CITIZEN
ARCHITECT
04/12/19
From short supply and high demand to a lack of affordable options, housing in Los Angeles is a complex and prominent issue that deserves the ...
04/18/19
USC Architecture Professor Scott Uriu was recently awarded a grant from USC’s Undergraduate Research Associates Program (URAP) for 2019-2020. The ...
04/15/19
On April 14, an exhibition highlighting the collaborative nature of the work on professor Geoffrey von Oeyen’s Napavilion, as well as the unifying ...
We are educating citizen architects — capacious makers and thinkers who see the world through the prism of architecture thinking and view their role in the world as activists.
Dean Milton S.F. Curry
School of Architecture
School of Architecture
@USCARCHITECTURE
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With final reviews starting next week, today is a perfect day for a #tbt #repost from alumnus @brian_rohrlick (B.Arch ‘18).
...and there goes my last final review (10 out of 10) of my 5-year undergraduate architectural program. I can’t believe it’s all over now 😥 I was just starting to have some fun...
We’re thrilled to celebrate some of the recently published books from our incredible faculty! These publications offer a glimpse into the breadth and depth of research and creative work coming out of our School right now.
Rob Berry
LA Forum Reader: From the Archives of the Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design
Vinayak Bharne
Affordable Housing: Inclusive Cities
Ginger Nolan
The Neocolonialism of the Global Village
Victor Regnier
Housing Design for an Increasingly Older Population: Redefining Assisted Living for the Mentally and Physically Frail
Alex Robinson
The Spoils of Dust: Reinventing the Lake that Made Los Angeles
Jose Sanchez
The Blindspot Initiative
Trudi Sandmeier & Vinayak Bharne
Routledge Companion to Global Heritage Conservation
Larry Scarpa
Ordinary and Extraordinary
Karen Kensek's ARCH 507: Theories of Computer Technology notes "the grand challenges to three-dimensional graphics are to make simple modeling easy and make complex modeling accessible to far more people." In homework #7, students explore how to use the conceptual modeler in Revit to create more complex shapes and curtain wall systems.
For his project, M.Arch student Mel Lewis designed a trellis to work in conjunction with the Kavo Gkreo Visitor Centre of Cape Greco, Cyprus to adapt to sun position as well as be altered according to particular material and size demands per the request of a client.
Our final faculty/student exhibition of the spring semester is on view now through April 27 in Watt Hall.
For the past four years, Geoffrey von Oeyen has been studying village development in rural China, has led architectural design research on the relationships between urban, rural, and industrial development through the USC American Academy in China (AAC), and has presented that work in symposia and exhibitions in Xi’an and Shenzhen. In 2017, he led a team of graduate students from both USC and the Xi’an University of Architecture and Technology to work in collaboration with local builders and laborers in Lantian, Shaanxi, to realize in less than two weeks the construction of his design for a permanent public pavilion on county land in the agricultural landscape, sponsored by the regional government and a local winery. This exhibition at the USC School of Architecture invites visitors to consider the design and construction of the Napavilion, and to frame themselves within its view. 📷: @gvodesign
@duttonarchitects uses VR technology to review a student’s project for ARCH 605b. The graduate comprehensive studio is working on Leimert Park housing proposals that emphasize co-living configurations and flexible floor plans.
M.Arch students @marissa__sketches and @Kevincohendesign share conceptual perspectives for their co-housing for Leimert Park, Los Angeles project for ARCH 605B.
It’s #NationalLibraryWeek, so here’s a brief history on our Helen Topping Architecture & Fine Arts Library.
A specialized library to benefit students in art and architecture was established at USC in 1925 and relocated into the lower level of Watt Hall in 1974. In 1986, ground was broken to expand the library to nearly 13,000 square feet, and the Helen Topping Architecture & Fine Arts Library was inaugurated in 1990. The library features the Alson Clark Reading Room, the Harry and Della MacDonald Periodicals Library, the John Stauffer Atrium (housing the reference collection) and the Torrey H. Webb Rare Books Reading Room.
CAVES! HUTS! TENTS!
This semester, ARCH 102b is exploring different processes for making three-dimensional form and space. In the first project, the archetypes of the cave, the hut, and the tent are used as starting points for the design of a series of architectural objects. Students develop exploratory drawings and models to represent both their forms and the ideas behind them. A selection of these drawings and models are on display in Watt Hall this weekend. Check out our Story for more shots!
Now on view in Verle Annis Gallery, “Salty Urbanism: Brooks + Scarpa” is an exhibition of research by faculty member Larry Scarpa’s firm @brooks_scarpa that examines the wicked problem of sea level rise and flooding in coastal cities. This is a critical concern as nearly half the U.S. population lives within 50 miles of the coast and much of the economic activity of the nation is tied to coastal communities.
Utilizing the North Beach Village neighborhood in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and Venice Beach, California as case studies, “Salty Urbanism” establishes an interdisciplinary team to develop a coupled research methodology and pedagogical approach that envisions and quantifies the experiential and ecological outcomes of alternative ways forward for the neighborhood in response to climate instability, disruption and rising sea levels.
This exhibition is free and open to the public from 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM daily.
Now on view in Watt Hall: Our new faculty/student exhibition explores the connection between cinematic representation and urban experience – an ongoing theme in faculty member Amy Murphy’s work. The faculty portion of the show features images from Haunted Screens: German Cinema in the 1920s, an exhibit design Murphy co-produced for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2014. The student portion of the show displays work from Murphy’s graduate seminar, ARCH 586: City Cine - Visuality, Media and Urban Experience. Each student interpreted a film that was set in Los Angeles in order to reveal how a particular scene within that film registers an important condition existing within the larger metropolis.
Photo credit: Iwan Baan
To continue the International Women’s Day celebration, we hosted a four-hour Wiki-thon last week to build and extend profiles of well-known women practitioners and thinkers in architecture, landscape architecture, heritage conservation and building science. Thanks to our guest speakers, Azatuhi Babayan and Jorge Leal, for sharing your insight!
Rosalind Krauss’ 1979 essay “Sculpture in the Expanded Field” represented an expansion of traditionally binary fields into a matrix. As usual, it took architecture a number of years to catch on and catch up - codified as canon at last by Stan Allen’s writings on field conditions in 1996. Drawing from these two influences, Joanna Grant’s fourth-year topic studio re-examines the role of components and processes by studying the history of Minimalism and Post Minimalism of the 1960s and 1970s.
In this studio, students are investigating the possibilities of translations of found objects with regard to their materiality, physics, and relationships with other materials. Drawing from a history of minimalist and post-minimalist processes, the studio is collecting and categorizing objects, materials and components as an architectural vocabulary. Utilizing this catalog, the studio experiments with physics simulators to examine the implications of geometry and gravity. From studies of gravity with the physics simulators, students deploy an assembly strategy to be translated into a 1:1 scale mockup. Using the mockups as the spatial organization system, the models will be adjusted accordingly to a new scale as a building, with postulations about program and occupancy. - @ioanagrant
Repost from faculty member @gvodesign • As citizen architects, the students of the USC School of Architecture are working in multidisciplinary ways to provide leadership toward solutions to the housing crisis in Los Angeles. My 2018-19 undergraduate and graduate studios concern design research in the development of housing architecture in Los Angeles using Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) composites.
Current housing in Los Angeles, both in its materials and its configurations, will not be able to satisfy the demand for the millions of additional units that have been estimated as required to stabilize housing prices. The students are therefore studying new designs, materials, and methods for multiunit housing at all scales in an effort to pursue community resilience through diversity, equity, and inclusion, new models for public and private collaborations, new models for economic viability, and environmental resilience. They are learning to create value in their housing proposals by impacting communities in Los Angeles, celebrating pluralism by exploring new ways to design for diverse residential communities and neighborhoods, and by developing critical, multidisciplinary thinking.
Similar to how Le Corbusier envisioned a new architectural system for housing that would respond to aesthetic, technical, and cultural forces, my design research proposes in the 21st century with FRP composites what the Dom-Ino was to reinforced concrete in the 20th. FRP, including fiberglass and carbon fiber, has been in wide use in other disciplines throughout the 20th century, such as naval architecture and aerospace engineering, and is only now making its way into more widespread architectural use.
@keko.alramah.arch @t__abbott @khalilgobir @uscarchitecture @usc_architecture_ug #gvodesign
Our annual Career Week Firm Fair brought together 60+ firms and hundreds of students today! Thanks to all our participating firms for sharing your time with us and to the USC Architectural Guild for their Career Week support. ✌🏻
B.Arch student @cstratton.arch shares a project from ARCH202b // Materiality Transformation Project 2 // Drawing // 30’x30’ corner of a bow truss warehouse transformed through rotation that changes perception and usability of a space grounded in changing surface materiality.
During spring break last week, a handful of undergraduate and graduate students participated in our inaugural externship program. Local companies hosted our students and provided a week of real-world experience and job shadowing. Read the full story on our website (link in bio)! 📷Photo 1: Leo Chen, James An (Student), Raffi Agaian, and Everardo Garcia at LCRA. Both Raffi and Leo are USC graduates from the School of Architecture and Everardo is one of the managers of the company. Photo 2: Jose Zagal at his externship with Sandhill Management Inc.
Our latest faculty/student exhibition in the Watt Hall 2nd Floor Gallery is from MLA+U interim program director Esther Margulies. She shares more about “Learning Los Angeles,” which is on view now through March 30: “After almost 30 years of practice and teaching here, I have learned that there is no way to know the entire city at one time. Perhaps it is the nature of Los Angeles, a place of continuous change. Or perhaps that we seem to face a new normal every time we pause to reflect on what we encounter as landscape architects so inextricably linked to natural systems, climate and culture. In my time in Los Angeles, I have experienced severe drought, El Niño, La Niña, earthquake, wildfire, flood, the completion of the city’s first truly integrated urban transit system, the improbable resurgence of downtown and the embrace of big data. I luxuriate in the process of exploring new worlds literally in my backyard. To understand and plan for the next century in Los Angeles, one must be part archeologist, part anthropologist and part futurist. Working and teaching in Los Angeles is an iterative cycle continually nourished by research and attempts to explain how this place has become what it is and will be.” – Esther Margulies
Repost from first-year B.Arch student @dqvofficial: Here’s an interior shot along with elevations of my final project for project 1 of my second semester of first year architecture. Our focus this semester so far has been analysis and design, beginning from a study of caves, to a study of huts, and finally a study of tents. Within my final design, I continued a story involving the collaboration of different structures, shapes, and claddings that don’t necessarily function off each other, but inhabit the same space. Everything within my design centers around the concept of folding, be it with the foldings of cubes, the folding of waves, or the folding of crease patterns on a folded pyramid. I loved this project as I had to learn to push myself out of my comfort to form abstract designs and concepts. The graphic seen on the interior shot and elevations is a crease pattern for an origami angel I designed a while back, something I found added to the overall expression of my design.
It’s spring break so we’re checking in with our students studying abroad in Italy. The program recently visited Vicenza with Federica Marchetti. Highlights included Andrea Palladio's suburban villas, including Villa Rotunda and Villa Maser; the Brion Family Tomb, designed by Carlo Scarpa, which reflects his appreciation for Japanese architecture; and the Praglia Abbey, where students received a historical tour from one of the abbey monks. The Praglia Abbey library, pictured in this post, is decorated with a Renaissance-style ceiling and currently has 100,000 texts in 15 different languages.
@USCARCHITECTURE
←
→
With final reviews starting next week, today is a perfect day for a #tbt #repost from alumnus @brian_rohrlick (B.Arch ‘18).
...and there goes my last final review (10 out of 10) of my 5-year undergraduate architectural program. I can’t believe it’s all over now 😥 I was just starting to have some fun...
We’re thrilled to celebrate some of the recently published books from our incredible faculty! These publications offer a glimpse into the breadth and depth of research and creative work coming out of our School right now.
Rob Berry
LA Forum Reader: From the Archives of the Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design
Vinayak Bharne
Affordable Housing: Inclusive Cities
Ginger Nolan
The Neocolonialism of the Global Village
Victor Regnier
Housing Design for an Increasingly Older Population: Redefining Assisted Living for the Mentally and Physically Frail
Alex Robinson
The Spoils of Dust: Reinventing the Lake that Made Los Angeles
Jose Sanchez
The Blindspot Initiative
Trudi Sandmeier & Vinayak Bharne
Routledge Companion to Global Heritage Conservation
Larry Scarpa
Ordinary and Extraordinary
Karen Kensek's ARCH 507: Theories of Computer Technology notes "the grand challenges to three-dimensional graphics are to make simple modeling easy and make complex modeling accessible to far more people." In homework #7, students explore how to use the conceptual modeler in Revit to create more complex shapes and curtain wall systems.
For his project, M.Arch student Mel Lewis designed a trellis to work in conjunction with the Kavo Gkreo Visitor Centre of Cape Greco, Cyprus to adapt to sun position as well as be altered according to particular material and size demands per the request of a client.
Our final faculty/student exhibition of the spring semester is on view now through April 27 in Watt Hall.
For the past four years, Geoffrey von Oeyen has been studying village development in rural China, has led architectural design research on the relationships between urban, rural, and industrial development through the USC American Academy in China (AAC), and has presented that work in symposia and exhibitions in Xi’an and Shenzhen. In 2017, he led a team of graduate students from both USC and the Xi’an University of Architecture and Technology to work in collaboration with local builders and laborers in Lantian, Shaanxi, to realize in less than two weeks the construction of his design for a permanent public pavilion on county land in the agricultural landscape, sponsored by the regional government and a local winery. This exhibition at the USC School of Architecture invites visitors to consider the design and construction of the Napavilion, and to frame themselves within its view. 📷: @gvodesign
@duttonarchitects uses VR technology to review a student’s project for ARCH 605b. The graduate comprehensive studio is working on Leimert Park housing proposals that emphasize co-living configurations and flexible floor plans.
M.Arch students @marissa__sketches and @Kevincohendesign share conceptual perspectives for their co-housing for Leimert Park, Los Angeles project for ARCH 605B.
It’s #NationalLibraryWeek, so here’s a brief history on our Helen Topping Architecture & Fine Arts Library.
A specialized library to benefit students in art and architecture was established at USC in 1925 and relocated into the lower level of Watt Hall in 1974. In 1986, ground was broken to expand the library to nearly 13,000 square feet, and the Helen Topping Architecture & Fine Arts Library was inaugurated in 1990. The library features the Alson Clark Reading Room, the Harry and Della MacDonald Periodicals Library, the John Stauffer Atrium (housing the reference collection) and the Torrey H. Webb Rare Books Reading Room.
CAVES! HUTS! TENTS!
This semester, ARCH 102b is exploring different processes for making three-dimensional form and space. In the first project, the archetypes of the cave, the hut, and the tent are used as starting points for the design of a series of architectural objects. Students develop exploratory drawings and models to represent both their forms and the ideas behind them. A selection of these drawings and models are on display in Watt Hall this weekend. Check out our Story for more shots!
Now on view in Verle Annis Gallery, “Salty Urbanism: Brooks + Scarpa” is an exhibition of research by faculty member Larry Scarpa’s firm @brooks_scarpa that examines the wicked problem of sea level rise and flooding in coastal cities. This is a critical concern as nearly half the U.S. population lives within 50 miles of the coast and much of the economic activity of the nation is tied to coastal communities.
Utilizing the North Beach Village neighborhood in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and Venice Beach, California as case studies, “Salty Urbanism” establishes an interdisciplinary team to develop a coupled research methodology and pedagogical approach that envisions and quantifies the experiential and ecological outcomes of alternative ways forward for the neighborhood in response to climate instability, disruption and rising sea levels.
This exhibition is free and open to the public from 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM daily.
Now on view in Watt Hall: Our new faculty/student exhibition explores the connection between cinematic representation and urban experience – an ongoing theme in faculty member Amy Murphy’s work. The faculty portion of the show features images from Haunted Screens: German Cinema in the 1920s, an exhibit design Murphy co-produced for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2014. The student portion of the show displays work from Murphy’s graduate seminar, ARCH 586: City Cine - Visuality, Media and Urban Experience. Each student interpreted a film that was set in Los Angeles in order to reveal how a particular scene within that film registers an important condition existing within the larger metropolis.
Photo credit: Iwan Baan
To continue the International Women’s Day celebration, we hosted a four-hour Wiki-thon last week to build and extend profiles of well-known women practitioners and thinkers in architecture, landscape architecture, heritage conservation and building science. Thanks to our guest speakers, Azatuhi Babayan and Jorge Leal, for sharing your insight!
Rosalind Krauss’ 1979 essay “Sculpture in the Expanded Field” represented an expansion of traditionally binary fields into a matrix. As usual, it took architecture a number of years to catch on and catch up - codified as canon at last by Stan Allen’s writings on field conditions in 1996. Drawing from these two influences, Joanna Grant’s fourth-year topic studio re-examines the role of components and processes by studying the history of Minimalism and Post Minimalism of the 1960s and 1970s.
In this studio, students are investigating the possibilities of translations of found objects with regard to their materiality, physics, and relationships with other materials. Drawing from a history of minimalist and post-minimalist processes, the studio is collecting and categorizing objects, materials and components as an architectural vocabulary. Utilizing this catalog, the studio experiments with physics simulators to examine the implications of geometry and gravity. From studies of gravity with the physics simulators, students deploy an assembly strategy to be translated into a 1:1 scale mockup. Using the mockups as the spatial organization system, the models will be adjusted accordingly to a new scale as a building, with postulations about program and occupancy. - @ioanagrant
Repost from faculty member @gvodesign • As citizen architects, the students of the USC School of Architecture are working in multidisciplinary ways to provide leadership toward solutions to the housing crisis in Los Angeles. My 2018-19 undergraduate and graduate studios concern design research in the development of housing architecture in Los Angeles using Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) composites.
Current housing in Los Angeles, both in its materials and its configurations, will not be able to satisfy the demand for the millions of additional units that have been estimated as required to stabilize housing prices. The students are therefore studying new designs, materials, and methods for multiunit housing at all scales in an effort to pursue community resilience through diversity, equity, and inclusion, new models for public and private collaborations, new models for economic viability, and environmental resilience. They are learning to create value in their housing proposals by impacting communities in Los Angeles, celebrating pluralism by exploring new ways to design for diverse residential communities and neighborhoods, and by developing critical, multidisciplinary thinking.
Similar to how Le Corbusier envisioned a new architectural system for housing that would respond to aesthetic, technical, and cultural forces, my design research proposes in the 21st century with FRP composites what the Dom-Ino was to reinforced concrete in the 20th. FRP, including fiberglass and carbon fiber, has been in wide use in other disciplines throughout the 20th century, such as naval architecture and aerospace engineering, and is only now making its way into more widespread architectural use.
@keko.alramah.arch @t__abbott @khalilgobir @uscarchitecture @usc_architecture_ug #gvodesign
Our annual Career Week Firm Fair brought together 60+ firms and hundreds of students today! Thanks to all our participating firms for sharing your time with us and to the USC Architectural Guild for their Career Week support. ✌🏻
B.Arch student @cstratton.arch shares a project from ARCH202b // Materiality Transformation Project 2 // Drawing // 30’x30’ corner of a bow truss warehouse transformed through rotation that changes perception and usability of a space grounded in changing surface materiality.
During spring break last week, a handful of undergraduate and graduate students participated in our inaugural externship program. Local companies hosted our students and provided a week of real-world experience and job shadowing. Read the full story on our website (link in bio)! 📷Photo 1: Leo Chen, James An (Student), Raffi Agaian, and Everardo Garcia at LCRA. Both Raffi and Leo are USC graduates from the School of Architecture and Everardo is one of the managers of the company. Photo 2: Jose Zagal at his externship with Sandhill Management Inc.
Our latest faculty/student exhibition in the Watt Hall 2nd Floor Gallery is from MLA+U interim program director Esther Margulies. She shares more about “Learning Los Angeles,” which is on view now through March 30: “After almost 30 years of practice and teaching here, I have learned that there is no way to know the entire city at one time. Perhaps it is the nature of Los Angeles, a place of continuous change. Or perhaps that we seem to face a new normal every time we pause to reflect on what we encounter as landscape architects so inextricably linked to natural systems, climate and culture. In my time in Los Angeles, I have experienced severe drought, El Niño, La Niña, earthquake, wildfire, flood, the completion of the city’s first truly integrated urban transit system, the improbable resurgence of downtown and the embrace of big data. I luxuriate in the process of exploring new worlds literally in my backyard. To understand and plan for the next century in Los Angeles, one must be part archeologist, part anthropologist and part futurist. Working and teaching in Los Angeles is an iterative cycle continually nourished by research and attempts to explain how this place has become what it is and will be.” – Esther Margulies
Repost from first-year B.Arch student @dqvofficial: Here’s an interior shot along with elevations of my final project for project 1 of my second semester of first year architecture. Our focus this semester so far has been analysis and design, beginning from a study of caves, to a study of huts, and finally a study of tents. Within my final design, I continued a story involving the collaboration of different structures, shapes, and claddings that don’t necessarily function off each other, but inhabit the same space. Everything within my design centers around the concept of folding, be it with the foldings of cubes, the folding of waves, or the folding of crease patterns on a folded pyramid. I loved this project as I had to learn to push myself out of my comfort to form abstract designs and concepts. The graphic seen on the interior shot and elevations is a crease pattern for an origami angel I designed a while back, something I found added to the overall expression of my design.
It’s spring break so we’re checking in with our students studying abroad in Italy. The program recently visited Vicenza with Federica Marchetti. Highlights included Andrea Palladio's suburban villas, including Villa Rotunda and Villa Maser; the Brion Family Tomb, designed by Carlo Scarpa, which reflects his appreciation for Japanese architecture; and the Praglia Abbey, where students received a historical tour from one of the abbey monks. The Praglia Abbey library, pictured in this post, is decorated with a Renaissance-style ceiling and currently has 100,000 texts in 15 different languages.