Levin charts the settler colonial imagination and practices that undergirded Israeli architectural development aid in Africa. Focusing on the “golden age” of Israel’s diplomatic relations in and throughout the continent from 1958 to 1973, Levin finds that Israel positioned itself as a developing-nation alternative in the competition over aid and influence between global North and global South.

Thursday, May 26, 12:30–2pm PST
Michael Young and Kutan Ayata: ​​Young & Ayata
Perloff Hall DeCafe and Online

Michael Young and Kutan Ayata formed Young & Ayata in New York in 2008 to explore the conceptual and aesthetic possibilities of architecture and urbanism. The practice is dedicated to both built commissions and experimental research. The practice views the reality of contemporary building as a provocation for architectural form, material and technology. Both principals teach and view the educational experience as crucial to the continual development of architectural ideas; Young is an Assistant Professor at The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at the Cooper Union, and Ayata is an Associate Professor and Vice Chair at AUD. (Zoom registration)

Monday, June 6 and Tuesday, June 7
RUMBLE 2022
Perloff Hall

RUMBLE is AUD’s annual end-of-year show, in which faculty and students engage in conversations about individual projects within a larger context of contemporary ideas and discourses, revealing how the questions and projects that motivate us have matured and developed under the direction of our talented students and the collective stewardship of faculty.