March 4, 2026
Aleksandra Jaeschke, associate professor, University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture
Sponsored by the Rudy Bruner Center for Urban Excellence
6:00 pm to 7:30 pm • Hayes Hall - Room 403
Image 1: A timeline of selected residential legislation, with driving agendas, highlighting the policy frameworks that structure the landscape within which design decisions are made. © Aleksandra Jaeschke
Aleksandra Jaeschke is an architect and associate professor of architecture at the University of Texas at Austin. Born and raised in Poland, she holds a doctor of design degree from Harvard Graduate School of Design and an AA diploma from the Architectural Association in London. Aleksandra is licensed in Italy, where she practiced at AION, an architectural firm she co-founded and co-directed with Andrea Di Stefano until her move to the United States. In recognition of work developed by AION, she received the 2011 Europe 40 Under 40 Award from the European Centre for Architecture, Art, Design, and Urban Studies and the Chicago Athenaeum. In 2013, AION held a solo exhibition, titled "Eco-Machines," at the Wrocław Museum of Architecture in Poland.
Predesign: Rethinking the Boundaries of Practice
In this lecture, Aleksandra Jaeschke rethinks the boundaries of architectural practice by focusing on the often-overlooked terrain of predesign—the regulatory, technological, and economic processes that shape buildings long before architects put ideas to paper. Drawing on her research and teaching, she examines how environmental, sociopolitical, and techno-scientific forces configure the ground on which architects, developers, and builders operate. By foregrounding the complex interdependencies that structure this phase, the talk reveals both the discipline’s limitations and opportunities for meaningful intervention, arguing that if architects hope to reduce the environmental impact of construction and remain professionally relevant, they must expand their definitions of design and engage critically with the standards, regulations, tools, and practices that quietly determine the built environment.
Image 2: A comparative timeline of selected environmental and residential legislation, with driving agendas, showing how intersecting policy domains configure the predesign landscape that architects navigate. © Aleksandra Jaeschke
Image of Aleksandra Jaeschke.
Jaeschke was the winner of the Harvard GSD’s 2019 Wheelwright Prize and the DigitalFUTURES's 2021 Mark Cousins Theory Award. She contributed to Log 51 and Log 56, participated in Log’rithms at the Italian Virtual Pavilion during the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale, and was part of "Model Behavior," a group exhibition curated by Anyone Corporation and presented by The Cooper Union Foundation in New York in 2022. In 2021, she curated Plant Potential, an event series exploring human-plant relationships—www.plant-potential.world. Her book, "The Greening of America’s Building Codes: Promises and Paradoxes," based on her doctoral dissertation, was published by Princeton Architectural Press in December 2022.
The School of Architecture and Planning is an AIA CES Approved Provider. This course is AIA CES Registered and approved for 1.5 Learning Unit (LU).