CONNECT: A Lecture by Li Hu and Huang Wenjing, OPEN Architecture

Li Hu and Huang Wenjing will present recent public and cultural projects by the New York City- and Beijing-based design practice OPEN Architecture, including those included in the new book Reinventing Cultural Architecture: A Radical Vision by OPEN (Rizzoli, 2022). Besides the unique struggles and breakthroughs associated with each project, Li and Huang will share how they see architecture as the means to connect—with different people, with nature and, ultimately, with ourselves.

The lecture will be followed by a conversation with Martino Stierli, MoMA's Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design, where the speakers will share their respective views on cultural architecture today with an eye on the future.

Copies of the book Reinventing Cultural Architecture will be available for sale at the event.

Speakers:
Li Hu, Co-Founder, OPEN Architecture
Huang Wenjing, Co-Founder, OPEN Architecture

Moderator:
Martino Stierli, Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design, MoMA

About the Speakers:
Li Hu and Huang Wenjing co-founded OPEN Architecture in New York City in 2006 and established their office in Beijing in 2008. Both have taught as visiting professors at Tsinghua University and Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, and Hong Kong University.

Before OPEN, Li was a former partner of Steven Holl Architects and the director of Columbia University GSAPP’s Studio-X Beijing. Li received his B. Arch. from Tsinghua University in Beijing in 1996 and M. Arch. from Rice University in 1998. Huang is a licensed architect in New York. Prior to OPEN, she was an associate at Pei Cobb Freed and Partners. Huang received her B. Arch. from Tsinghua University in 1996, and M. Arch. from Princeton University in 1999.

Martino Stierli is the Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, a role he assumed in March 2015. Stierli oversees the wide-ranging program of special exhibitions, installations, and acquisitions of the Department of Architecture and Design. He is the author of Montage and the Metropolis: Architecture, Modernity and the Representation of Space (Yale University Press, 2018) and Las Vegas in the Rearview Mirror: The City in Theory, Photography, and Film (Getty Research Institute, 2013). He has organized and co-curated exhibitions on a variety of topics, including the international traveling exhibition Las Vegas Studio: Images from the Archives of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown and The Architecture of Hedonism: Three Villas in the Island of Capri, which was included in the 14th Architecture Biennale in Venice in 2014. At MoMA, he has curated the exhibitions Toward a Concrete Utopia: Architecture in Yugoslavia, 1948-1980 (with Vladimir Kulic ́), Renew, Reuse, Recycle: Recent Architecture from China (with Evangelos Kotsioris), and The Project of Independence: Architectures of Decolonization in South Asia, 1947-1985 (with Anoma Pieris and Sean Anderson). Stierli also oversaw the installation of the new Architecture and Design collection galleries in the expanded MoMA, which opened in October 2019, and curated numerous collection installations.

This event is offered in person and virtually; COVID-19 vaccinations and face masks are strongly encouraged for all visitors. Read our full Health and Safety Protocol here. 

If you register for a virtual ticket, you will receive an email with a Zoom link to access the program.