Helen Liu Fong: Bright Constructions

Mina Chow FAIA NCARB is an award-winning interdisciplinary filmmaker, licensed architect, Adjunct Professor at the USC School of Architecture, and a Faculty Fellow at USC Annenberg Center on Public Diplomacy. Through her filmmaking, public scholarship, and interdisciplinary teaching, Mina communicates important underlying relationships between design and culture. She has written on identity and cultural issues between media and architecture for The Architect’s Newspaper’s “Suspended in a Spectacle: Public Diplomacy at Expo 2020 Dubai,” “With the Media Burning and a Virus Raging, Should We Look to Architecture?” and “Delinquent in Dubai: We Need to Tell America’s Best Story in the Middle East.”

In 2021, she was elevated to the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects for interdisciplinary work and documentary filmmaking. Since 2018, she’s served as a design history consultant for the U.S. Department of State Expo Unit. Recognized by the U.S. Department of State Expo Unit website her 2022 PBS documentary “FACE OF A NATION: What Happened to the World’s Fair?” continues its impact in Time and Smithsonian Magazine, international screenings on Emirate Airlines, and at the 2022 International Communications (ICA) Conference in Paris. The film connects U.S. participation at overseas World Expos to the erosion of the country’s international image.

She has directed and produced films for the American Institute of Architects, and the University of Southern California. In 2011, she created BRAVE NEW WORLD, a pilot for the LA Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs about innovative architecture. Select awards include an Arnold W. Brunner Grant from the Center for Architecture, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, the California Architectural Foundation, USC’s Architectural Guild, USC’s US-China Institute and Ambassador’s Fund. She was on the award-winning U.S. Pavilion team “Spontaneous Interventions: Design Actions for the Common Good” at the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale.

Beverly Payeff Masey is a designer, design historian and educator with extensive US Foreign Service experience in Europe and Southeast Asia. For more than five decades, her work has been centered on the many ways spatial environments impact an individual’s lived experience. Her deep interest in the roles of culture and gender in the evolution of historic living spaces, as well as the design needs of those living with cultural displacement, heightened risks of violence, trauma, or personal loss, led to her study of recent neuroscientific findings about visual-spatial perception and the brain. Her integration of the work of neuroscience Nobel Laureates David Hubel and Thorsten Weisel into her design courses at Boston’s Boston Architectural College (BAC) and the University of New Hampshire, made possible her 1999 development of a vision-science-based programming protocol for architects and interior designers. 

Today she is the director of the Masey Archive in New York City, a design history resource that houses an extensive collection of images, texts, rare artifacts, and ephemera that document the intersection of American Modernism with international political and cultural dynamics from the end of World War II to the present. A consultant for historians, academics, filmmakers, and others, she was the lead researcher for Cold War Confrontations: US Exhibitions and Their Role in the Cultural Cold War and a primary resource for Mina Chow’s film, Face of a Nation: What Happened to the World’s Fair?

John English is an architectural historian and historic preservation consultant with over
twenty-five years of professional cultural resources experience, including: conducting
historic resource surveys, archival research, determinations of eligibility, CEQA
analyses and mitigation options, HABS/HAER documentation, the preparation of historic
property inventory forms, National Register Nominations and City of Los Angeles
Historic Cultural Monument applications.
He has lectured on car culture, roadside architecture and modern architecture and
design of the mid-twentieth century.
He has created tours for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Society for
Commercial Archaeology, and the Yale School of Architecture.
John’s infamous “Googie Tours” were featured in the Los Angeles Times, Sunset
Magazine, National Geographic Traveler, and appeared on CBS’ Sunday Morning, and
the Discovery Channel.
He was a founding board member of the A + D Architecture and Design Museum in Los
Angles. He also served six years on the Los Angeles Conservancy’s board of directors
and was an active member of the Conservancy’s Modern Committee, where he
advocated for the protection of historic resources including the Downey McDonald’s, the
Bob’s Big Boy coffee shop in Burbank and the Holiday Bowl in Los Angeles’ Crenshaw
District. He is currently a board member of the John Lautner Foundation.
John first met architect Helen Liu Fong in 1993 and is currently working on a book about
her life and career.

Gary Riichirō Fox is an architectural historian, educator, and Assistant Curator of Architecture and Design at Getty Research Institute. He currently leads curatorial research projects examining the architecture of Paul R. Williams, as part of a cross-institutional effort undertaken by Getty, USC School of Architecture, and LACMA, and a publication project investigating the architectural criticism of Ada Louise Huxtable. Previously, he has curated exhibitions and public programs at MAK Center for Art and Architecture and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Gary serves as visiting faculty in history/theory at SCI-Arc and UCLA. Gary completed a Ph.D. in History of Architecture at UCLA; prior, he received an M.A. from the Architectural Association and a B.A. from Yale University.

Erica Allen-Kim is an architectural historian of Asian diasporic built landscapes and assistant professor at the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on the capacity of vernacular landscapes to express stories of migration and intergenerational belonging. Her writing, including Building Little Saigon (U Texas 2024) examines the influence of transnational ethnic economies and cultural planning politics on the development of diasporic communities in North America. She looks at how planning and design ideas are interpreted by developers as well as municipal planners. Her participation in public history and planning initiatives support and amplify the work of community stakeholders seeking to commemorate their collective history and shape the future of their built landscapes. 

Jia Yi Gu is an architectural scholar, curator, and designer working on histories of knowledge production through the lens of media studies, cultural techniques, and material cultures (i.e. how we know and show our histories). Her research and courses explore changing definitions of architectural knowledge from the building site to the desktop. She is Assistant Professor of Architecture at Harvey Mudd College and one half of the architecture and research studio Spinagu. Over the past decade, she has cultivated a pedagogical and curatorial practice centering on transdisciplinary and inquiry-based exhibitions, alongside the critique and transformation of institutional work. Previously, she was director and curator at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House, and director of Materials & Applications. She is currently a Board member of the Feminist Center for Creative Work. She develops projects, exhibitions, publications, and experimental programming.

Annie Chu, FAIA, NCIDQ, WELL AP, is an architect, interior designer, educator, and a founding principal of Chu-Gooding in Los Angeles. In her four decades in practice, Annie has worked extensively with world-renowned museums and cultural institutions, including MOCA, Hammer Museum, The Huntington, Autry Museum of the American West, Studio Museum in Harlem, Southern California Public Radio, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association.After relocating to the U.S. from Hong Kong at the age of sixteen, Annie earned her Bachelor of Architecture at the Southern California Institute of Architecture and her Master of Science in Advanced Building Design from Columbia University. She conducted months-long research focused on Mayan and Incan architecture in Central and South America as the recipient of the post-graduate SOM Foundation Travel Fellowship. Leveraging her design reputation, Annie champions Interior Architecture as a distinct and emerging discipline, advancing design excellence through teaching, public speaking, and her leadership in the civic and professional realms, including her role on the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Commission, the Mayor’s Design Advisory Panel, the National AIA Interior Architecture Advisory Group, and the IIDA International Board of Directors.
In 2014, Annie received the International Interior Design Association’s Leadership Award of Excellence
from the IIDA Southern California Chapter. A dedicated educator since 1990 in architecture and design
schools across the country and abroad, Annie was recognized with the distinguished Presidential
Honoree Educator Award by AIA Los Angeles in 2016, and her contribution to architectural design
excellence was recognized by her elevation to the AIA College of Fellows in the same year.

Victor joined Armet Davis Architects in 1963 and became partner in 1972. Between these years, he freelanced for Bernett Turner FAIA and Thornton Abell FAIA, later obtaining his license in 1968 while working for Jones and Emmons (A Quency Jones FAIA). He is a licensed architect in the State of California and in fourteen other states. He has been the architect of record on over 3000 public and private sector architectural projects. Victor is well versed on the specific design, site, and cost issues involved with commercial construction in Southern California and throughout the nation. His extensive background makes him an invaluable asset to the timely completion of all construction phases.

He has been a Master Commissioner on the State Board of Architectural Examiners since 1980. In this capacity, he conducts oral architectural licensure exams for the State Board and has participated in writing the California oral exam test questions.

Victor has also been hired by various firms as a consultant to analyze business problems related to physical plants (i.e., Marriott Corp. – How the Public Perceives Its Image). Victor has the specific project experience, qualities, and education which are all essential to guiding projects to timely completion within budget.

Leyuan Li is a Chinese architect, educator, and researcher whose professional and academic work focuses on the agency of the architectural interior in the articulation of spaces and societies. He has practiced architecture internationally at OMA, SOM, and Affordable Housing Lab. He is the founder of Office for Roundtable, a design collective exploring different forms and events of sharing. Recent built projects have been featured on ArchDaily, Designboom, The Architect’s Newspaper, Gooood, and KoozArch, among others.

Li is an assistant professor of architecture at the University of Colorado Denver. He was a visiting assistant professor of architecture with an emphasis on issues of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion at the same institution, and has taught at Rice University’s School of Architecture and the University of Houston. He has been invited to lecture and review at numerous institutions, including Texas A&M University, Cal Poly, Cornell AAP, Ohio State University, Nanjing University, and Syracuse University. Li’s work has been exhibited at national and international venues, such as the Mashburn Gallery at the University of Houston, the UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, the OCAT Museum in Shanghai, and the 9th Bi-City Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism in Shenzhen. His curatorial project, Your Greenhouse Is Your Kitchen Is Your Living Room, received a Design Trust Seed Grant from the Hong Kong Ambassadors of Design and was on view at FEI Arts in Guangzhou. Most recently, Li collaborated with History Colorado and Colorado Asian Pacific United on the public exhibition, Where is Denver’s Chinatown? Stories Remembered, Reclaimed, Reimagined, which is currently on view at the History Colorado Center until August 2025.

Hsinming Fung is an architect and educator whose career has been marked by academic leadership as
well as design innovation. An advocate of positive change, Fung is acutely aware of the social, political,
and technologic context that molds architecture’s role in society, and believes that an essential part of
the architect’s role is to look beyond the status quo. With a critical approach to the discipline of
architecture, and a belief in its ability to awaken the senses, she infuses her designs with insights drawn
from her own multi-cultural background.
As principal and founder of the interdisciplinary firm Hodgetts + Fung, Fung’s work has been
distinguished by notable designs with a wide breadth of typologies. Her award-winning projects for
television, museum installations, and cultural institutions have established a reputation for clarity, with an
emphasis on rigorous formal logic and precise delineation of material. Much of her work has been at the
intersection of a celebrated architectural icon and the application of innovative technology, often with a
poetic sensibility as well as performance enhancing transformations.
Fung is a distinguished professor at SCIArc, where she held the positions of Director of Academic Affairs
from 2010-2015 and Director of Graduate Programs from 2002-2010. In that capacity, she increased the
role of digital technology to include robotic fabrication, while expanding the post graduate programs to
research new modes of practice thru media art and material science. Over the years, Ms. Fung served on
the board of the PLACES Journal and was President of AIA/Los Angeles as well as President of the
Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture. She also served as a National Peer for the General
Services Administration in Washington, D.C., and in 2004 served on the National Endowment of the Arts
Council.
Fung lectures widely, and has held prestigious studio appointments at Yale (Eero Saarinen 1995 and
2000), Ohio State University (Herbert Baumer Professorship 1996), National University of Singapore (Ong
Siew May Professorship 2022 and 2023), the University of Pennsylvania, and Bergen School of
Architecture.
Fung has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the Rome Prize Advanced
Fellowship in Design Art in 1991, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Architecture Award in 1994,
and the Chrysler Design Award in 1996. In 2006, her firm was awarded the AIA Gold Medal, and the
Firm Award from AIA/CA in 2008.
Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires, the Los Angeles Museum of
Science and Industry, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Venice Biennale and Milan
Triennale, and is in the permanent collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Alissa Walker is a writer based in Los Angeles where she has covered transportation, housing, urban design, public space, and environmental policy for two decades. She edits the newsletter Torched, which tracks the legacy improvements that LA is rmaking for its megaevent era, including the 2026 World Cup, 2027 Super Bowl, and the 2028 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games. Alissa is the 2021 recipient of the Steven Heller Prize for Cultural Commentary for her writing on design and urbanism, and played herself on the traffic safety episode of Adam Conover’s show Adam Ruins Everything, “Adam Ruins a Murder.” She lives in L.A.’s Historic Filipinotown neighborhood, where she is the co-host of LA Podcast, an avid ice cream consumer, and a mom to the city’s two most enthusiastic public transit riders.

Lavin received her Ph.D. from the Department of Art and Archaeology at Columbia University in 1990 after having received fellowships from the Getty Center, the Kress Foundation, and the Social Science Research Council. Prior to her appointment at Princeton, Lavin was a Professor in the Department of Architecture and Urban Design at UCLA, where she was Chairperson from 1996 to 2006 and the Director of the Critical Studies M.A. and Ph.D. program from 2007 to 2017.

The MIT Press published Lavin’s first books Quatremère de Quincy and the Invention of a Modern Language of Architecture and Form Follows Libido: Architecture and Richard Neutra in a Psychoanalytic Culture in 1992 and 2005. Her most recent books include, Kissing Architecture, published by Princeton University Press in 2011 and Flash in the Pan, an AA publication from 2015.

Professor Lavin is also a curator: a recent exhibition, Everything Loose Will Land: Art and Architecture in Los Angeles in the 1970s, was a principal component of the Pacific Standard Time series supported by the Getty Foundation and traveled from Los Angeles to New Haven and to Chicago. Exhibition Models, a show she curated for the Princeton University School of Architecture, opened in September 2018. The exhibition presented 18 models collected by Heinrich Klotz, historian of Brunelleschi and chronicler of postmodernism, as he formed the German Architecture Museum (DAM). Her installation, Super Models, was shown at the 2018 Chicago Architecture Biennial and she is currently working on Architecture Itself and Other Postmodernists Myths, an exhibition that will open at the Canadian Center for Architecture in the Fall of 2018.

Lavin is the recipient of an Arts and Letters Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Sam Lubell is Editor at Large at Metropolis. He has written more than ten books about architecture for Phaidon, Rizzoli, The Monacelli Press, and Metropolis Books. He writes for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Fast Company, Architectural Digest, Wallpaper, Dwell, Architect Magazine, and other publications. He has co-curated four major architecture exhibitions and taught at Syracuse University School of Architecture, Columbia University GSAPP, and Arizona State University The Design School.