Publication

  • SPACE, Vol. 1: Delirium
    Etulan Joseph
    Editor
    University of Southern California, 2023
  • GRANTEE
    University of Southern California-School of Architecture
    GRANT YEAR
    2023

Rory Patterson, “Sculpting Time,” 2021. Digital photograph. Courtesy the artist

Delirium–a disturbed state of mind characterized by restlessness, illusions, and incoherence–has touched nearly every spatial facet of the twenty-first century. Extreme climate disasters, pandemics, population bursts, new technologies, cultural booms, material mutations, and increasing power disparities have all affected architecture. Across these multitude of scales, the fragmented repositioning of our spatial landscape has created new adjacencies, superimpositions, and extremes. This issue aims to capture space—an assemblage of infinite pluralities—through design-valued articulations of varied written, illustrated, modeled, fabricated, and photographed forms. This is a curated collection that works towards representing the complex interconnectedness architecture has with culture, positionality, technology, landscape, and more. With each published submission, the journal further explores the depths in which delirium has informed, disturbed, and continues to manifest our realities.

Jessica Lam (cofounder) is a second-generation Vietnamese Chinese immigrant who grew up in the San Gabriel Valley of Los Angeles County. She is currently an MArch student at University of Southern California’s (USC) School of Architecture. She holds a BA in design and a minor in gender and sexuality studies from the University of California, Davis (UCD). As a cofounder of SPACE and former architectural designer at the UCD Feminist Research Institute. She is interested in using interdisciplinary spatial mediums to further discourse between architecture and critical cultural studies.

Born in Guyana to Nigerian and Grenadian parents, Etulan A. Joseph was raised in Grenada before moving to London as a teenager. Joseph continued his stint across the globe for personal, academic and professional endeavors—living in Ukraine, Turkey, Malaysia, and the United States. Joseph's decade-long global journey has greatly influenced his obsession with culture, curation, positionality, identity, memories, and the act of deconstruction and representation in architecture. This obsession has led him to cofound SPACE, with the agenda of furthering architectural discourse both in academia and the industry. Joseph is the editor-in-chief and cofounder of SPACE. Joseph holds several degrees, one in architectural engineering and the other is a bachelor’s of architecture. He also holds a master’s of arts in architecture with a specialization in history and theory from the University of Westminster and is currently pursuing his second graduate degree as an master’s of architecture student at the University of Southern California where he focuses on computational geometry and architecture.

Grace Poillucci was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and currently serves as SPACE’s managing editor. She holds a bachelor’s in interior architecture from George Washington University and is working towards her master’s degree in architecture. She aims to bring her curiosity to the forefront as a designer, documenter, educator, researcher, and administrator. It is a core tenant of her mission to observe architecture and the built environment through a lens that combines architectural history, heritage conservation, current needs, and emerging technologies.

Katie Phail (marketing editor) was born and raised in Cerritos, California, a small suburb close to Disneyland. She is passionate about general Angeleo culture and served as the director of publicity for her high school’s Chinese culture club. She is currently in her second year of pursuing a bachelor’s of architecture degree at the University of Southern California.

Valeria Alegre (secretary) was born and raised in Corona, California by Mexican and Peruvian immigrant parents. She has been an active member of her community, volunteering, planning, and fundraising through several organizations since she was young. Her interest in architecture first began in middle school and blossomed in high school through their Career and Technical Education program. She is currently studying at the University of Southern California, in her second year of pursuing a bachelor’s of architecture degree. Last summer, she interned at Ruhnau Clarke architects as a designer working on several educational projects. As a part of SPACE, she is interested in investigating architecture narratives and helping share the thoughts and explorations of underrepresented people.

Brandon Smith (content director) is a Filipino American third-generation designer with a family filled with architects, artists, engineers, and contractors from both sides. His upbringing of two cultures, one family, and similar interests allowed him to understand the industry at an interdisciplinary level, which resulted in his passion for collaboration and tectonics not only within architecture but anything design. Smith believes in the optimization that computer coding can bring to the professional workflow, having a keen sense for hands-on fabrication and most importantly, creating stunning graphics for people to remember and believe in projects. He believes graphics are the language of architecture whether it be illustrative, render-based, or photography. All his accomplishments, which include acquiring over two and a half years of experience in the profession and having an exemplary academic stance, precede his architectural mantra.

Brandon Chin currently holds the position of events director for the SPACE publication and role serves to acquire relationships with faculty and student organizations on campus to establish partnerships and curate material across media, digital, and/or research in an event or exhibition setting. He's finishing up the MArch +2 program and prior to graduate school, he focused on corporate strategy, university recruitment, and program management for companies like Microsoft, Facebook, and Waymo - Google's first self-driving car project. His passions intersect design, healthcare, science & technology, along with critical computation.

Win Aung is an MArch student at University of Southern California and MSRE student at Fordham University. The multidisciplinary student has roots in Myanmar, where his family currently resides. From each discipline, Aung is exposed to both the procedures of AEC professionals as well as the perspective of developers and analysts. As an aspiring architect, Aung seeks to become licensed in the near future and one day expand his profession as a real estate developer. Aung currently also serves as the president of the Graduate Architecture Student Association (GASA) at University of Southern California and also as finance director of SPACE, a newly formed student-run publication. In his spare time, Aung likes to sharpen his existing skills and learn new things.

Saloni Pandit is a final year architecture master's student at the University of Southern California (USC) and has a certificate in sustainability. She also holds a merit scholarship at USC. Originally from Goa, India, she completed her undergraduate studies in architecture at Goa University and was awarded the Best Thesis award in 2020. Her design approach is influenced by her cultural traditions and passion for community building, which she brings to her role as graphic director at SPACE. Pandit has won two design charrettes at USC, including the Design through the Justice and Equity Lens award and the Holistic Health and Wellbeing award, both for community development in Los Angeles. Her passion for materials and graphics makes her a very enthusiastic individual in the field of architecture. Additionally, she also is the president of SAWA (Students Association for Women in Architecture) demonstrating her leadership and commitment to advancing women in architecture.

Alex Gauthier (print director) was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois where she grew up immersed in her Korean and French-Canadian heritage. Her diverse perspectives and merge of cultures gave her passion for merging fields as well like STEM and the arts, leading her to pursuing architectural design and how it can help all people regardless of their background. In her pursuit of a bachelors and now masters of architecture, Gauthier has developed a passion for clear graphical representation when it comes to representing the field and believes this is the single most important skill to communicating ideas to a wide variety of people. She has worked before as social media director with organizations to help best represent them digitally and is now excited to work with SPACE to help represent their publication physically and beautifully as well.

Edgar Claure Meruvia was born in La Paz, Bolivia, a sprawling city in the Andes Mountains. There, urban planning inequities in his hometown’s fast-growing metropolis spurred his interest in architecture’s potential for spatial justice. He is currently pursuing an MArch degree at the University of Southern California and holds a BArch from Miami University. He has worked at Jim Clemes Associates, Nelson Worldwide, and Corgan. Interested in different modes of transportation design, Claure Meruvia is especially passionate about architectural design for aviation, rail, and automobile hubs. He is the web director for SPACES.

SPACE is a student-run publication organization founded in September 2022 within the University of Southern California’s School of Architecture. Through print, digital, and event mediums, we showcase student work that expresses space beyond the traditional domains of architecture. Our team hopes to capture space, an assemblage of infinite pluralities, through design-valued articulations of varied written, illustrated, modeled, fabricated, and photographed forms. Our curated collections work towards representing the complex interconnected-ness architecture has with culture, positionality, temporality, technology, landscape, and more.