In collaboration with the SCI-Arc Student Union, Why Not Us? will explore non-traditional and critical modes of architectural practice and organizing, and speculate on how architecture can learn from mutual aid. The workshop is oriented towards identifying harmful systems present in traditional practices and internships, and will serve as a platform to brainstorm how students can instead build their own mutual aid networks and social infrastructures to flatten leadership in architectural production.

In conversation with educator and activist Dean Spade, we will consider how mutual aid can challenge the organizational logic of professional practice. These networks focus on immediate forms of care rather than categorical solutions. What might architecture gain by moving away from transaction and toward care? Join us in reading and discussing a short chapter of Spade’s forthcoming book, Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the next), with the author and with each other. Register now to receive future updates, materials, and resource guides.

Shade is a crucial yet criminalized resource in Los Angeles. Join us for six stories about shade and its criminalization in Los Angeles. Moderated by Sam Bloch, this session will address the complications of heat and shade through the topics of homelessness, the LA River, street vending, tree canopies, and public transportation. Speakers include Geneviev Liang from SELAH, Mark Vallianantos from LA Metro, Jessica Henson from LA River Project, and Lyric Kelkar from Inclusive Action, among others.

Help us distribute urgently needed water and resources to our unhoused neighbors in Echo Park and neighboring areas. Materials & Applications is converting the M&A Storefront (1313 Sunset Blvd, Echo Park) into a mutual aid drop-off center and collection site. From there, we will coordinate with already existing initiatives including Waterdrop LA, SELAH and Street Watch to distribute these donations.

Heat Aid is a mutual aid initiative that pairs direct action with public programming to address water and shade inequity in Los Angeles.

Building On Digital Foundations presents the uses of “big data” in development and construction industries, examining the ways data drives decisions by investors, developers, construction companies and design teams. The talk surveys the emerging field of “prop tech”: the loose network of research labs, startups, coders, and entrepreneurial academics searching for strategic uses of this new source of information.

Scoring, Building is a new installation by architect Michelle JaJa Chang that investigates architecture as allographic work. The installation is scored in three recursive “iterations”, each one accompanied by a public program. Iteration III (of III) takes place on February 29th, 7pm - 9pm at the Mackey Apartments with a closing party.

M&A is seeking proposals for experimental exhibitions, architectural activities, experimental program formats, and new forms of community outreach. Applicants who are focused on programming-based exhibitions that explore the use of a space outside of regular exhibition use are encouraged to apply.

Scoring, Building is a new installation by architect Michelle JaJa Chang that investigates architecture as allographic work. The installation is scored in three recursive “iterations”, each one accompanied by a public program. Iteration II (of III) takes place on February 15th, 7pm - 9pm at the Makey Apartments with a special program by CCMA.

Scoring, Building is a new installation by architect Michelle JaJa Chang that investigates architecture as allographic work. The installation is scored in three recursive “iterations”, each one accompanied by a public program. Iteration I (of III) takes place on February 1, 7pm - 9pm at the Makey Apartments with guest appearance and electronic music performance by Neil Denari.

Join us on Saturday, January 18th, 7pm-9pm at the Mackey Apartments for the opening reception of Scoring, Building, a new installation by Michelle JaJa Chang that presents architecture as an allographic work.

Michelle Chang's Scoring, Building is a spatial installation and architectural performance that centers on construction’s durational aspects, rather than its finished form. The installation is scored in three recursive “iterations”, each one accompanied by a public program in order to unpack the ideas of the installation itself.

Join us for the LA book launch of Unresolved Legibility In Residential Types, a five year-long research project by architect Clark Thenhaus that offers new interpretations of American residential architecture.

Bringing Los Angeles- and Berlin-based architects together for an afternoon of conversation, Bauhaus Looking Forward seeks to identify past challenges and possibilities that might be recognized as present among current practices. Initiated by the Getty Research Institute, the Goethe-Institut Los Angeles, A+D Museum, and Materials & Applications, Bauhaus Looking Forward is presented as part of a series of programs that will unravel at multiple venues over the course of 2019.

Join us for Sunday Summer Steams at the Craft Contemporary featuring Michael Parker’s Steam Egg. Don’t forget you bathing suit!

Visit the Steam Egg on select November and December evenings— don’t forget a bathing suit!

M&A and WCCW invite you to join us for a public discussion and exercise in care. In conversation with curator and feminist theorist Elke Krasny, we will discuss what care might look like in architectural and urban practices. We will ask how practices of care can contribute to new forms of activism, by expanding dialogues, engaging materialisms, transforming pedagogies, and projecting alternatives.