Arriscraft Canada Brick Speaker Series: 11x17
Out of Stock
Alex Yueyan Li & Mahsa Malek, 11x17
Thursday, October 23, 2025
4:30 pm, Cummings Lecture Theatre
Architects do not make buildings, and they certainly do not make materials; they specify. The “out of stock” sign, often considered as a hiccup in procurement, is in fact a threshold where the ethical reach of architecture becomes visible, yet remains perpetually at risk of collapse.What if architecture is never fully available? What happens when specifying itself no longer leads directly to the production of a building? Drawing on 11 x 17’s recent projects, this lecture explores a material politics of “unavailability” and speculates on new modes of architectural practice that consider how form, material, and labor entangle to produce an architecture of resourcefulness.
Hosted by Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream / Associate Director, Undergraduate Studies Fiona Lim Tung
11 x 17 is a research-driven design practice based in Toronto and Denver. Founded by Mahsa Malek and Alex Yueyan Li in 2022, the studio works across scales, producing exhibitions, installations, interiors, furniture, books, and buildings. Works undertaken by 11 x 17 explore architecture’s material politics, approaching building construction as a conceptual device to engage larger issues around resources, labor, and form. Experientially rich and economically accessible, 11 x 17’s speculative and built projects have appeared in the US, Canada, and China. In 2025, the practice was named a winner of the League Prize by the Architectural League of New York. Their work has been featured in e-flux, Architectural Record, AZURE, and Archinect, New York Review of Architecture and in institutions such as the Chicago Architecture Biennial, Harvard University, DesignTO, and the Denver Art Museum.
Mahsa Malek holds a Bachelor of Architectural Studies from the University of Waterloo School of Architecture and an MArch from Princeton University School of Architecture. She is currently a lecturer at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design at the University of Toronto and adjunct faculty at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture. As an executive committee member of BEAT (Building Equality in Toronto), Malek was awarded the RAIC Advocate for Architecture award in 2024. She received the Suzanne Kolarik Underwood Prize for Excellence in Design from Princeton University in 2020.
Alex Yueyan Li holds a Bachelor of Architectural Studies from the University of Waterloo School of Architecture and an MArch from Harvard University GSD, where he was awarded the 2022 Irving Innovation Fellowship Research Grant and the 2019 Clifford C.F. Wong Prize in Housing Design. He is currently an assistant professor at the University of Colorado Denver’s College of Architecture and Planning.