STUDIO

Spinagu is a Los Angeles-based architecture practice that builds, curates, researches, questions, and organizes—towards a systems repair of our field. Our practice is a process, one focused on ideas and inquiries, and also relationships. In our work, we are experimenting with what it means to be a small and independent practice, critically engaging with public issues in architecture. 

We approach architecture as a form of knowledge production — developing ideas, processes, and working conditions that lead to the built work and our shared environments—and we learn from and think through various lines of inquiry. How can architects reclaim agency from market-driven systems by engaging in alternative economies and organizational practices? Can the practice of building also be a practice of relations, where we can invest in liveliness, tending, making, and advocating?

In our current projects, we are invested in re-rebuilding our material ecologies; situating work within feminist ethics of care; advancing systems repair in our field; designing housing for equitable equity; and re-envisioning institutions as propositions. These are multi-year initiatives takes many forms, durable and ephemeral: housing, institutions, exhibitions, books, furniture, dialogues, gatherings, experiments, workshops, and social technologies. 

Our work has been generously supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, Getty Foundation, California Council of Arts, Canadian Center for Architecture, SCI—Arc, Harvey Mudd College, and the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.

Spinagu is directed by Jia Yi Gu and Maxi Spina. Get in touch.