Sport Clubhouses for Suburban LA
This project explores the transformation of underutilized school fields in Los Angeles County, with a focus on Downey, into sites for neighborhood sports clubhouses. Yoli drew inspiration from her 2024 USC Jon Adams Jerde Traveling Fellowship, during which she studied the urban planning and programmatic elements of successful European clubhouses.
In LA, car-dependent suburban sprawl has exacerbated play inequity and fostered isolation by limiting access to local recreational spaces. By repurposing school fields, this project seeks to localize sports, eliminate cost and travel barriers, and create opportunities for neighbors to connect. Collage techniques, incorporating imagery from Yoli’s photography in Downey, El Monte, Whittier, and Compton, visually represent the communities these clubhouses could serve. Designed with public input, the project reflects Downey’s changing demographics and envisions school-site clubhouses as spaces that foster a sense of belonging and provide accessible places to play.
Between Home & Class: Spatial Agents that Grow, Feed, and Respond
At USC, nearly 10,000 commuter students, almost a fifth of the university population, navigate campus without access to true third spaces—places to pause, rest, eat, or connect between classes. These students move through what Marc Augé calls “non-places,” suspended in transition, academically integrated but infrastructurally excluded. With over 20 percent of students experiencing food insecurity, the absence of lived space intersects with the absence of nourishment. Architecture, in this case, becomes both the problem and the possibility.
This thesis proposes a modular network of spatial agents that grow, feed, and respond to those who engage with them. Each node integrates a vending-based access system, a responsive canopy that cools and glows with collective use, an inverted ceiling garden maintained by a robotic harvesting arm, and a feedback loop where actions like composting, studying, and caregiving translate into meals and shared rewards.
These are not traditional buildings, but civic agents. Designed to reclaim the overlooked edges and in-between moments of campus, the nodes transform architecture into a system of reciprocity. Local vendors and student chefs rotate through compact vending platforms, distributing surplus meals, repurposed ingredients, and seasonal produce, contributing to a campus-scale food recovery system that reduces waste while expanding equitable access to nourishment. The environment grows in response to care. The more students contribute, the more the structure gives back.
While piloted at USC, the system is designed to scale. It can extend to transit stops, public libraries, and food deserts across Los Angeles. By transforming vending into civic infrastructure and embedding food access into the physical fabric of the city, the project reframes nourishment not as a commodity, but as a shared architectural right.
Under the Dome: Repurposing Stadiums into Community Assets
Modern mega-stadiums are built at great expense—often with a combination of public and private funds—yet they frequently yield modest economic returns and lie underutilized for much of the year. Within a few decades, many of these high-profile venues become obsolete or abandoned, leaving behind vast, costly structures and communities burdened by debt.
This thesis focuses on the broader legacy of such stadium projects, arguing that a more sustainable approach is needed to address the long-term consequences of stadium development. Specifically, it explores how displaced communities—like those in Inglewood around SoFi Stadium—might benefit in future decades if stadiums are repurposed for affordable housing once their sporting functions cease.
By converting venues such as SoFi Stadium into community assets, the thesis envisions a model that mitigates gentrification, reclaims underutilized space, and ultimately redresses the social and economic disruption these projects can create.
Urban Refuge: Echoes of Empathy
Urban Refuge I Echoes of Empathy explores how architecture can restore a sense of home for external/internal climate refugees through an urban, social, and developmental lens. As global displacement increases due to environmental crises, this project investigates how children—often the most vulnerable—can become leaders in the healing and rebuilding of community. Set in Downtown Los Angeles, the proposal transforms a forgotten amenity deck into a rooftop learning and healing park for displaced children aged 3–12, with adjacent communal spaces where adults can engage, reflect, and relearn empathy. Architecture becomes both a vessel for recovery and a framework for social integration, fostering belonging, equity, and resilience. By embedding play, education, and interaction into the site’s core, the project positions children as catalysts for social change—eliminating bias and nurturing collective healing. Adaptable to other urban contexts, this model proposes a new kind of refuge—one rooted in empathy and designed to echo across generations.
BUS STOP PLUG INS
Growing up in East Los Angeles, I’ve seen firsthand how overlooked public spaces can be and how they can impact daily life, especially the bus stops in the area. Most are just a bench or a pole, offering no shelter, comfort, or connection to the neighborhood. This thesis reimagines these overlooked transit points as architectural interventions that serve more than just transportation needs. By introducing thoughtful design and community-focused programming, bus stops can become welcoming, functional spaces that reflect the identity of the neighborhood and support meaningful social interaction. It’s about transforming a routine moment into an opportunity for connection, dignity, and engagement within the urban fabric.
The Community Interchange
Often perceived as the epicenter of endless sprawl and car dependency, Los Angeles is now shifting towards a vision centered on improved connectivity. Backed by federal and state investments, along with Angelenos’ positive attitude towards mass transit, the greater Los Angeles area is poised to embrace transit efficiency.
The Community Interchange seeks to transform historically isolating infrastructure into points of connection in Los Angeles by reimagining the region’s traditional path of connectivity. Transit is more than a node within a system and can be transformed into multimodal civic hubs that respond to the unique needs of surrounding neighborhoods by becoming spaces that enhance cultural visibility, exchange, and community accessibility.
The Community Interchange presents a dialogue between designing for diverse stakeholders and accommodating to specific needs. From transient commuters to long-time residents, this proposal aims to acknowledge its purpose within a neighborhood, a network, and a greater urban system.
ÑAN: Connecting Ecuador’s 4 Worlds
Ñan — derived from the Quechua word for “path” — is a speculative satellite-based transportation system that reimagines mobility as a sky-bound network designed to preserve the Earth’s surface. Rooted in the landscapes and values of Ecuador, Ñan proposes a future where transportation infrastructure no longer scars the land but instead floats above it.
At its core, Ñan is composed of two interconnected elements: a satellite hyperloop that functions both as a transportation capsule and space debris collector, and a terrestrial antenna hub that teleports goods and materials directly from orbit to Earth. This vertical mobility system seeks to reduce environmental impact while offering ultra-efficient connectivity between remote regions.
BUOYANT BIOMES: SOFTSCAPE INFRASTRUCTURE FOR LIVING BUFFERS
‘Buoyant Biomes: Softscape Infrastructure for Living Buffers’ explores how natural wetlands can be simulated and restored through an architectural, ecological, and urban lens. The environment plays a major role in regulating temperatures, supporting ecological health, and in the quality of life of humans, animals, and plants alike.
At an urban scale, the aggregation of these modular wetlands creates an urban park, allowing for zones of various degrees of human interaction with the environment. By utilizing interchangeable habitat modules to support native flora and fauna, this modular floating wetland system can be adapted to various climates, geographical locations, and bodies of water, allowing for the restoration of wetlands everywhere.
Through the use of pumice stone, hemp, and natural rubber, this floating wetland system is designed to sink at the end of its life cycle. This softscape infrastructure will sequester carbon biomass, removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing it in bodies of water. Wetland flora will also improve water quality through the filtration, supporting marine habitats.
At the seafloor, these micro-biomes will provide nutrients to marine life as well as create hardscape reef structures for shellfish and aquatic flora communities. These marine ecosystems will dissipate and mitigate wave energy and protect shorelines, filter water, and produce oxygen.
Accessible through kayaks and dives, this new soft infrastructure also offers opportunities for agriculture and aquaculture, allowing the community to interact and learn more about the ecological network. Educational labs and platforms also offer gathering spaces for the community to rest, observe, and learn.
RE:ALLEY
Re:Alley explores the transformation of Los Angeles’ overlooked alleyways into dynamic, community-driven spaces. This thesis proposes a modular, flat-pack kit system inspired by traditional Japanese joinery to activate and reimagine these underutilized corridors. Drawing from the principles of craftsmanship, modularity, and tactical urbanism, Re:Alley presents a scalable solution that fosters flexibility, adaptability, and inclusivity in public space design. The kit incorporates a variety of programmable elements—such as market stalls, seating areas, garden spaces, and art installations—that can be easily assembled, disassembled, and rearranged without specialized labor or permanent construction. This adaptability allows alleyways to support a range of activities, from pop-up markets and educational workshops to cultural events and communal gatherings.
The design process is informed by a combination of ArcGIS mapping, AI-generated visualizations, and hands-on material research. Through this methodology, Re:Alley identifies key alleyway networks with the highest potential for social and economic revitalization, while also exploring how visual storytelling can reframe public perception of these spaces. By treating alleyways not as leftover infrastructure but as vital connectors within the urban landscape, the project challenges the conventional understanding of what constitutes public space in a sprawling metropolis like Los Angeles.
At its core, Re:Alley is a call to rethink small-scale urban interventions as catalysts for broader community engagement and urban regeneration. The project highlights how thoughtful design and craftsmanship—embodied through joinery techniques and modular systems—can offer a cost-effective, sustainable way to revive neglected infrastructure. In doing so, it aims to elevate alleyways from spaces associated with neglect and crime to active, celebrated parts of the city’s cultural and social life. Ultimately, Re:Alley proposes a future where these hidden corridors are not forgotten voids, but thriving spaces of gathering, creativity, and connection.
Plug to Live
Fire-Resistant Modular ADU is a response to the wildfire-resilient designs that have recently surged in Los Angeles. The California wildfires of 2025 left a devastating impact on the state, and as a result, this design has been created with the damaged structures in mind. These wildfires have been reported to have severely damages over 12,000 structures, which included homes, as well as commercial properties. This thesis explores how modular ADUs can be protected and transformed using a custom brick facade system that is adaptable and fire-resistant.
Brick is often avoided in LA due to its cost, and the fact that it is not an ideal building material for earthquakes. Despite this, it can be reused as a lightweight, modular wrapper. The proposed idea suggests that it is possible to put a system in place using square bricks, and that these bricks will connect around housing units like an armor. Each room will be scaled to match the dimension of a brick unit, making it consistent in the space. These bricks will be designed in such a way that they interlock, and small holes in each unit will allow for rebar to be inserted, which will reinforce and strengthen the structure, which will add even more safety to the building.
Using only three modular types, I was able to develop a flexible ADU system that can expand over time. We can combine the base modules in many different 2D and 3D configurations that will be best for different site conditions and maybe even cater to different family needs. As homeowners grow their recources, they will be able to add more spaces, and they won’t have to rebuild the entire structure.
This approach will bring together fire-resilient materials with a phased housing strategy. It will have interlocking, and reinforced brick components that will be able to have doors, windows, which will allow for us to have structural variation. So, the system will be designed to grow, protect, and allow us to create structures that are able to adapt to LA’s housing and climate future.
