USC Architecture Xpo
Paffard Keatinge-Clay’s Mt. Tamalpais Pavilion has been subjected to many subsequent changes since the initial building was produced. Tam2.0 implements the strategies of vaulting and adjusting columns to the topography in order to improve the longevity of the design intent.
There has been an explosion of van dwellers in both our major cities and rural areas and evidence shows that these communities will continue this growing trend. They have been forced into existence by a variety of factors but generally, the inability to afford a traditional form of housing. As these clusters continue to increase, interventions will need to take place to accommodate their needs. If these precautions are not fully realized, cities will be forced to rapidly designate last-minute settlements. My thesis project seeks to take a proactive approach by developing meaningful architecture for these communities.
The global climatic issue of rising sea levels makes the neighbourhood of Venice, Los Angeles, a potential flooding site which would disrupt the current living conditions. By the year 2100, it is estimated that much of the neighbourhood of Venice would be at serious risk of flooding. Through close analysis there is am imperative need for such a project on account of the fact there are several areas of lower elevation near the canals as compared to the homes closest to the shore. This thesis will focus on designing homes for climate resilience.
This project re-imagines the existing neighbourhood to make it a more resilient and socially integrated community. In the words of Jane Jacobs “Neighbourhoods aren’t just about the buildings but also about its social networks”. This project will propose to design elements that will reinforce socially diverse, equitable, and inclusive communities and represent a future of housing in which individual parts come together to re-figure and reform culturally, economically, and environmentally resilient living arrangements.
Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) composites can be used creatively to design different housing configurations.The homes would be prefabricated in factories which would make them cheaper than normal homes. They could be used to turn waterfronts into new neighbourhoods. FRP creates opportunity for more affordable, sustainable and efficient alternatives for safe and desirable housing. Their strength, low density and lightweight makes them easy to transport. It can also be used to create more modular elements which can be assembled and disassembled on site easily.
Cooperatively Coliving seeks to make coliving the primary form of housing in Los Angeles by 2040 through a system of coliving modules which can fit into a variety of scales of site. The modules together create affordable, social, and flexible complexes specifically designed for coliving.
The project is called “fragment museum”. It’s an urban pop-up exhibition. My overall position is to develop a spatial quality as a series which can curate things in a new way and explore the relationship between it and urban space. They are like fragments scattered in the city. It’s not only a pop-up installation exhibition but also a new way to interact with landmark spaces in the city , and the spatial quality itself could be an architectural exhibition and graphic intervention system as well.
I choose Shanghai as my target city and select 5 specific sites which represent Shanghai in different periods with different cultures. I hope they could offer people new perspective when they visit these landmark and break the method of curating in traditional museum.
The project explores essential graphic elements in an architectural drawing. The combination of architectural drawing and graphics yields new methods of reading the drawings. The drawings illustrate the concept, introduce the design techniques and demonstrate the programs. More importantly, the reading of the drawing echos the experience of the building. The paired drawing shows the repetition of the same graphic configuration and reveals different aspects that each drawing intends to focus on. The intention behind the invention of the DUO is to make emphasis through repetition, and to make dialogues between the pairs.
This thesis focuses on methods of alchemy, the process of assembly + manipulation of elements with rigor + precision, yielding a series of collections on architectural techniques that form the tropes. The locus is the dispersion and containership of knowledge. The materiality of this thesis is graphically displayed through sensory associations and typefaces as textures. Developing a method of architecture that best conveys knowledge via modern media… the documentary film. The practice is to mold the modern library as a storage apparatus, contained within the treasure that is all wealth… knowledge.
Since the advent of modern shopping malls, retail has coexisted with entertainment within a shared building—from coffee shops and food courts to movie theaters and ice skating rings. Despite this spatial and programmatic adjacency, shopping experience has not been affected by the impact of the various entertainment programs that have dominated the malls.
This thesis aims to combine the two spaces and experiences through what has been known as ‘retailtainment’ and ‘entertainmerce.’ By adopting various cross-programming strategies, the project aims to rethink the concept of shopping and retail space as a hybrid architecture that enhances both the user experience as well as the business and commerce associated with it.
Since the advent of modern hospitals, healthcare has been confined to fixed institutional space that lacks flexibility. The thesis aims to rethink the hospital and focus on healthcare delivery by creating mobile healthcare spaces that can be assembled on demand.
Using inflatable architecture, the project conceives healthcare as a prosthetic extension of a residential space that functions not only for treatment and recovery but also quarantine.
Luis Barragan said Architecture is an art when one consciously or unconsciously creates aesthetic emotion in the atmosphere and when this environment produces well-being. Street tells stories and history about itself. It has its own language. Miro will be a great way to yell these stories out. Architecture is not only a building, but also a part of the exhibition about history in Chinatown. This project provides multiple circulations and mirrors surrounding buildings, which allows people to travel in it and understand the history in Chinatown. In this process, Chinatown will be reactivated.