Dezeen School Shows: a project exploring the effects of building sports architecture in the USA is among the thesis projects from the University of Southern California.

Also featured is an investigation into how trends affect "architectural gaze" and another exploring adaptive reuse in Los Angeles, USA.

University of Southern California

Institution: University of Southern California
School: School of Architecture
Course: Directed Design Research
Tutors: Ryan Tyler Martinez, Wes Jones, Gillian Shaffer Lutsko, Lisa Little, Sascha Delz and Andy Ku

School statement:

"The 2025 Directed Design Research (ARCH 793a/b) sequence – the capstone to the Master of Architecture (M.Arch) and Master of Advanced Architectural Research Studies (M.AARS) programmes – invited students to explore the term "model" as a conceptual, material and methodological framework for architectural inquiry. Coordinated by Ryan Tyler Martinez, the year-long thesis studio challenged each student to define their own position, polemic and project, beginning from faculty-led research prompts and evolving into independently developed investigations.

"Across six sections, faculty provided distinct departure points that collectively reframed what it means to model – as noun, verb, and adjective. As a noun, the model functioned as a representation, a prototype or a system of reference. As a verb, it became an act of transformation – testing, simulating or crafting ideas through process. And as an adjective, it described qualities of precision, aspiration and disciplinary intent."

Resilient Tides: Spatial Frameworks for Political Autonomy and Climate Adaptation by Nayla Alejandre

"Recipient of Excellence in Directed Design Research Award (best overall).

"Set in Puerto Rico, Resilient Tides reimagines architecture as a collective resilience system rooted in cultural continuity and environmental adaptation.

"It proposes a modular, self-built framework that supports incremental housing, ecological restoration and participatory construction in flood-prone coastal communities like La Perla.

"Drawing from vernacular traditions and informal practices, the project rejects top-down recovery models in favour of local agency and shared authorship.

"By embedding material improvisation, community labour and spatial rituals into its design, Resilient Tides envisions adaptable neighbourhoods as living infrastructures of autonomy and climate response – preserving heritage while empowering transformation."

Student: Nayla Alejandre
Course: Directed Design Research: Translations
Tutor: Gillian Shaffer Lutsko

Embedded Ontology: Object Ontologies through Higher-Dimensional Word Embeddings in AI Architecture by Gabriel Harmon

"Winner of Innovation in Directed Design Research Award (best technology).

"Embedded Ontology explores how relationships between objects in AI embedding spaces can inform new architectural languages.

"By analysing vector-based connections across text, image and 3D data systems, the research reveals how latent hierarchies – rooted in datasets like WordNet and ImageNet – generate architectural forms through non-human logics of association.

"The project reframes the architect as a curator of inter-object relationships, orchestrating forms derived from the hidden geometries of AI cognition.

"In doing so, it challenges anthropocentric authorship and proposes an expanded design methodology where machine perception, ontology and architecture converge to produce new spatial and epistemological possibilities."

Student: Gabriel Harmon
Course: Directed Design Research: Hallucinations and the Fabrication Gap
Tutor: Lisa Little

Old Habits. New Ideas by Janette De Los Santos

"Winner of Disciplinary Advancement in Directed Design Research Award (best disciplinary relevance).

"Old Habits. New Ideas. investigates how trends shape the architectural gaze and how familiar visual languages can be reinterpreted to forecast new disciplinary directions.

"Through narrative modelling, the project reimagines architecture as both archive and speculation – bridging eras, media and cultural habits to reveal how aesthetic conventions evolve over time.

"By using material, text and illustration as instruments of temporal dialogue, the work explores how architecture can anticipate rather than imitate, positioning design as a living record of continuity and change.

"The thesis invites reflection on how the familiar can become a catalyst for architectural innovation."

Student: Janette De Los Santos
Course: Directed Design Research: A Model for Later
Tutor: Ryan Tyler Martinez

Metastasis: Beyond Immobility by Bryan Lee

"Distinction in Directed Design Research (honourable mention).

"Metastasis: Beyond Immobility redefines architectural authorship in the age of artificial intelligence, proposing a model of design that is collective, adaptive and reflective.

"Through Étude-based research methodology and transdisciplinary architectural thinking, the thesis uses iterative studies to explore architecture as a networked field of shared intelligence rather than isolated creativity.

"It challenges the notion of the singular auteur, positioning authorship as an evolving continuum shaped by social, political and technological forces.

"By integrating AI's distributed cognition with human intuition, the work envisions a collaborative architectural future grounded in reflection, exchange and multiplicity."

Student: Bryan Lee
Course: Directed Design Research: AI/n/U
Tutor: Wes Jones

Building with Bricolage: BRICO and the Art of Reassembly by Macintyre Schnell

"Building with Bricolage redefines adaptive reuse as a regenerative act of material and social reassembly.

"The project transforms deconstructed and discarded structures into new architectures that celebrate imperfection, layering and history.

"By treating existing materials as narrative elements rather than waste, it cultivates a poetics of transformation rooted in sustainability and collective authorship.

"Partnering with LA Trade and Technical College, the proposal integrates vocational education, community engagement and low-carbon construction within a cooperative framework.

"Architecture here becomes a participatory process – an evolving story of reuse and resilience that rebuilds not just structures, but the social fabric surrounding them."

Student: Macintyre Schnell
Course: Directed Design Research: Adaptive P/Re-Use
Tutor: Sascha Delz

Edge Ecologies: Architecture and the Everyday Border by Jennifer Dominguez Hernandez

"Social and Environmental Dimensions in Directed Design Research Award (spatial justice).

"Edge Ecologies reinterprets the US-Mexico border as a living ecology shaped by daily movement, performance and resistance.

"Rather than a fixed line of control, the border emerges as a dynamic field of human and environmental interactions.

"Through mapping, modelling and representational translation, the project exposes and intervenes in the infrastructures and routines that constitute this contested terrain.

"Architecture becomes both witness and agent, revealing the border's latent spatial potential as a site of connectivity, exchange and ecological repair.

"The work calls for new forms of design practice grounded in empathy, participation and geopolitical awareness."

Student: Jennifer Dominguez Hernandez
Course: Directed Design Research: Translations
Tutor: Gillian Shaffer Lutsko

New Familiar by Negin Sabouhi

"Distinction in Directed Design Research (honourable mention).

"New Familiar investigates how everyday, off-the-shelf materials can be reimagined to challenge conventions of construction and perception.

"By reorienting common hardware-store components in unconventional ways – juxtaposing textures, altering structural roles and subverting expectations – the project transforms the ordinary into the speculative.

"It asks how familiar materials, when misused or repurposed, can yield new spatial, aesthetic and conceptual outcomes.

"Through this process, the thesis proposes an expanded vocabulary for accessible design, where innovation arises not from novelty or excess, but from the creative reconfiguration of what already exists – inviting a more resourceful, experimental and open-ended architectural practice."

Student: Negin Sabouhi
Course: Directed Design Research: A Model for Later
Tutor: Ryan Tyler Martinez

Rethinking Temporality by Alec Sweeting

"Design Communication in Directed Design Research Award (best presentation).

"Rethinking Temporality challenges architecture's bias toward permanence by proposing a design ethic that values the ephemeral as deeply as the enduring.

"The project repositions temporary structures not as disposable utilities but as opportunities for empathy, adaptability and cultural resonance.

"Through studies of transient spaces – pavilions, installations and relief structures – it explores how temporality can heighten contextual awareness and human connection.

"By designing with care for the fleeting, the thesis redefines temporality as an architectural condition of responsiveness rather than loss, asserting that even the briefest spatial moments can carry lasting meaning and memory."

Student: Alec Sweeting
Course: Directed Design Research: A Model for Later
Tutor: Ryan Tyler Martinez

Anomalous Assemblages: Reconfiguring Memory, Material and Space Beyond the Ground by Etulan A Joseph

"Distinction in Directed Design Research (honourable mention).

"Anomalous Assemblages envisions an architecture liberated from the ground – an elevated, entangled system of fragments reconfigured through computational assemblage.

"The project reimagines adaptive reuse as a generative rather than preservative act, transforming architectural debris into hyper-connected spatial formations that suspend memory and material in new relationships.

"Rejecting permanence and fixity, it explores how digital recombination can produce architectures that are both ephemeral and deeply historical.

"By merging memory, matter and computation, Anomalous Assemblages proposes a radical model of spatial construction – one that redefines architectural authorship, resists extractive logic and repositions reuse as an act of creation rather than repair."

Student: Etulan A Joseph
Course: Directed Design Research: Hallucinations and the Fabrication Gap
Tutor: Lisa Little

Sport and Cultural Densities: Unity in Intruding Formations and Sport by Gregor Vincent Tillman

"Sport and Cultural Densities explores how American sport culture and its architectures reflect and shape collective identity across varying cultural and urban contexts.

"From dense city stadiums to suburban parks and rural fields, the project examines sport as both a formal and informal spatial assembly that unifies communities through shared rituals and values.

"Using strategies of intrusion, overlap and connective layering, the design investigates how sports infrastructure can dissolve spatial and social boundaries.

"By merging cultural study and urban morphology, the thesis proposes architecture as a medium for civic cohesion, national symbolism and everyday cultural engagement."

Student: Gregor Vincent Tillman
Course: Directed Design Research: Cultural Assembly
Tutor: Andy Ku

Partnership content

This school show is a partnership between Dezeen and University of Southern California. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here.

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