To Where Form Follows

What should aspiring architects take away from a lecture on fetishistic sand piles? Speaking to students in UCLA Architecture and Urban Design’s JumpStart summer intensive program, Garrett Ricciardi, a professor at the school and co-founder of Formlessfinder, expounded on his first big break—a folly designed with collaborator Julian Rose for Design/Miami that featured a lightweight aluminum roof stabilized by a heap of sand (a material that is ordinarily “a complete nuisance in Miami and in the construction industry in general”)—and delved into more recent interventions in land art and Kuwaiti archaeology. Ricciardi couched his eruditions on territory, extraction, and infrastructure with the cold, hard truths of maintaining a research practice in a competitive job market. “You take every bathroom and renovation job you can get,” he said in response to a question about financial sustainability raised by an anxious audience member. His suggestions for how to “avoid the depletion and exhaustion” of building materials appeared to doubly serve as personal advice to the students themselves, brimming with questions and energy.