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Natasha Sandmeier

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A little recap of this summer at UCLA AUD/MSAUD ☀️

Had the pleasure of supporting the MSAUD summer session as a technical consultant, and I’m still amazed by what these talented students were able to create in just six weeks.

So much creativity, experimentation, and imagination packed into such a short time. It’s been inspiring to see their ideas come to life. So proud of everyone’s work!

Film and entertainment need more worldbuilders like these.

**Credits (in order of appearance):

01 — Top image: @ezio_zhang03 | Bottom image: some of the final review jury members @natashasandmeier @guvencozel @feghali.yara @unitedfutures, picture by @ezio_zhang03
02 — @yddddrl, instructed by @vanleuwenhall
03 — @ezio_zhang03, instructed by @liam.denhamer
04 — Model by @rita_5_1, Model Photo by @ezio_zhang03, instructed by @vanleuwenhall
05 — @miaochuan88990022, instructed by @liam.denhamer
06 — @amalqadhi, Picture by @ezio_zhang03
07 — @ste11a, instructed by @vanleuwenhall
08 — Top video by @peng_1935 | Bottom video by @kushal_walinjkar, instructed by @liam.denhamer
09 — @rita_5_1, instructed by @vanleuwenhall
10 — Top video by @sum_uubbhf923 and @dongxtg | Bottom video by @ste11ashao, instructed by @liam.denhamer

#architecture #uclaaud #worldbuilding #film #design

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Six weeks. A whole new design vocabulary 🎯

Our MSAUD program begins each August with Summer Studio, a six-week intensive that builds fluency in essential tools and software and offers the cohort a chance to bond and collaborate. Students tackle design questions from the start: how new methods change the way you think about the built environment, about systems, about how people actually inhabit space. Technical skill and design thinking develop together from Day One.

This year’s MSAUD cohort presented their Summer Studio work last week, and now move into year-long studios exploring speculative worldbuilding, architectural intelligence, material innovation, and urban strategy.

Applications for the MSAUD program (2027 matriculation) are completed via the UCLA Application for Graduate Admission, opening October 1, 2026. The application deadline is January 6, 2027. Visit and bookmark the links in our bio to learn more.

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Material Innovations is one of the four research themes in our MSAUD program, a one-year, post-professional degree for architects and designers who want to push architectural thinking into new territories.

The Material Innovations studio is grounded in experimentation with emerging materials, 3D printing, and advanced fabrication. Students investigate how emerging materials and production methods can change both what architecture is made from and how it is constructed. The work moves between research, prototyping, and full design propositions, using material behavior as an active source of architectural form and intelligence.

Last year, the Material Innovations studio used the Olympic Games as a case study, investigating how large-scale global events can serve as test beds for circular design and advanced technologies. Led by Julia Koerner @koernerjulia and Tucker van Leuwen-Hall @vanleuwenhall, students explored computationally driven parametric design, Design for Manufacturing (DFM), and Design for Disassembly (DFD) principles to create adaptable buildings that can be easily assembled, dismantled, and repurposed, ensuring long-term urban utility beyond the games.

Learn more about Material Innovations and our entire MSAUD program via link in bio.

📅 Applications open this October and are due January 6, 2027 for 2027 matriculation.
🎥 @vanleuwenhall

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🎬 THE GLITCH, a short film by Yiwei Weng (MSAUD ‘26) / @wianonw

Produced in the 2025-2026 MSAUD Speculative Worlds Studio led by Natasha Sandmeier and Liam Denhamer / @natashasandmeier @liam.denhamer

In “The Glitch,” a twelve-year-old girl moves through a world that presents itself as natural but reveals itself, gradually, as image. A forest turns out to be a billboard depicting a forest. A mountain gives way to a quarry that’s really a landscape of extraction and data. Open fields lead, finally, to a virtual meeting room at the edge of the game world.

The project asks what it means to reach for human connection inside an environment built entirely of representations of an environment, and sits within a longer inquiry into how synthetic and digital ecologies have come to feel more legible than the landscapes they replaced.

One of four research areas in our MSAUD program, the Speculative Worlds Studio approaches architecture as a practice of worldbuilding. Each project begins with a narrative premise that generates its own sites, programs, and spatial logics, then develops into a world that can be entered, interpreted, and contested. Students work across drawing, physical models, installation, film, game design, and robotic fabrication, using each medium as an instrument for constructing the world itself.

#worldbuilding #media #gamedesign #designresearch

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MSAUD @ UCLA AUD: One year. New trajectories. A broader field of practice.

UCLA AUD's Master of Science in Architecture and Urban Design (MSAUD) is for architects and designers ready to push their thinking, and their future, into new territory.

Design, technology, material research, urban strategy, visual culture: MSAUD works at the intersections.

🔍 Who applies: Architects and designers with a NAAB-accredited BArch, a graduate architecture degree, or the foreign equivalent.

⏱️ How it works: A six-week Summer Studio builds fluency fast, followed by a year of Research Studios, Technology Seminars, and Critical Studies. Your skills and your potential reach new levels.

🧭 Four research topics, one question — how does design lead us into tomorrow's territories?
Speculative Worlds · Architectural Intelligence · Material Innovations · Urban Strategy

📍 Where it leads: Advanced practice, tech, research, curation, entrepreneurship, and beyond. Grads have landed at Adobe, Apple, Google, Autodesk, and IDEO, and have founded their own award-winning practices.

📅 Applications for 2027 matriculation open this fall, due January 6, 2027.

Link in bio to learn more, or DM us your questions.

#UCLAAUD #MSAUD #ArchitectureSchool #UrbanDesign #DesignEducation

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MSM TV GUIDE VOL. 2
Jon Rafman, Sprüth Magers

EDITOR
Liam Denhamer

GRAPHIC DESIGN
Liam Denhamer / The Opioid Crisis Lookbook (Dustin Cauchi & Dasha Zaharova)

PUBLISHER
Farmers Publishing

CONTRIBUTORS
Jon Rafman, Liam Denhamer, Talia Ergas Lenett, forcult., Wera Nowak, Dawid Dinh Xuan, Sophia Alvarez, Johanna Stone, Nina Cheb-Terrab, Chelsea Brennan, PSYOP Brotherhood, Aaron Pharness, Antoine Provencherr, Samuel Staples, Mae Noland, Brandon Bowen, Alexei Haddad, Natasha Sandmeier, Honor Levy, Patrick McGraw, Jack Self, Norman M. Klein, Juvenilia Architecture, Halcyon Veil, Tom Schneider, Heavy Traffic Magazine, The Opioid Crisis Lookbook, Dustin Cauchi, Dasha Zaharova, APEX Edition, Rose Marie Johansen, SEX IS DEATH.

250-page hardcover book

Available at WWW.FARMERS-DAUGHTER.COM @farmersxdaughter

@jonrafman @liam.denhamer @tal9000000 @weanowak @lsdawid @slolphia @josettastone @ninachebt @chelseathepale @antoinetoday @smstpls @brandon.bowen @alexeiahaddad @aaronpharness @natashasandmeier @victim0_o @ptrkmgrw @j_self @halcyonveil @tom____schneider @heavy_traffic_mag @theopioidcrisis_lookbook @dustin_cauchi @dasha_snoww @rosemariejohansen @sexisdeath @spruethmagers

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We can’t wait to open the doors to Rumble60 this morning. See the full program for Monday and Tuesday via link in bio. Good luck to all and have fun!

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Final Reviews in the MSAUD Material Innovations Architecture Studio @uclaaud with @vanleuwenhall • Students shared their research into biomimicry, biomimetic design, computational design and 3D printing catalogues as well as the design of 3D printed AQUA VISORS • thanks to our jurors @yuanmumuyuan @madisonsinnovative @jackihahbloom @feghali.yara @natashasandmeier @kais.rawi for their time and great contributions • inspiring conversations

students:
@borna_tnejad
@archmbg
@xiangshu02
@laura111sun
@sab.arch
@chris_ezden
@feihao_ye
@marabdal
@jared_miao
@abelmaq
@aurella.99
SadhviSankaranarayanan
@lucy_louise_jiaying_liang

#architecture #architectureschool #losangeles #parametricdesign #computationaldesign

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UCLA Architecture and Urban Design is pleased to share its full 2025–26 program of lectures and events, all free and open to the public.

Celebrating AUD’s 60th anniversary, the poster centers on an archival photograph of Perloff Hall from the 1960s, enlarged to reveal its details — the grain of film, the traces of age, and the imperfections carried through multiple scans. This act of zooming in collapses time, bringing decades of history and reproduction into a single surface. Layering extends this gesture, allowing past and present to overlap and accumulate within the design. As with the anniversary lecture series itself — which brings together distinguished speakers and alumni — the poster underscores how AUD’s past continues to shape and inform its present conversations.

All events are held at AUD’s Perloff Hall on UCLA’s Main Campus in Westwood and begin at 5:30pm, unless noted otherwise. See the link in our bio to RSVP to the below events:

Keller Easterling, “Your Land”
Mon, Oct 6, 2025

Julie Eizenberg & Ananya Roy with Dana Cuff & Karen Kubey, “Architecture and the Right to Housing in Los Angeles”, co-organized by UCLA cityLAB & U of Toronto
Mon, Oct 20, 2025

Tatiana Bilbao
Thu, Nov 13, 2025

David Godshall, “Surfing a Tsunami”
Mon, Nov 17, 2025

Kai-Uwe Bergmann (MArch ’93), “Materialism”
Thu, Jan 22, 2026

Mark Jarzombek
Mon, Jan 26, 2026

Marlon Blackwell
Thu, Feb 26, 2026

Mark Lee
Mon, May 11, 2026 (rescheduled from April 13)

Hsinming Fung (MArch ’80), Distinguished Alumni Lecture
Mon, May 18, 2026

RUMBLE 2026
Mon, Jun 8 & Tue, Jun 9, 2026

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Work by Chufeng Wu and Yizheng Sun (both MSAUD ’25) for “Atlas of Images and Image-Making Technologies,” Natasha Sandmeier and Liam Denhamer’s Spring 2025 Research Studio. The studio asked students to probe how imaging, simulation, and real-time tools shape architectural narratives—using filmic worldbuilding to test light, material, scale, and perception. @phoneshockstudio @lenord2118 @natashasandmeier @liam.denhamer

“This project presents a speculative world built upon layered realities and nested spaces. At its core lies the garage—not just as a physical structure, but as a symbolic site of invention, observation, and self-contained cosmology. In this world, truth is not handed down, but constructed through individual inquiry—be it through seismic simulations or experiments in light. The story follows two characters—both seekers of truth—who approach the nature of their world from distinct directions: one studies the frequency patterns left by earthquakes, believing in an underlying structural rhythm to chaos; the other maps the behavior of light, convinced that illumination drives the world’s movement and change.”

Built with Unreal Engine for real-time rendering, physics, and cinematic lighting—alongside Rhino for architectural devices, MetaHuman and New Identity for characters, and MetaTailor for costume—the final output is a film with a layered, immersive visual language.

See the link in our bio for more from this project, and to see the full film!

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Announcing our Lectures for the 4th Playing Models!
@natashasandmeier
Natasha Sandmeier is an architect, educator, and writer whose work operates at the intersection of architecture, visual storytelling, and speculative worldbuilding. She leads the postgraduate Entertainment Studio and serves as Program Director of the Master of Science in Architecture and Urban Design (MSAUD) at UCLA Architecture and Urban Design. From 2022 to 2024, she was Executive Director of the A+D Museum in Los Angeles.
She is the author and editor of Little Worlds (London, 2014), a monograph of projects and essays examining the evolving role of the architect in contemporary culture, and is currently developing a new book titled Tremors and Signals: Field Reports from Possible Futures, an anthology combining speculative fiction, visual inserts, and essays exploring how narrative and worldbuilding might help us make sense of systemic and planetary change.
Sandmeier is a registered architect in the Netherlands and founding partner of the Los Angeles–based design practice Office UR (OUR). She has previously taught at SCI-Arc, the Architectural Association, and the Berlage Institute.

Find all the Playing Models 2025 info through the links in our bio.

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Announcing our 3rd panel!

Day 2 - Morning Session
August 14th - 10:15
Drafting Geometric Stories
Moderator: Agostino Nickl @agostinonickl
Speakers:
Natasha Sandmeier / UCLA - A+D Museum @natashasandmeier
Adil Bokhari / ETH Zurich @adilbokhari
Daniel Cardoso Llach / CodeLab, Carnegie Mellon University @daniel.cardoso.llach

AI can endlessly write and render, achieving impressive results in the blink of an eye. As architectural writing and rendering practices start adapting to and adopting these tools, the measured architectural drawing—measured both as true to a particular scale and as a matter of careful attention—seems strangely absent. Both are acts of proportioning: not just walls and floors, but also characters and concepts. During our discussion, we want to explore how drawing brings latent things into view, how geometry moves from earth-measuring to world-making, and how storytelling functions as a reflective and projective instrument of sense-making. What becomes of writing and drawing, the key instruments that have long accompanied architectural thinking, in the light of AI?

Location:
@carnegiemuseumofart

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