Running in the Dark: Scanning, Projection, and Eerie Doubles | Jeffrey Halstead

Running in the Dark: Scanning, Projection, and Eerie Doubles

Architecture is no longer only built; it is continuously scanned, indexed, and reconstructed. Jeffrey Halstead follows the scan from his early work at Gehry Partners, where it served as tectonic instruction, to today’s radiance-field reconstructions. In his installations, rooms meet their own computed doubles. He reads these doubles as hauntings; eerie traces of systems that keep running without us and of a future that feels replayed rather than invented. The talk turns to his two most recent exhibitions: The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, which projected a courtroom in Toronto’s Old City Hall back onto itself for Nuit Blanche 2026, and TRAMPOLINE TRAMPOLEEN TRAMPOLIN at L.L. Contemporary.

The CAAD Forum series is hosted by the Center for American Architecture and Design to bring faculty, students, and staff together for informal and inquisitive discussions about ideas relating to architecture and its history, theory, practice, and future. Presentations introduce and off insight into new and ongoing research, and are followed by time for Q&A. Lunch provided; first-come first-served. View past CAAD Forums on the Texas Architecture YouTube channel.