Kutan Ayata
Vice Chair and Associate Professor
Ayata is a founding partner of Young & Ayata, an award-winning practice based in New York City and Los Angeles. Prior to joining the UCLA AUD Faculty, he was a full-time faculty at University of Pennsylvania. His other previous teaching appointments include positions at Pratt Institute, Cornell University and Columbia University. He received his Masters of Architecture from Princeton University in 2004 and his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Architecture from Massachusetts College of Art in 1999.
Young & Ayata, founded by Kutan Ayata and Michael Young, is an architectural design practice formed in 2008 dedicated to speculations on the aesthetics of the near future. They work through images, objects, and buildings to build scenarios of the background. The practice is dedicated to both built commissions and experimental research. Both principals teach and view the academic domain as crucial to the continual development of architectural ideas, particularly emergent trajectories in architectural representation.
Young & Ayata recently received the Progressive Architecture Award with their DL1310 Apartments project in Mexico City. They are the recipients of the 2016 Design Vanguard Award from Architectural Record. 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 Young Architects Program in Istanbul, Turkey. In 2014, the partners were the recipients of the Young Architects Prize from Architectural League of New York, and their entry in the International competition for the Dalseong Citizen's Gymnasium in South Korea received an honorable mention. The firm's work has been published widely and has been exhibited nationally and internationally including at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Istanbul Modern Museum, the Graham Foundation, SCI-Arc, Princeton, Harvard and Yale Universities.
Related Links |
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| Master of Architecture, Princeton University |
| Bachelor of Fine Arts in Architecture, Massachusetts College of Arts |
| 2019 | Progressive Architecture Award for DL 1310 Residential Building in Mexico City, Architect Magazine |
| 2017 | Semi-Finalist, Kaunas M.K. Čiurlionis Concert Centre, Lithuania, Open International Competition |
| 2016 | Design Vanguard Award, Architectural Record Magazine |
| 2016 | “Close-Up”, Group Exhibition, Sci-Arc, Los Angeles |
| 2015 | First Place Winner (1 of 2) - Bauhaus Dessau Museum, Two-Stage Design Open International Competition, Dessau, Germany |
| 2015 | Finalist, MOMA Young Architects Program, Istanbul Modern Museum Courtyard Pavilion Competition, Istanbul, Turkey |
| 2015 | "Treatise: Why Write Alone", Group Exhibition, Graham Foundation, Chicago, IL |
| 2014 | League Prize for Young Architects & Designers, The Architecture League of New York |
| 2014 | Honorable Mention, Pamphlet Architecture 35,” The Problems of Strange Objects”, Storefront for Art & Architecture |
| 2014 | Honorable Mention, Dalseong Citizen’s Gym Competition, Daegu, South Korea, Open International Competition |
- DL1310 Residential Building in Mexico City. Image credit: Rafael Gamo.
- DL1310 Corner close-up of aperture and ruled surfaces
- 1st Prize (1 of 2), Bauhaus Museum Dessau International Competition Proposal, Germany
- Semi-finalist, Kaunas M.K. Čiurlionis Concert Centre International Competition Proposal, Lithuania
- Pavilion for an acoustic environment to surround one of the Cones from Bronze Bell Series of Harmen Brethouwer, Netherlands
- Guggenheim Museum Helsinki International Competition Proposal, Finland