Material Acts Launch

Material Acts Launch

Biophilic Knit Mold tensioned by scaffold, 2019, Christine Yogiaman. Courtesy of the artist.

Material Acts Launch
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Date
February 18, 2025, 7pm
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e-flux
172 Classon Ave
Brooklyn, NY 11205
USA

Join us at e-flux on Tuesday, February 18 at 7pm for a presentation by Kate Yeh Chiu and Jia Yi Gu, curators and co-editors of the e-flux Architecture project Material Acts, to discuss their most recent publication and exhibition, Material Acts: Experimentation in Architecture and Design

Material Acts accompanies and shares its name with the exhibition at Craft Contemporary in Los Angeles in 2024, offering a companion that delves into the research shown in the galleries. The publication is organized around the same five thematic material acts of the exhibition: Animating, Disassembling, Feeding, Re-fusing, and Stitching. Formats employed include commissioned essays, photography, how-to-guides, and conversations spanning the scope of the project.

Together, these projects examine the role of nature as a starting point for material experimentation in the domains of architecture, craft, and science. While nature has often stood in as a model, metaphor, or resource for designers, the recent global upheavals in climate, ecology, and technology are driving intensive understandings of nature’s tangible and imagined substrate. These projects look at how contemporary design practices mobilize, confound, and generate natures, whether through simulating mechanics or growing biological matter. 

This event will feature a presentation by Kate Yeh Chiu and Jia Yi Gu, along with readings and reflections by Lola Ben-Alon, Felecia Davis, and Elsa Mäki, amongst others.

For more information, contact program@e-flux.com.

Accessibility                 
–Two flights of stairs lead up to the building’s front entrance at 172 Classon Avenue.      
–For elevator access, please RSVP to program@e-flux.com. The building has a freight elevator which leads into the e-flux office space. Entrance to the elevator is nearest to 180 Classon Ave (a garage door). We have a ramp for the steps within the space.               
–e-flux has an ADA-compliant bathroom. There are no steps between the event space and this bathroom.

Category
Lecture, Nature & Ecology
Subject
Architecture, Raw Material, Craft

Kate Yeh Chiu is a designer and arts organizer. She is currently the Executive Director of Materials & Applications, Editor-At-Large of the Avery Review, and half of the collaboration yyyy-mm-dd. She teaches at the University of Southern California School of Architecture.

Jia Yi Gu is an architectural scholar, curator, and designer working on histories of knowledge production through the lens of media studies, cultural techniques, and material cultures (i.e. how we know and show our histories). She is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at Harvey Mudd College and one-half of the architecture and research studio Spinagu.

Lola Ben-Alon is an Assistant Professor at Columbia GSAPP, where she directs the Natural Materials Lab and the Building Technology curriculum. She specializes in socially and environmentally sustainable building materials, construction practices, and engineering-architecture collaborations. Her research and teaching focus on natural earth- and bio-based building materials, their craft, digital fabrication, life cycle, supply chains, and policy.

Felecia Davis is an associate professor of architecture, lead researcher in the Stuckeman Center for Design and Computation, and director of SOFTLAB in the Stuckeman School. She has lectured, taught workshops, published, and exhibited her work in textiles, computation, and architecture internationally, including the Swedish School of Textiles, Microsoft Research, and the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Elsa Mäki is an architectural designer and writer from Minneapolis whose work focuses on borders, living environments, and Indigenous futures. She has contributed drawing to the #StandingRockSyllabus Project and the book Empire’s Tracks (Karuka). Her writing has appeared in the Avery Review, where she is an editor-at-large, and elsewhere. Elsa’s other work includes cartography and scenic installation design. She received a degree in architecture from Columbia University and studies architecture at the Harvard GSD.

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