Lecture: Jesse Reiser

Weaponized Craft 

Craft has unexpectedly returned to the architect. 

Migrating from the job site into the exploratory space of the design studio, craft takes on new unprecedented dimensions. No longer strictly limited by material realities, or the routines of normative practice, the architect is free to engage with a project across scales and mediums, craft is, for Reiser+Umemoto, less a set of concrete techniques than an exploratory ethos. This radical mode of thinking and working is an ongoing dance between centuries-old and cutting-edge technologies. A crafty engagement with technology is essential; eluding the twin traps of conservative handicraft and process-based techno-purism. The practice seeks to chart a radically aesthetic passage between the two as the most resonant way to advance culture and society. 

Like the effectiveness of the itinerant smiths of old and Lockheed’s mid-century Skunk Works, which existed within larger machines: economic, political or otherwise, Reiser+Umemoto continue to leverage the vitality of independent thought beyond the constraints of convention, in service to the world. 

Reiser+Umemoto, RUR Architecture is an internationally recognized architecture office and design atelier founded in 1986 by Jesse Reiser and Nanako Umemoto. The firm works across continents and scales with projects ranging from large scale cultural and infrastructural projects to detailed object, furniture, and exhibition designs. Reiser+Umemoto, RUR is widely published, most recently in their sweeping monograph Projects and Their Consequences which traces thirty years of multidisciplinary investigations into form, structure, techniques and planning. Awards and honors include the Chrysler Award for Excellence in Design, the Academy Award in Architecture by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Presidential Citation and John Hejduk Award from the Cooper Union, and the USA Booth Fellowship from United States Artists for Architecture & Design. 

Jesse Reiser is a Professor of Architecture at Princeton University and co-founder of Reiser+Umemoto, RUR Architecture. 

Nanako Umemoto is a Professor of Practice at Washington University, a visiting Professor at Kent State University and UT Austin as well as a co-founder of Reiser+Umemoto, RUR Architecture.

https://arch.usc.edu/events/jesse-reiser