USC Architecture XpoInstructor: Gillian Shaffer
Cities are not static but relational constructs that are continuously shaped by the evolving interplay of social practices, collective perceptions of place, and material conditions. As needs, values, and routines shift, the urban landscape transforms leaving behind neglected spaces and fractured traces of past systems. Yet in this accumulation, many of the informal public spaces […]
In an era defined by displacement, migration, and transnational flows, architecture must operate as a medium of cultural translation—capable of holding the layered identities of those who inhabit multiple worlds. This project explores how the built environment can serve as a connective tissue between cultures, fostering belonging, continuity, and shared meaning across difference. By incorporating […]
The design of adaptable, self-built neighborhoods in Puerto Rico presents a critical opportunity to reframe architecture as a collective resilience system rooted in cultural continuity, environmental responsiveness, and the historically informal practices that have long-defined communities like La Perla. In the face of climatic volatility and systemic neglect, this project proposes a kit-of-parts framework that […]
In architecture, natural and artificial are not opposites but intertwined conditions—experienced simultaneously through sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste. Architecture, as a mediator of these sensory encounters, holds the capacity to shape emotional and psychological states. Through the design of a wellness campus, this thesis investigates how design can support healing for individuals with PTSD, […]
Spatial boundaries are not merely drawn, they are enacted, contested, and continuously reconfigured through everyday practices. The U.S.–Mexico border, long framed as a site of division and control, is an active space shaped by daily movement, resilience, routine, and performances that produce a layered terrain of social connectivity. This thesis examines how representation and design […]
The suburban housing crisis demands a radical reimagining of residential development through a Circular Economy framework—one that prioritizes longevity, adaptability, and regenerative material practices. By integrating hyper-local production methods, Design for Disassembly (DFD) principles, and Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) technologies, this approach proposes a new paradigm for suburban housing that actively reduces dependence on non-renewable resources […]
As society’s dependence on data intensifies, data centers, often hidden from view, have emerged as critical yet environmentally taxing infrastructures, consuming vast energy, generating carbon emissions, depleting water resources, and contributing to mounting e-waste. Green Bytes reimagines the data center not as an isolated industrial artifact, but as a self-sustaining, site-responsive ecosystem embedded within rural […]
Manhattanism endures not as a relic, but as an evolving paradigm through which capitalism’s spatial, economic, and ideological intensities are made physical. Its vertical ambition, speculative logics, and infrastructural congestion constitute not a crisis, but a blueprint for urban desire. Projected into the next century, this paradigm transforms into a recursive megastructure—fragmenting the singular extrusion […]
In the face of accelerating demographic transitions—particularly in regions shaped by policies like the one-child policy—urban environments must reconceive their spatial, ecological, and social infrastructures to accommodate aging populations and shrinking generational cohorts. This research proposes the development of Slow Metabolic Health Communities as a new urban paradigm—one that reimagines the built environment, as well […]
Adaptive micro-architecture operates as a spatial counter-strategy to the rigid and exclusionary logics of single-zoned urbanism, particularly within the fragmented terrain of Los Angeles. Through small-scale, mobile, and modular interventions, it reclaims latent spaces—flatlands, alleyways, freeway edges, parking voids—not as overlooked remnants but as fertile grounds for collective life. These architectures reject the architectural object […]