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Aaron Huey

Olson Kundig Speaker Series

Aaron Huey is a National Geographic photographer and Explorer, a three time Stanford Fellow, and Founder + Creative Director of Amplifier.org.

As a photographer Huey has created over 30 stories for the National Geographic magazines including several cover stories, and is also leading new projects inside the brand from VR and AR to metaverse spaces.  Huey’s Bear Ears Virtual Museum VR experience promoted the protection of sacred lands and won the Webby for best VR Interactive Design, and is being made into Augmented Reality lessons and metaverse experiences to teach pre-Colonial History in K-12 schools across the country.  His current assignment for the magazine is photographing inside the metaverse using a dozen avatar bodies and virtual cameras to photograph virtual worlds.   In 2011 Huey was named a Contributing Editor at Harper’s Magazine, only the second photographer ever on the masthead of the oldest monthly magazine in the US (1850).

As a Stanford Knight Fellow and then as one of the first d.School Media Experiments Fellows, Huey focused on using the human centered design process in both the analog and digital world to evolve his storytelling.  That resulted in many projects beyond traditional photography, including the evolution of his art and advocacy non-profit Amplifier.org, where he created the global art phenomenon called “We The People” with Amplifier and long time collaborator Shepard Fairey.

We the People broke crowdfunding records, and along with its followup We the Future, and Huey’s Sherpa Photo Fund project, he has raised over 2 million dollars between his last 3 crowdfunding projects.

Huey’s 3rd Stanford Fellowship was as a Stanford Starling Lab Fellow working on data integrity for visual journalism in 2022.

Huey is widely known for his 3,349 mile, solo walk across America (with his dog Cosmo).  The 2002 journey lasted 154 days.  They walked every step, with no support team or cellphone.

Huey recently launched a photography fellowship funding projects that address threats to democratic institutions in the US.

His 1,000 year project is an artist in residency program he is building on 400+ acres bordering the Sespe Wilderness in Southern, CA. See this link for photos from the property, by his partner in the land, Devlin Gandy.

BUT!!!! perhaps most importantly Huey was named the 3rd coolest Dad in America by Fatherly.com after Lebron James and Kelly Slater!

Aaron Huey is based in Seattle and Los Angeles.

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Every Monday, Olson Kundig starts the week with an all‑office meeting, and once a month this meeting is devoted to an outside guest speaker. The Olson Kundig Speaker Series was created by Alan Maskin over two decades ago with the goal of inspiring staff with presentations from people who work outside the realm of architecture. To date, more than 300 guests have come to speak in our offices. The forum is also available for internal speakers, who share completed project overviews, complex project details, and research findings, all with the aim of increasing our shared knowledge.

The 2023 theme of The Speaker Series is Other Plans. Other Plans is a retelling of stories untold which capture the unexpected moments in time that have altered our narratives. These are the plot twists, the detours, the pivots that challenge us to tap into the truest versions of ourselves and press on toward the future — even if that future is a vastly different destination to where we had planned. At its core, Other Plans is an examination of the human condition to better understand how each individual responds and adapts in the face of change.