Kutan Ayata: Around Competitions

Kutan Ayata
Associate Professor / Vice Chair, UCLA AUD
Partner, Young & Ayata

Kutan Ayata is an Associate Professor and the Vice Chair in the Department of Architecture and Urbanism at UCLA, where he also serves as the Director of the Master of Architecture Program. He previously held teaching positions at University of Pennsylvania, Pratt Institute, Cornell University and Columbia University. He received his Masters of Architecture from Princeton University with and his Bachelor of Fine Arts from Massachusetts College of Art. Young & Ayata, formed together with Michael Young (Associate Professor, Cooper Union), is dedicated to both built commissions and experimental research. The practice views the reality of contemporary building as a provocation for architectural form, material and technology. Both principals teach and view the educational experience as crucial to the continual development of architectural ideas. Young & Ayata are the recipients of the 2016 Design Vanguard Award fromArchitectural Record. The Apartment building DL1310 designed in collaboration with Michan Architecture received the 2019 Progressive Architecture Award from Architect Magazine. In 2015 they were one of two first prize winners in the International Competition for the New Bauhaus Museum in Dessau, Germany. They were finalists in the 2015 MoMA YAP Program in Istanbul, Turkey. In 2014, the partners were the recipients of the Young Architects Prize from Architectural League of New York. Most recently, in 2022, their entry in the open international competition for the New Agricultural Resource Management Building in Gyeongsangbuk-do, South Korea received the first-place prize.The firm's work has been broadly published and their work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, the Istanbul Modern, the Graham Foundation, Yale University, Princeton University and SCI-Arc.

The lecture will frame the central role architectural design competitions play in the way our studio practices.