Waste heat from the data center is captured and redistributed based on temperature: warming greenhouses, spa areas, and domestic water systems before cycling back to the servers, creating a closed-loop thermal ecosystem.
RENEWABLE ENERGY FLOW CROP DISTRIBUTION FLOW
Received the USC Master of Architecture Distinction in Directed Design Research Award
Professor: Gillian Shaffer-Lutsko
USC Spring 2025
As society’s dependence on data intensifies, data centers, often hidden from view, have emerged as critical yet environmentally taxing infrastructures, consuming vast energy, generating carbon emissions, depleting water resources, and contributing to mounting e-waste. Green Bytes reimagines the data center not as an isolated industrial artifact, but as a self-sustaining, site-responsive ecosystem embedded within rural landscapes and aligned with existing agricultural and infrastructural networks. By integrating digital infrastructure with regenerative agriculture, circular material systems, and decentralized energy strategies, the proposal defines a new typology—one where computation and cultivation co-exist within a performative landscape. In doing so, Green Bytes positions data infrastructure as an active agent of ecological repair, blurring the boundaries between technology and terrain, and reframing digital growth as a catalyst for environmental justice, rural resilience, and a radically decarbonized future.
Massing diagrams exploring how the surrounding context and landscape can shape the building, allowing it to camouflage within the site while minimizing disruption to existing infrastructure and development.
Final massing demonstrates how the building emerges from the landscape, using the logic of surrounding landforms and agricultural geometries to generate a continuous, camouflaged roof that houses data, agriculture, and community under one form.
The site is embedded within Nebraska’s crop circle grid, tapping into existing agricultural and infrastructural systems while camouflaging the building within the landscape.
Agrovoltaic fields support food production beneath elevated solar panels, while integrated wind energy and community farming reflect the project’s vision of a productive, renewable landscape.
This section illustrates the integration of data, farming, and community within a single landform, revealing the hidden systems that drive the project’s regenerative and self-sustaining design.
The floor plans reveal how all programs radiate from the central data core, which organizes life, agriculture, and energy systems around it. Abundant roofscapes above offer circulation, farming, and gathering zones, transforming infrastructure into an active public terrain.
The central rotunda serves as a vibrant hub for gathering, surrounded by grocery stores, cafés, and restaurants that feature food grown onsite.
A public research center merges vertical greenhouse-like space, inviting the community within a regenerative environment.
Professor: Selwyn Ting
USC Spring 2024
The View is a 40,000 square foot mixed use art gallery for the Corita Kent Art Foundation. The design of the building was centered around Corita’s values of community, learning, and viewing the world through many perspectives. These values were brought into the design through the central atrium that stretches through the entire building. This allows for users to see through, over, and across the many galleries of the museum. The building is meant to be a gathering space for the community to enjoy Corita’s work while also learning and creating their own art. Aside from the community art spaces there are preservation and research labs with a large archive to bring in works from all over the world.
Interior view design language that stems from the idea of using Corita Kent’s “view-ports” to see new perspectives.
A quarter scale physical section chunk model showing the CLT and glu lam structure and raised floor system. The sixteenth scale structural model has clear floor plates to highlight the column grid, three cores, and girder beam system in place.
Diagram displaying the facade system which is a lightweight metal mesh with an aluminum framing system.
Thirty-second scale foam study models exploring different site conditions and effects and how the building form could respond.
Diagram displaying the radial circulation around the atrium that brings the user to the major “view-ports” of the building.
Section perspective highlighting the gallery spaces that offer “view-port” views across the public atrium.
Professor: Soomeen Hahm
Collaborated with Gregor Tillman
USC Fall 2024
The AeroLoop Terminal is a 250,000 square foot mixed use transportation hub of the future. The building is a vital piece of infrastructure needed to propel the United States into the vehicles of the future. This building located in downtown Los Angeles feature a core of pedestrian circulation tubes that take the user to landing pads for transportation drones and hyperloop platforms with tubes leading to all major cities. The help contribute to the housing crisis in Los Angeles 40 percent of the building is residential while 20 percent is public space and the last 40 percent is the transportation modules. Our building explored how we could accommodate new vehicular infrastructure in major cities.
Street view renders showing how pedestrians would interact with the building at the ground level.
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Preliminary chunk model studies made using a grasshopper script that allowed us to create the forms of our building and focus on connections these spaces made. We used these connections as major shift points in our building.
Professor: Olivier Touraine
Collaborated with Evan Wilson USC Fall 2023
Grow-living housing is a co-living community building that houses 100 people located in downtown Los Angeles. The building replaces four parking lots and takes up an entire city block between South Olive Street and South Hill Street. Our design strategy comes from the comparison of the rigidity of the street and urban environment to the fluidity of nature. This created a rigid street relationship which allowed for easy sidewalk access to stores and a major street presence to not break the flow of downtown. This rigidity slowly shifted to a staggering room layout on the park side which began the forming of a park that could be used as an escape from the fast paced and chaotic city.
Eighth scale physical model perspectives of a residential pod.
Facade System: The top is the street side and the bottom is the park side of the building highlighting the change in facade based on our design language.
Design Language Diagram: Rigidity of the street vs. the fluidity of nature
Sixteenth scale physical model perspectives highlighting the facade and exterior circulation.
A section drawing showing the site elevation changes and the passive air flow of the units.
Bedroom wall system that hides all the bedroom necessities to allow for maximum floor space for the user.
Sixteenth scale physical model highlighting the fluidity of nature found on the site.
Site plan emphasizing the minimal footprint the building in order to allow for the land to be given back to the people of the city.
