Spinagu is a small architecture studio that designs, researches, converses, questions, writes, and organizes. 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 critical and independent practice. What could alterity in architecture look like? How can we direct energies, ideas, resources, and gifts to systems that we choose intentionally, rather than those that are constructed and chosen for us? In choice, we are not advocating for an architecture of extreme autonomy, but alterity — we want to be participant in economies, solidarities, and ecologies we align with. 

Almost all of architecture is a client-based model, reducing the agency in our field to entities with deep capital, whether the single homeowner or the commercial developer. As architecture increasingly aligns with real estate, we are missing fundamental systems in our economic, cultural, and civic institutions to expand architecture’s work into public realms, in support of civic and public life. We are working towards a systems repair of our field. We are seeking alterity in architecture. We learn from and think about this across a wide range of techniques and sites: material ecologies, feminist ethics of care, systems repair, and institutions as propositions.

We do not exist outside convention. Some of our projects are guided by traditional client models of practice. Others are supported by private philanthropic organizations or academic engagements. How we fund our work is tied into broader questions of the field — what funds and structures architecture today? 

Architecture is everywhere—not only in built work. For our studio, architecture is a form of knowledge production — the ideas, processes, and working conditions that lead to the built work and our shared environments. Our work engages in building as an extension of architectural thinking, where we can invest in liveliness, tending, making, and inquiring. Spinagu is currently researching bioregional material systems; alternative ownership models; a museum courtyard renovation; a private residence in Los Angeles; an ADU project in Angelino Heights; and the Getty PST ART project Material Acts.

Spinagu is directed by Jia Yi Gu and Maxi Spina,