Tuesday, September 29, 4:30–6:30PM
Talk at 5PM
FCCW: 3053 Rosslyn St. LA, CA 90065
Info on our space here
Free
Material Streams is a new community program at FCCW, organized by Jia Yi Gu! This is a learning community for exploring the material streams and ecologies of Los Angeles and its regions towards a post-carbon future. Through workshops, excursions, presentations, and facilitated conversations, participants explore the potential of non-extractivist approaches and systems repair for the built environment. This is the very first session of Material Streams, but look forward to more opportunities to engage this fall, and on-goingly.
Maria Lisogorskaya, co-founder of the London-based collective Assemble, presents Assemble: 3 Places. This talk explores the collective’s democratic, hands-on approach to architecture, design, and art, highlighting projects like the Material Institute in New Orleans and Sugar House Studios.
ABOUT THE PRESENTER
Maria Lisogorskaya is an artist, and a co-founding member of Assemble – award winning art, architecture and design studio based in London, UK. In her collective, and evolving individual art practice, Maria engages with people, places and materials at different scales: object making, spatial design and organisational strategy.
Projects, with which she built this experience include Blackhorse Workshop in London – a publicly accessible space she helped to establish, design and contributed to at board level 2013-2021; product development for Granby Workshop in Liverpool in 2015; concept and design for exhibitions such as the Wohnungsfrage at the HKW Berlin, Material Institute in New Orleans where she led the pilot for a new experimental Fashion & Textiles Department, cofounded with MONA, continuing to contribute to the development of the programme, and most recently Assemble’s collaboration with Luma Atelier in Arles, integrating bio-based and waste stone materials with new workshop, laboratory and public space designs.
Maria was the Assemble Visiting Professor of Masters Architecture in EPFL Switzerland 2020-2022, and has previously led Masters of Architecture studios at Central Saint Martins in London, and at Vienna TU. She has been a lecturer and critic in universities and art schools across the UK, Brazil, China, Denmark, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Netherlands, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland and the US. Maria is a WCMT fellow (with her research project Learning Through Making) and an Assemble Royal Academician since 2022.
ABOUT ASSEMBLE
Assemble is a London-based organisation working across architecture, art, design and construction. Founded in 2010 by a group of friends, Assemble operates collaboratively, bringing together design, making, research and cultural production. Assemble uses design to address environmental, social and economic challenges, combining rigorous practice with critical reflection. The organisation champions inventive reuse, craft and material knowledge, preserving industrial spaces, and defending public and cultural spaces. Through collaboration and collective practice, Assemble develops projects that actively engage with people, place and play.
ABOUT THE ORGANIZER
Jia Yi Gu is one-half of Spinagu, an architecture practice working across building, research, publishing, and cultural organizing, founded with Maxi Spina. Spinagu approaches design and research as a mode of critical inquiry, cultivating spaces for exchange and experimentation across built projects, institutions, exhibitions, books, furniture, and workshops—with priorities that include systems repair for the field of architecture, rebuilding material systems toward regenerative models, and advocating for equitable housing.
Gu is also a Los Angeles-based architectural historian, curator, and designer, and Assistant Professor of Architecture at Harvey Mudd College. Her research examines materials as sites of knowledge production in twentieth-century architecture. She previously directed two Los Angeles institutions, the MAK Center for Art and Architecture and Materials & Applications, and in 2024 co-curated the Getty PST ART project Material Acts. She is co-curator of Unknowing Los Angeles, a history of postmodern Los Angeles architecture, and a Board member of the Feminist Center for Creative Work. Her work has been supported by the NEA, Getty Foundation, Graham Foundation, and Canadian Center for Architecture.