@uscarchitecture

Friday vibes: Scale, Occupancy, Movement Work from M.Arch student @motorradley.

Fifth-year B.Arch student Abri Aiken (she/her/hers) is taking over our Instagram Stories today! Follow along and get your questions ready if you’re a prospective student. @abri.aiken / @sawa.usc

Join us today at 12:00 PM PT for a virtual research seminar from Professor Sascha Delz on “Investigating Spatial Formations Beyond Scalar and Disciplinary Boundaries." This event is free and open to the public. Link to join in our bio!⠀ ⠀ Sascha Delz is an architect and researcher working at the intersection of architecture, urban design, and urban studies. He holds a master's degree in architecture and a doctor of science from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich). Engaging with contemporary urbanization processes, his research focuses on how specific political-economic frameworks influence the manifestation of architecture, urban form and living environments. Addressing challenges of uneven development, asymmetric cooperation setups, and exclusive distribution of urban resources, he is particularly interested in advancing knowledge on more equitable and collaborative practices of urban production.

@haynes.arch shares her ARCH 202a midterm project for a new street proposal: “the main (street) attraction” having analyzed the existing street, a new street proposal plays on axial symmetry to gradate from public commercial zones to private residential spaces while improving the relation between vehicular and pedestrian traffic, creating gathering/courtyard spaces, and contending with the extreme heat and flash flooding that is characteristic of the local climate. 1. new street axonometric: shade, ground conditions, vehicular traffic 2. analysis axonometric: pedestrian occupancy and circulation, building use 3. problem diagram: grid of vehicular traffic, building orientation, green space

Join us tonight at 6:00 PM PT for a lecture with Michael Maltzan. This virtual event is free and open to the public but registration via the link in our bio is required. ⠀ ⠀ Michael Maltzan founded Michael Maltzan Architecture, Inc. in 1995. His projects cross a wide range of typologies, from cultural institutions to city infrastructure. Michael’s notable projects include the Moody Center for the Arts at Rice University, MoMA QNS, Star Apartments, the Pittman Dowell Residence, the new Sixth Street Viaduct, MIT Vassar Street Residential Hall, and the Winnipeg Art Gallery Inuit Art Centre. His work has gained international acclaim for innovation in both design and construction and has been widely featured in publications and exhibitions worldwide. Michael received an M.Arch from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and BFA and B.Arch degrees from the Rhode Island School of Design. Michael is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, a recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Architecture Award, and the 2016 AIA Los Angeles Gold Medal Honoree.⠀ ⠀ Photo by Iwan Baan

Thinking of applying to our Bachelor of Architecture program? Check out this video + the link in our bio for tips from our admissions team on how to create a strong portfolio as a freshman applicant! ⠀ ⠀ Portfolio submissions must be uploaded by December 1, 2020 if applying for first-year merit scholarship consideration or January 15, 2021 for regular first-year consideration.

Our latest virtual faculty exhibition is now on view! Associate professor of practice Olivier Touraine's gallery walks viewers through a project that involved rethinking “manufactured homes" for a large company looking to improve design and energy autonomy for its line of products in three U.S. assembly factories. The purpose was to target a new market of co-shared weekend or vacation homes for an urbanite population, possibly located in very diverse landscapes.⠀ ⠀ To read more about the project and view the gallery, visit the link in our bio!

ARCH 102aL: first-year studio midterms ✔️ 📷: @yolanthemost

to this spring 2020 ARCH 302b project from @ralex.studio for a Leimert Park Community Center: This video, using the Twinmotion software, was the replacement/solution for sharing a 3D model as classes moved online in the spring. Rachel notes that “something cool about making this video (instead of a model) is that it made it easier for me to express my ideas to my non-architecture friends and family, which was really fun during quarantine :).” The project employs a long-span system based on creating a three-dimensional vector truss system that works both vertically and laterally. The structure works by offsetting the lower chords of each truss by five feet laterally. The shapes of the upper and lower chords are derived from conglomerations of hexagons in section, yielding a condition where wall becomes ceiling becomes floor. The site is manipulated to direct light into the semi-underground basketball courts and offer views for the public to watch the games. Two more courts are raised to the second level so they can be viewed more publicly, encouraging the neighborhood to engage with the site. For more on this project and to view the full video, visit @ralex.studio’s page.

Join us tonight at 6:00 PM PT for a lecture from Dolores Hayden on memory and preservation. This virtual event is free and open to the public but registration via the link in our bio is required. ⠀ ⠀ Dolores Hayden, professor emerita at Yale University, writes about built environments and the politics of place. Her work has spanned architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, and American cultural history as she has pioneered the analysis of vernacular buildings and landscapes to explore larger political questions about gender, class, and race. She’s a former president of the Urban History Association and a Fellow of the Society of Architectural Historians.⠀ ⠀ Photo courtesy of Dolores Hayden

A parametric exercise - 1D-2D-3D - in an M.Arch first-year studio with instructor Eric Haas.    📷: @bohan_lang_design

to this mesmerizing student work from @bs_projcts 410 COMPUTER TRANSFORMATIONS: INTRODUCTION TO VARIABLE MODELING. Summer Toolkit @uscarchitecture . Work by students interrogating outputs in virtual design space and inputs from physical hand gestures. Each triptych contains screen-captures illustrating a continuous feedback between variables; an algorithmically-generated model and a script parsing brightness values from a webcam. Students: Hernandez / Salas