Project shown: ‘Recycle, Food, Learn, Play’ by Honghu Chen, Riffath Sultana Hidayathullah, Samuel Tung, Sarina Vega, Jiaqi Zhang, Boyuan Wu [2024].

Our latest Archinect Studio Pin-Ups takes a look at three studios at Archinect Partner School USC School of Architecture, offered as part of their one-year Master of Advanced Architectural Research Studies (M.AARS) postgraduate program.

Led by instructors Julia Sulzer and Sascha Delz, the Adaptive P/Re-use studios explored new possibilities for adaptive reuse schemes and non-speculative housing models as weapons to combat the crises of affordable housing and accessible urban services in Los Angeles.

The results showcase the greater need for deep sustainability, resilient design, zoning reforms, and more inclusive and democratic economic systems. A report was produced as part of one studio, and students learning under Sulzer's Spring 2024 offering collectively designed a 1-1 intervention using the adaptive p/re-use design ideas they produced in the previous term.

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Program Summary: "This pin-up depicts results from the studios ARCH-705, ARCH-793a/b, and ARCH-705L that are part of the one-year postgraduate program ‘Master of Advanced Architectural Research Studies‘ [M.AARS] at the USC School of Architecture, which offers two concentrations named City Design + Housing [M.AARS CD+H], and Performative Design + Technology [M.AARS PD+T]. The M.AARS program aspires to address pressing social and environmental challenges by critically re-thinking how we engage, conceptualize, design, inhabit, transform, and construct our built environments."

Under the overall banner of adaptive p/re-use, the program considers environmental and social sustainability as two sides of the same coin.

"Within the framework of ‘Adaptive P/Re-use,’ the City Design + Housing concentration has set up research and design activities by an obvious yet (still) radical challenge: How can we design and build cities based on the idea of re-use, where recirculation and repurposing of materials, existing buildings, social structures, and environmental settings are a given necessity? And how, at the same time, can we design and build cities based on the premise of pre-use, where future adaptation, transformation, reassembly, disassembly, as well as social and environmental change are an integral part of design considerations? Furthermore, exploring non-speculative economic models such as Limited Equity (Housing) Cooperatives [LEHCs] and Community Land Trusts [CLTs], the program aspires to incorporate inclusive economic principles into design considerations as well. By design, these economic setups empower their members and participants from the bottom up and enable us to speculate about alternative ways of how urban housing, infrastructure, and services can be organized, produced, owned, managed, and designed more collectively and equitably. So, under the overall banner of adaptive p/re-use, the program considers environmental and social sustainability as two sides of the same coin."

"Both frameworks — Adaptive P/Re-use and non-speculative economic models — essentially ask students to start from a different vantage point by reversing some crucial aspects of traditional design briefs and design processes. Rather than envisioning something new by default and then looking for respective materials, technologies, and sites that would be able to accommodate the respective idea, adaptive p/re-use requests to investigate and design based on a given (and future) inventory of materials, resources, urban settings, economic environments, and social institutions. Similarly, non-speculative models reverse the designers’ position — which is often defined by top-down structures — into pro-active agents who can become supporters from a bottom-up perspective by using their creative skills to design both inclusive, sustainable spaces, as well as prototypes, models, and systems."

The program’s core represents a series of specifically tailored research seminars and three design studios.

"The M.AARS CD+H program is based on a variety of mandatory and elective courses offered within the school’s M.Arch program, addressing topics of technology, urbanism, housing, history, and theory. Building on this, the program’s core represents a series of specifically tailored research seminars and three design studios following the main components of the program: a ‘city design’ studio in the fall focusing on fieldwork, mapping, open and public spaces, infrastructure, urban services, etc. (ARCH-705); a ‘housing design’ studio in the spring addressing affordable housing models and innovative housing designs, etc. (ARCH-793a/b); and a ‘synthesis design’ studio in the summer compiling conducted research and design activities into a report, as well as collectively building a 1-1 intervention using the developed adaptive p/re-use design ideas (ARCH-705L)."

ARCH-705 [2023] / Instructor: Julia Sulzer, Adaptive P/Re-use – Collective Spaces for Equitable Densities

Project One: 'Alleys for All' by Hunter Barnett

Description: "As one of the city’s — and nation’s — densest occupied neighborhoods, Koreatown lacks amenities and usable public spaces to adequately accommodate its population. At the same time, Koreatown features an abundance of underutilized, often dilapidated back alleys. ‘Alleys for All’ attempts to create a framework that enables both the city and the adjacent property owners to transform these alleys into accessible, high-quality, multi-functional public and community spaces. Bolstering both private and public interests, the project envisions designing open structures as public infrastructure (and public investments), which, in turn, allow the community to use the alleys as shaded public space or gardens, and the property owners to attach commercial spaces, or accessory dwelling units (ADUs), onto the structure. The structures’ modular and open design is further geared towards collecting water and accommodating energy infrastructure such as solar panels that could serve the whole residential block."

Project Two: 'Revitalizing Wilshire' by Tristan Lindner

Description: "'Revitalizing Wilshire' addresses the lack of activity along Koreatown’s once lustrous Wilshire corridor. Although many unoccupied or underutilized spaces hide in plain sight K-Town’s Wilshire Boulevard has a rather high rate of vacancy. At the same time, dozens of unoccupied buildings on and around Wilshire are either slated to be demolished, or likely to be demolished. Given that many of these soon-to-be-demolished buildings possess diverse materiality and other intriguing bits of character, 'Revitalizing Wilshire' looks to reusing and recontextualize these ‘demolition’ elements on selected buildings and junctions along the boulevard, creating a series of architectural palimpsests that exalt the rich character of K-Town’s built environment. At the same time, the junctions and buildings will be transformed and adapted to provide the community with four distinct yet equally crucial programs. Managed and operated by a '4-in-1 Non-Profit' structure owned by community members, the reactivated and revitalized structures will accordingly offer affordable retail space, accessible transit space, public green space, and various forms of affordable housing."

ARCH-793a/b [2023] / Instructor: Sascha Delz, Adaptive P/Re-use – Co-operative Models for City Housing

Project One: 'Zoup(ing) LA' by Joshua Ryan

Description: "Addressing the affordable housing and commercial real estate crisis, 'Zoup(ing) LA' proposes a change in state and local zoning laws that would allow more flexible and comprehensive ways to make use of gaps, underutilized, or left over spaces within the urban fabric. Combining the words Zone (specific purpose) and Soup (blend), the term ‘Zoup’ is defined as the opposite of a zone; the act or process of blending urban infill, housing, and live/work opportunities into a comprehensive urban fabric. A set of new Zoup policies envision a different take on how to produce housing and the urban fabric: unlocking underutilized land, tax incentives for non-speculative co-operative housing, flexibility for previously separated uses to enable a blend of live/work/production/commercial setups, allowing for incremental construction and planning, and implementing incentives for using repurposed and recycled materials. Applying these policies in the neighborhood of Venice, the Zoup(ing) LA proposes a construction co-operative which produces an architectural kit of parts that can flexibly and adaptively fill in existing, underutilized parcels with affordable housing, live/work setups and commercial spaces."

Project Two: 'From Forest to Framework' by Ellie Selzer

Description: "'Forest to Framework' seeks to re-frame the framework of sustainably harvested mass timber products and show how they can be utilized in design practices to maximize flexibility, incremental growth, re-use and adaptability. It is vital that timber products used in the construction industry are sourced from sustainable certified forest lands to ensure that deforestation of green reserves is mitigated. The existing supply chain is not vertically integrated, and it follows the cradle-to-grave pipeline, where building materials most likely end up in landfills following demolition. The industry should therefore introduce a closed-loop product life cycle system using the cradle-to-cradle concepts introduced by architect William McDonough. The main priorities within this system are to ensure the increase in sustainable land management practices, to grow the demand for sustainably harvested and produced mass timber products, to update building codes, and to create deconstruction and reuse toolkits that can be adopted into standard design and construction practices. Applying this framework to an affordable housing cooperative located in Venice Beach, Los Angeles, this system of flexible and deconstructable mass timber members creates a community of spaces for users to grow their own nutrients, as well as their own houses within a diverse community."

ARCH-793a/b [2024] / Instructor: Sascha Delz, Adaptive P/Re-use – City Housing Beyond Property

Project One: 'Open Source Housing' by Boyuan Wu

Description: "'Open Source Housing' proposes a transformative model for affordable and sustainable housing delivery. Inspired by existing models of open-source design and production — such as WikiHouse — Open-Source Housing goes beyond offering an open, decentralized process: it aims at integrating its open-source production tool kit into an incremental, decommodified, and radically circular housing delivery scheme. Using the Community Land Trust (CLT) and Limited Equity Co-operative (LEC) models, Open Source Housing not only establishes a CLT to extract land from speculation and lease it back to its trust members at an affordable price. It also establishes a LEC that integrates all produced and used materials into a leasing system, where the building materials are considered part of a revolving pool of resources that will return to the LEC after disassembly to be reused or recycled. With this approach, Open Source Housing will open up possibilities for a diversity of owners, dwellers, and inhabitants to participate in the production of a multitude of ecological and affordable housing solutions applied at different scales and adapted to various contexts."

Project Two: 'Practopia' by Amir Bolourchi

Description: "'Practopia' proposes a concept of urban transformation that is both pragmatic and reminiscent of utopian ideas of collective living. Located in Los Angeles’ Koreatown, Practopia seeks to introduce new affordable multifamily housing, new community and public spaces, as well as micro-commercial programs to foster a more resilient, self-sustaining, and inclusive neighborhood. Building on the hybrid ownership structure of the Community Land Trust (CLT) model, Practopia envisions a framework for participation, incremental change, adequate densification and preservation, as well as non-speculative housing options. As the CLT model, Practopia itself is a hybrid: creating pragmatic improvements for inhabitants and owners who join the CLT and advocating for utopian ideas for collective living at the same time, it ultimately serves as a practical, realistic catalyst for a more sustainable, equitable, and community-centric future of a Koreatown block, the whole neighborhood, the city, and beyond."

ARCH-705L / Instructor: Julia Sulzer , Adaptive P/Re-use – Find it, Build it, Test it

Project: ‘Recycle, Food, Learn, Play’ by Honghu Chen, Riffath Sultana Hidayathullah, Samuel Tung, Sarina Vega, Jiaqi Zhang, Boyuan Wu [2024]

Description: "'Food-Play-Learn-Recycle' is the result of applying the notion of Adaptive R/Re-use into action through a 1-1 scale design-build project within the neighborhood of Koreatown, Los Angeles. Students were tasked to design a project built with reused materials and able to be disassembled, as well as be adapted for other potential uses. No new building materials were purchased: they were scavenged on campus, reclaimed from demolished set designs, and collected within the neighborhood of Koreatown. Based on the resulting inventory and developed digital library of reclaimed materials, students engaged in a collective design process to develop a 1-1 intervention. The resulting ‘Food-Play-Learn-Recycle’ pavilion addressed three major neighborhood challenges: a lack of affordable and healthy food, a lack of a fine-tuned recycling system, and a lack of spaces for leisure. The pavilion was installed in front of — and in collaboration with — KYCC, a local youth and community center. The students developed a ‘waste for food’ concept where local youth was encouraged to deposit recyclable materials, receive fresh, home-made snacks in return, while using the possibilities to play chess, table tennis and other games. The pavilion was then disassembled, stored, and is now waiting for a future use and application yet to be determined."

Featured Students: Hunter Barnett, Tristan Lindner, Joshua Ryan, Ellie Selzer, Boyuan Wu, Amir Bolourchi, Honghu Chen, Riffath Sultana Hidayathullah, Samuel Tung, Sarina Vega, and Jiaqi Zhang.

Studio Instructors: Sascha Delz and Julia Sulzer

Coordinator M.AARS City Design + Housing: Sascha Delz

Director of Graduate Studies: Alvin Huang

Learn more about USC School of Architecture and past editorial coverage by exploring their Archinect School Profile.