sl Collective is a Los Angeles-based architecture and design firm that translates identities and concepts into built environments. Established in 2020, sl Collective is a new model for expanded and scalable practice, formed by a group of individuals who work globally with forward-thinking clients on a wide range of projects, including buildings, interiors, industrial design, design-research consulting and ideation.
The Collective
Gillian Shaffer Lutsko is an architectural designer, urbanist and founder of the sl Collective, and the Citizen Architect Fellow 2022-23 at USC. Her design and research interests center around the question of how architecture should respond to the most pressing issues of our time: the ongoing climate crisis; broader understandings of individual and cultural identities; worsening economic inequity; and the societal and cultural impacts of new technologies on space and visual media.
Shaffer Lutsko's design work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts and other international organizations, and has been exhibited in the Venice Biennale: Fundamentals (2014), the Seoul International Biennale on Architecture and Urbanism (2017), and several galleries in New York. Recent design work and critical writings have appeared in Project Journal for Architecture, CARTHA, POOL Magazine, Pidgin, and the Doe. Before founding her practice, Shaffer Lutsko worked at architecture offices in Berlin, Tokyo, Boston, and New York City. She has previously taught at UCLA Architecture & Urban Design and Pratt Institute's Berlin program. She graduated from the Pratt Institute with a Bachelor of Architecture and holds a Master of Architecture II from Princeton University, where she received a certificate in Media + Modernity.
Recent Press
2022Grantee, National Endowment for the Arts: Design Category
Citizen Architect Fellow, USC Architecture
2021Invited Lecture – "Future Architect" at Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture & Design in Moscow
Invited Lecture – “The Story of Now: Why Knowledge Matters” at USD
Finalist, Porto Design Biennale 2021, Alter-Realities: Designing the Present
Future Architecture Platform, The Creative Europe Programme of the European Union
Featured on Madame Architect, “Ahead of the Times: sl Collective's Gillian Shaffer Lutsko”
Published in CARTHA: Invisible Structures, “Monuments of Visible Order”
Published in the Doe, Special Issue
2020Invited Lecture – “Ways of Seeing Green,” The Cooper Union, New York City
Co-organizer – “LA-ND Symposium,” UCLA Architecture & Urban Design, Los Angeles, CA
Exhibited in “Working Remotely”, a83 Gallery, New York City
Published in POOL Magazine No. 5 Simulation, “The Synthetic View”
CONTRIBUTERS
Sandra Junghanns is an architect and designer based in Berlin. Since 2012 Sandra has worked as an independent freelancer, collaborating with architecture offices in Stuttgart and Berlin on built projects located in Stuttgart, Zürich, Shanghai, Berlin and Leipzig. Sandra received a Diploma in Engineering for Architecture and Urban Planning from the Universität Stuttgart, and has studied at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. Her diploma project investigated the theoretical topic of ruins of modernity. Sandra’s expertise is in design detailing and contemporary construction methods in western Europe and Japan.
2014VOV Magazine, “From Utopia to Dystopia,” an article on Hashima
Nick Lutsko is an Assistant Professor of Climate Science at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. His research focuses on issues of climate sensitivity and variability, clouds and large-scale atmospheric dynamics. He completed his undergraduate degree at Imperial College London, his PhD at Princeton University and spent two years at MIT as a postdoc prior to joining the faculty at Scripps. In addition to his research, Nick is also a collaborator of the design practice, sl Collective.
2020The Exchange, Art in America
2018Innovation in Sustainable Engineering Award, American Society of Civil Engineers
20181st Place, MIT Climate Changed Competition by MIT Architecture and Earth, Atmospheric & Planetary Sciences
Previous collaborators include Paul Ruppert, Chinmayi Suri, Florian Lepinard, Ruchi Singhania, and Alex Schweder, as well as public policy advocates, scientists, conservationists and philanthropists.
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Design + Development: Burrow