Rossana Hu, Chair of the Department of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design, will present the work of her award-winning practice Neri&Hu Design and Research Office in the lecture “Thresholds: Space, Time and Practice.”

Terence Hawkes once said that the ”true nature of things may be said to lie not in things themselves, but in the relationships which we construct and then perceive, between them.” “Thresholds,” the title of this lecture, is a word that has long been embedded in Neri&Hu's architectural practice. It can be roughly translated to the Chinese notion of "jian", which means "gap", "space", or "pause". In an architectural sense, this term is often used to describe the physical mediation between two contrasting spatial environments. This lecture, in examining a series of contemporary issues in various global contexts, aims to shed light on how Neri&Hu ground their work while maintaining an intellectual inquiry into adaptive reuse and the role of history, reimagined spatial legibility associated with voyeurism, tectonics and the use of poché, a search for a connection back to the vernacular, and the role of collective memory and fragments.

Rossana Hu co-founded Neri&Hu Design and Research Office, an inter-disciplinary architectural design practice based in Shanghai, with Lyndon Neri in 2006. Through her practice, Hu has reinforced a core vision: to respond to a global worldview incorporating overlapping design disciplines for a critical paradigm in architecture, while believing strongly in research as a design tool, as each project bears its unique set of contextual issues.

Alongside her design practice, Rossana has been deeply committed to architectural education and has lectured across the globe in various universities and professional forums. She was appointed the Howard Friedman Visiting Professor of Practice in 2023 at the University of California, Berkeley; the Design Critic in 2023 and 2021, and the John C. Portman Design Critic in Architecture in 2019 at the Harvard Graduate School of Design; the Eero Saarinen Visiting Professor in 2022 and Norman R. Foster Visiting Professor Chair in 2018 at the Yale School of Architecture. Rossana was appointed as Chair of the Department of Architecture at Tongji University in 2021 and Chair of the Department of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design, effective spring semester 2024.

Hu is also Founding Partner of Design Republic in Shanghai since 2004, a design platform incorporating retail concept, design and cultural exhibitions, and education. In 2015, she was appointed as the Creative Director of Stellar Works, and has served on the International Advisory Board of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra since 2018.

Hu received her Master of Architecture and Urban Planning at Princeton University and her Bachelor of Arts in Architecture at University of California, Berkeley with a minor in music.

This lecture is sponsored by the M. Arthur Gensler Jr. Center for Design Excellence at CCA and is presented in partnership with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.