The 30th Anniversary Block Party celebrates three decades of the MAK Artists- and Architects-in-Residence program at the Mackey Apartments, which has served as a haven for international artists and architects to research, produce, and become immersed in the culture of Los Angeles.
The MAK Artists- and Architects-in-Residence Program was inaugurated in October 1995 with the arrival of its first cohort of artists and architects. Initiated earlier that year, an international jury has since convened annually in Vienna to select up to eight residency projects as well as two alternates per group. To date, the MAK Center has hosted more than fifty groups of international residents. This unique program is funded by the Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport, in cooperation with the MAK — Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna.
The Block Party will mark the launch of the MAK Center’s new Alumni Archive Module, bring together Los Angeles-based Residency Alumni, and features the opening of the 26th iteration of Garage Exchange, showcasing Vienna-based artist and Mackey Residency alumnus Christoph Meier alongside Los Angeles-based artist Chadwick Rantanen. Guests are also invited to tour the Mackey Apartments and connect with friends, alumni, and MAK Center supporters over food, drinks, and conversation. Together, these elements create a multifaceted celebration of the MAK Artists- and Architects-in-Residence Program’s thirty-year legacy of creative exchange.
3:00 PM Residency Alumni Panel with Simona Ferrari, Julia Koerner, Christoph Meier, and Luis Ortega Govela, moderated by Anthony Carfello
4:00 PM Walkthrough of Garage Exchange with Christoph Meier and Chadwick Rantanen
Reception and Block Party to Follow
Panelists
ANTHONY CARFELLO
Anthony Carfello is a curator, editor, and educator.
He is the Museum Manager/Curator of the Venice Heritage Museum, an initiative to preserve the stories of L.A.'s changing beachside community. From 2020 to 2022, Carfello served as Deputy Director of the Wende Museum in Culver City. For the decade prior (2009–19), he was Deputy Director of the MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House. Since 2017 he has taught as an adjunct assistant professor for Temple University’s L.A. study program, and from 2022 to 2024 he taught the art history of L.A. for Elon University (NC). Currently, he is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Museum Studies at the University of Iowa.
He has received support from the Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant for the online journal Georgia (with Shoghig Halajian and Suzy Halajian) and the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.
SIMONA FERRARI
Simona Ferrari is an architect working across different scales and formats. Practicing both independently and collaboratively, her work addresses architecture and the built environment through building, photography, drawing, and writing. Simona studied architecture at the Politecnico di Milano and the Technical University of Vienna, and received her Master’s degree from the Tokyo Institute of Technology. She completed a Master of Fine Arts at the Zurich University of the Arts. Alongside her practice, between 2017-2023, Simona taught and conducted research at the Department of Architecture at ETH Zurich and was assistant curator of the Japan Pavilion at the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale (2018). Previously, she worked with Atelier Bow-Wow in Tokyo, completing several international projects, including the Search Library in Muharraq, Bahrain, exhibition designs and installations at the Cultural Center of Chicago, Harvard GSD, the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, the MAXXI Museum in Rome, and the Triennale di Milano. Recent works include “Landscape In-Between,” a project for the former industrial site of Acetati in Verbania, Italy, awarded in the 15th edition of the Europan architectural competition and subsequently developed as an urban plan commissioned by the municipality, involving the local community. Simona was an architect-in-residence at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture in Los Angeles and at the Charles Moore Foundation in Santa Monica.
JULIA KOERNER
Julia Koerner is an award-winning Austrian designer working at the convergence of architecture, product and fashion design, specialized in 3D-printing. She is the founder of JK Design GmbH /JK3D and a professor at UCLA. Her recent collaborations include 3D-Printed Haute Couture and costumes for Marvel’s Hollywood blockbuster ‘Black Panther’ earning two Academy Awards. Furthermore, she has developed research on innovative uses of 3D printing with Swarovski, Stratasys, and Materialise. She is internationally recognized for design innovation in 3D printing and recently was awarded for her architectural design for ICON's 3d-printed affordable housing Initiative 99. JK3D is a next generation brand that focuses on 3D-printed fashion and décor products. The brand features iconic nature-inspired designs, with intricate and complex designs that can only be made through innovative 3D printing technology, utilizing sustainable plant-based materials. JK3D is a woman-owned business with design ateliers and urban manufacturing facilities in Vienna and Los Angeles. Since 2024 she serves on the Creative Industries Council of the Federal Ministry of Labour and Economy of Austria as part of the "Innovation Program for the Creative Industries 2030.
CHRISTOPH MEIER
Christoph Meier (b. 1980, Vienna) studied architecture at the Vienna University of Technology and sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and Glasgow School of Art. His internationally exhibited, installation-based work often engages with architectural and social spaces. Meier has participated in numerous exhibitions, including at the Museum of Applied Arts Vienna, Wiener Festwochen, Portland Institute of Art, Etablissement d’en face Brussels, and the Nam June Paik Art Center Seoul. He has presented solo exhibitions at venues such as Casino Luxembourg, Kiosk Gent, Kunstverein Hamburg, Kunsthaus Graz, and the Vienna Secession. Since 2009, Meier has co-published the artist fanzine BLACK PAGES with Ute Müller and Nick Oberthaler and, in 2016, co-founded the independent exhibition space Guimarães in Vienna. From 2019 to 2020, he was professor at the Institute of Art and Design at the Vienna University of Technology, where he now works as a senior artist at the Research Unit for Three-Dimensional Design and Model Making. Recently Meier has realized Gills Bells, a large-scale carillon as a public artwork in Gilsdorf, Luxembourg.
LUIS ORTEGA GOVELA
Luis Ortega Govela (1988) is a Mexican architect, writer and filmmaker based in Los Angeles. He graduated from the Architectural Association School of Architecture London. He is the founder of Office LOG, a research-based design studio working across architecture, design and art. . He is theco-founder of ÅYR, an art collective which explores the complex evolution of the home and domesticity. The collective has exhibited internationally, including at theBritish Pavilion for the Venice Architecture Biennale and at the 9th Berlin Biennale of Contemporary Art.
He is the author of GARAGE a book on the architecture and image of the garage published by MIT Press which has now been translated into Russian by Strelka. The book was also adapted into a documentary and was part of the CPH:DOX festival official selection. He was a recipient of the MAK Center for Art and Architecture Residency in 2017. He has lectured at the Architectural Association London, TU Delft, Garage Museum Moscow and The Royal College of Art. He is currently working on his third book.
Garage Exchange Artists
CHRISTOPH MEIER
Christoph Meier (b. 1980, Vienna) studied architecture at the Vienna University of Technology and sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and Glasgow School of Art. His internationally exhibited, installation-based work often engages with architectural and social spaces. Meier has participated in numerous exhibitions, including at the Museum of Applied Arts Vienna, Wiener Festwochen, Portland Institute of Art, Etablissement d’en face Brussels, and the Nam June Paik Art Center Seoul. He has presented solo exhibitions at venues such as Casino Luxembourg, Kiosk Gent, Kunstverein Hamburg, Kunsthaus Graz, and the Vienna Secession. Since 2009, Meier has co-published the artist fanzine BLACK PAGES with Ute Müller and Nick Oberthaler and, in 2016, co-founded the independent exhibition space Guimarães in Vienna. From 2019 to 2020, he was professor at the Institute of Art and Design at the Vienna University of Technology, where he now works as a senior artist at the Research Unit for Three-Dimensional Design and Model Making. Recently Meier has realized Gills Bells, a large-scale carillon as a public artwork in Gilsdorf, Luxembourg.
CHADWICK RANTANEN
Chadwick Rantanen (b. 1981, Wausau, WI) appropriates the forms of familiar consumer goods and modifies and re-contextualizes them into sculptural tools. Adapting and conforming to architecture and infrastructure, Rantanen’s sculptures mimic installations or site-specific works, often taking the form of an adaptor, wedging between objects and their sources of power, articulating a web of accommodation, compromise, maintenance and parasitism by slightly detouring energy, but never causing harm. His solo exhibitions include Secession, Vienna, Austria; Museo Pietro Canonica, Rome, Italy; Standard (Oslo), Oslo, Norway; Essex Street, New York, New York; Overduin and Co., Los Angeles, California; Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago, Illinois, Bel Ami, Los Angeles, California; CAPITAL, San Francisco, California.