Recent grads garner 2x8x20 competition wins

Four recent AUD grads were among the sixteen architects honored by ACLA and AIA | LA’s 2x8x20 competition, marking the 20th anniversary of the annual 2x8 competition. AUD alumni Morgane Copp and Wei Qiu (both MArch ‘22) earned one of three Gold Level prizes for their project “LA’s Future History,” while Steven Katz and Hongye Wu (both MArch ‘22) were awarded one of three Silver Level prizes for their “The Line.”

Copp, Katz, Qiu, and Wu are among the 16 prize winners this year. Eighteen schools from across California each nominated two projects, which were then juried by an expert panel. ACLA and AIA | LA announced this year’s 12 winning projects at a May 2 ceremony; projects are on view at the Center for Communities LA in West Adams until the end of June and viewable online.

Founded in 2002, 2×8 is an annual student exhibition, competition, and scholarship fund that seeks to foster and celebrate the diversity of California’s architectural pedagogy. Originally, each of eight California-based institutions submitted two student projects–hence “2” for the number of entries per school, and “8” for the number of schools. This year’s competition drew entries from 20 different schools.

With “LA’s Future History,” Copp and Qiu speculate on the future of abandoned sound stage typologies of movie studios in Los Angeles due to the emerging technologies for digital scene-making, as currently required physical spaces become obsolete. Instead of imagining a clean slate to exercise yet another version of generic urban patterning, the project speculates on an alternative form of urbanism; by flipping the figure ground, in essence removing the roof of the obsolete sound stages and building program in between these containers, Copp and Qiu imagine a new urban fabric.

Copp and Qiu completed the project for Vice Chair Kutan Ayata’s 2021-2022 year-long Research Studio “Future [Hi]stories of the City.” Check out our full profile of "LA's Future History"

Katz and Wu’s “The Line” is also the outcome of an AUD Research Studio–Chair Mariana Ibañez’s “Episode 5: Domestic (R)Evolutions.” Katz and Wu speculate on the various points of connection–the lines–that would be needed to support an industry of mining, specifically mining for rare earth.

“From extraction and production to distribution, this born-again industry will form a new domestic supply chain,” Katz and Wu write. “Sites of extraction are points on a line of a supply chain system that removes material from a distant location and relocates it to an immediate location in the form of architecture. Our proposal speculates on the reclaiming of these points of extraction by inhabiting these sites into a new territory of domestic space.” Check out our full profile of "The Line"

Currently, Copp is a Project Designer at Young & Ayata as well as a lecturer at AUD; Katz is a Designer at the Los Angeles office of Foster + Partners; Qiu is an Architectural Designer at Montalba Architects; and Wu is a Junior Designer at the Los Angeles office of Bjarke Ingels Group.

Check out the full roster of 2x8x20 projects via the ACLA x AIA | LA announcement.