Living With… Comes to SCI-Arc

Coinciding Lecture
Dominique Jakob + Brendan Macfarlane: Creating With...
November 13 at 6pm

LIVING WITH is an international architectural exhibition addressing climate change, conflict, displacement, and the wider challenges of global instability. Its aim is to demonstrate architecture's capacity to ensure the continuity of life between disasters, to involve not just experts but everyone in addressing urgent global issues, and to amplify the voices of the next generation of architects. The exhibition repositions architecture as a political and ecological act that embraces interdependencies between nature, social structures, and technology while nurturing a poetic relationship with our environment.

First created for the French Pavilion at the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale (2025), the exhibition featured 50 designs selected from over 300 submissions to an open call, alongside student projects from eight architecture schools from different continents.

The exhibition is organized around six major themes: Living with What’s Already There; Living with the Immediate, Living with the Broken, Living with Vulnerabilities, Living with Nature, and Living with Combined Intelligences. It presents context-specific solutions for different places facing common global challenges, creating a shared source of intelligence. The exhibition design is based on circular principles, and is fully adaptable to different exhibition spaces, with detailed information on each project accessible via individual QR codes. The exhibition also includes a bilingual catalogue sold worldwide.

After the Venice biennale, LIVING WITH was exhibited in Brazil, at COP30 in Belem and the International Architecture Biennale of São Paulo; then traveled to the Chicago Architecture Biennial. In 2026, it featured at the International Conference on Sustainabilityin Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, followed by the FRAC Centre in Orléans – one of the world’s leading museums of radical architecture – and Le Pavillon, the museum of architecture, urbanism, and landscape in Caen, France. In New Zealand, it was shown at the in:situ international conference in Auckland, then at the School of Architecture, Victoria University in Wellington. Next stop: SCI-Arc, Los Angeles.

Born in France, Dominique Jakob graduated from the École d’Architecture Paris-Villemin (1991) after receiving a degree in art history from the Université de Paris I (1990). She taught at the Paris-Villemin and Paris-Malaquais School of Architecture from 1994 to 2004, at the Special School of Architecture, and at SCI-Arc in 2018 in Los Angeles. She was named Woman Architect of the Year in 2019 by the ARVHA. She has been a full member of the French Academy of Architecture since 2016.

Brendan MacFarlane, born in New Zealand and a graduate of SCI-Arc in Los Angeles (B.Arch ’84), received his master's degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Design in Boston (1990). He has taught at the Bartlett School of Architecture in London, the Architectural Association in London, the Special School of Architecture in Paris, SCI-Arc in Los Angeles (2006 and 2018), and the Harvard Graduate School of Design in Boston. In 2010, he received the Distinguished Alumni Award from SCI-Arc.

Jakob + MacFarlane is an architectural, urban planning, and design practice centered on research into the development of innovative and socially committed architecture tailored to meet the environmental emergencies and other challenges of the twenty-first century. At the forefront of digital technology for more than twenty years, the practice, created in 1998, is renowned for buildings that have become real urban markers. It specializes in proposing an architectural language that is suited to the history of its projects and to their program. An international, multi­disciplinary team spearheads the research, design, and production. It is supported by a global network of technical expertise, aimed at conceiving and implementing specific solutions to the challenges that each project presents. Dominique Jakob and Brendan MacFarlane are regularly invited to participate in conferences and juries in prestigious institutions such as the Architectural Association of London, the Centre Georges Pompidou, and the Monterey Design Conference.