Concrete Encounters: Architecture of Repair and Theory Across Cultures

Amateur Architecture Studio and Ruo Jia | Toward Venice 2027

In celebration of its seventh anniversary and new chair leadership, the AIANY Committee on Residential Architecture invites you to explore a unique perspective on the built environment through Concrete Encounters: Architecture of Repair and Theory Across Cultures. This program examines a design approach grounded in regional craft, cultural continuity, and material practice.

The two-part program will be introduced by Stephen Moser and Michael Landry, incoming AIANY Committee Co-Chairs.

The first portion focuses on the work of Amateur Architecture Studio, led by Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu—recently appointed curators of the 2027 Venice Architecture Biennale. Their practice prioritizes construction, material life cycles, and human labor over purely conceptual approaches. Participants will examine how reclaimed materials, vernacular traditions, and on-site craftsmanship inform architecture rooted in place and lived experience.

Amid evolving global tensions, their work offers an alternative model for architectural exchange centered on shared concerns of resource use, environmental stewardship, and cultural continuity. Emphasis will be placed on Lu Wenyu’s role in advancing a process of “repair,” where material reuse and construction knowledge drive design, demonstrating how architecture can respond to rapid urbanization through resilient, context-responsive building strategies.

The second portion features a lecture by Ruo Jia based on her book, Chinese Experimental Architecture Or French Poststructuralist Theory: Different Patches of the Concrete. Her research situates Chinese experimental architecture within a global theoretical framework, highlighting how cross-cultural exchanges expand architectural thinking and challenge conventional narratives.

A discussion with Guanghui Ding will further contextualize these ideas within the historical development of contemporary Chinese architecture and its role in shaping more sustainable and culturally grounded built environments.

Speakers:
Ruo Jia, Founder and Director, If Work
Guanghui Ding, PhD, Adjunct Associate Professor, City College of New York

About the Speakers:
Ruo Jia is founder and director of the research-based architecture/theory practice If Works. She is the author of Chinese Experimental Architecture Or French Poststructuralist Theory: Different Patches of the Concrete, constructing a decolonizing postmodern materialist space, which expands to her on-going research/practice envisioning the possibilities of Asian Feminist Architecture, and Post humanist Sustainability. Her works have been published with The Journal of Architecture, Representations, Log, Brooklyn Rail, Journal of Architectural Education, Architectural Research Quarterly, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians among others.

Guanghui Ding is a former Associate Professor at Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture and Adjunct Associate Professor at the City College of New York. A specialist in contemporary Chinese architecture, Ding is author of Constructing a Place of Critical Architecture in China (Ashgate, 2015), and with Charlie Xue, co-author of A History of Design Institutes in China (Routledge, 2018) and co-editor of Exporting Chinese Architecture (Springer, 2022).