USC Architecture Xpo
This thesis repositions storytelling as a critical tool for decoding the cultural, historical, and community narratives embedded in Los Angeles’ Chinatown, reimagining its spaces as thresholds where collective memory and speculative futures intersect. By transcending conventional urban design frameworks, it constructs a dreamscape that merges reality and fantasy, transforming the neighborhood into an abstract, visitor-centric […]
Architectural models, traditionally understood through their representational or aesthetic roles, can also be conceptualized as generative instruments within broader cultural and epistemological frameworks. As Kersten Geers observes, a model is capable—like a plan—of producing other models, objects, and ideas. Reframing model making as a cultural technique reveals its capacity to participate in the circulation of […]
Cultural engagement enhances social, spiritual, and leisure activities. It involves assembling events, happenings, and spaces to bring people together. Cultural participation is a shared experience that promotes a sense of belonging and connection with others. This Directed Design Research course studies architecture and design approaches that support cultural vitality and practice – concentrating on developing […]
In Altadena, where homes meet the foothills, wildfires are no longer a distant threat—they are a devastating reality. In the wake of the Eaton Fire, which scorched large swaths of the community, Nature’s Whisper reframes fire not as an end, but as a beginning and a call for exploring new, alternative approaches to recovery. The project begins […]
In its brief history in architecture, AI has been used exclusively as an agent of novelty. Architects have seen it as a form finder and fantasy generator, and this has prevented it from being considered a tool for serious architecture. This thesis section investigated the possibilities for AI within the field as such a tool. […]
For many marginalized individuals and communities, informal practices are an essential means of gaining access to services and spaces that are otherwise unavailable or unaffordable. This is especially true for shelter and housing, where squatting often serves as a last resort. While property owners have broad legal means to evict squatters, squatters also hold limited […]
Building with Bricolage reimagines adaptive reuse as an active, regenerative process – one that is as much about creative material transformation as it is about collective social empowerment. This thesis proposes a framework where architecture is built not from scratch, but from what already exists: disassembled, deteriorated, and often overlooked structures are carefully taken apart, […]
U.S. cities are grappling with a post-pandemic paradox: while 20% of commercial spaces—including office buildings—sit vacant, the country faces a shortfall of 7.3 million affordable homes, leaving just 34 available units per 100 low-income households. Commercial to Community addresses this disconnect by proposing a mutually reinforcing solution: transforming underused commercial assets into frameworks for non-speculative housing […]
Inside Out / Outside In explores gentle suburban densification through the creation of collective hybrids—blending cooperative ownership, live-work arrangements, and flexible indoor-outdoor typologies. Anchored in a co-operative model, these hybrids promote adaptable, community-centered, and long-term affordable housing solutions. True to its title, Inside Out / Outside In addresses both spatial and organizational dynamics. Spatially, it rethinks the boundaries […]
Frameworks to Freedom builds on John Habraken’s Open Building concept, which proposes a dynamic relationship between a fixed structural framework and adaptable infill, striking a balance between architectural control and resident-led customization. While Habraken’s vision typically applies to newly constructed frameworks, this project explores how existing housing typologies can be transformed to enable similar freedoms. Focusing on the […]