The KPF Lecture: Eric Owen Moss

Kublai: Marco, when you return to the west, will you repeat to your people the same tales you tell to me?
Marco: I speak and speak, but the listener retains only the words he is expecting.
 
-The Travels of Marco Polo
Rustichello da Pisa and Marco Polo, 1300

Eric Owen Moss was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. He received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of California at Los Angeles, and holds Master's Degrees in Architecture from the University of California at Berkeley, College of Environmental Design and Harvard University's Graduate School of Design.

Eric Owen Moss Architects was founded in 1973. The Culver City-based office has completed projects in the United States and around the world.

The firm is perhaps best know for its on-going revitalization of a former industrial zone in an area of Central Los Angeles and Culver City consisting of industrial and warehouse buildings that had been abandoned as industry moved abroad. EOMA developed a strategy to reconstitute the former industrial zone, utilizing is built assets and imagining a constructive concept for  a new model for urban revitalization.

Throughout his career, Eric Owen Moss has remained engaged in academia and educating the next generation of architects. He held teaching positions at major universities around the world including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, University of Applied Arts in Vienna, and the Royal Academy in Copenhagen. He received the AIA|LA Educator of the Year in 2006, and the Most Admired Educator Award from the Design Futures Council in 2013.

Moss has been a longtime professor at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), and served as its director from 2002-2015. Under his leadership the school developed the SCI-Arc Gallery program that has commissioned more than fifty installations by established and emerging architects and designers, executed as workshops with students to assist in the fabrication and installation; founded SCI-Arc Press; developed the online, publiclyaccessible SCI-Arc Media Archive; engaged in Solar Decathlon and Habitat for Humanity Partnerships, and oversaw several facility improvements and expansions including the RAD (Robot, Analog, Digital) Center for digital fabrication and research.

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