Gesa Büttner Dias

Gesa Büttner Dias is an architectural designer, writer, and educator, whose projects and research investigate the intersection of architecture, landscape, and art. 

Currently a visiting critic at Cornell AAP in Ithaca, New York, Büttner Dias lived and worked in Los Angeles, Chongqing, Paris, and Berlin. She got her m.arch from the Technical University in Berlin, and her post-graduate degree from SCI-Arc in Los Angeles.

Büttner Dias was cofounding principal of gabpa, a design studio based in Paris and Los Angeles. Gabpa's work was awarded several awards and their urban design proposal for Jakarta, Indonesia was exhibited at the Rotterdam Trienniale of Architecture. 

Büttner Dias worked for thirteen years with Frank Gehry at his studio Gehry Partners, where she was senior associate. As project architect, she built several projects, notably the Boulez Hall in Berlin, a chamber music hall for the Barenboim Said Music Academy. Other buildings are the UTS Business School in Sydney, Australia; the Battersea Power Station residential development in London, and New York by Gehry tower in Manhattan. 

In her research, Büttner Dias investigates the metropolitan region of Los Angeles as a case study for how the role materiality, everyday practice, and urban activism play in making a city. Her focus is to overlap the cultural productions of the 1970s with today's

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Classes (Selected)

  • ARCH 4101/4102 Design VIIAdvanced programs in architectural design, with options in, but not limited to, urban design, architectural technology, computational design, ecology, culture, and representation.
  • Arch 3308/6308/4408/6408 Special Topics in Theory: Los Angeles TrilogyAdvanced programs in architectural design, with options in, but not limited to, urban design, architectural technology, computational design, ecology, culture, and representation.
  • Arch 4102/5115/7112 Option Studio/ Core Design Studios V, Expanded Practices: Marginal LandscapesAdvanced programs in architectural design, with options in, but not limited to, urban design, architectural technology, computational design, ecology, culture, and representation.
  • Arch 3101/3102 Core Design Studio V/ VI: The Building in the City (- in the Building)Advanced programs in architectural design, with options in, but not limited to, urban design, architectural technology, computational design, ecology, culture, and representation.
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