UC Berkeley Architecture

Design Excellence Award: Swen Yuan Studio: ARCH 201 Instructor: Rene Davids “The project rethinks three existing buildings along University Avenue by introducing an elevated residential complex that spans above them. The proposal is structured around a multiple-layer landscape façade, developed through an encompassing scaffolding framework that transforms the building envelope into a spatial system of circulation, vegetation, and social interaction. Within this framework, a sequence of red staircases forms the central layer, operating both as secondary egress and as a continuous circulation loop linking floors, rooftop gardens, and shared indoor–outdoor spaces. Between circulation and residential units, layers of planter boxes establish a planted buffer that negotiates the boundary between public movement and private living. Beyond the stair layer, climbing vegetation supported by the scaffolding creates a green surface facing the street, turning the façade into an inhabitable landscape. Two east–west rooftop gardens connect the buildings and provide collective outdoor spaces for residents. Together with the vertical landscape façade, the project constructs an interconnected system of vertical and horizontal landscapes, where circulation, housing, and planting merge into a continuous spatial environment.” #architecture #studio #wurster #UcBerkeley #design

ARCH 205B: Studio One "This graduate research studio focused on the potential of plywood and veneer-based approaches to mass timber building. Departing from LeCorbusier’s 1914 proposition for the Maison Dom-ino, students reimagined the concrete frame of point supported slabs in light of emerging technologies in wood. To test their ideas, four teams developed detailed proposals for a new building type that speculates on the future of wood building in California." Students: Project 1: Public Canopy Tianwu Zheng Yueqian (Bella) Sun Zheng (David) Zhou Project 2: Transitional Kindergarten Zuohao Qiu Zhixuan Zhou Joseph Pai Project 3: Live / Work Lofts Jiming Xu Yushi Gan Hongjie (Jackie) Kuang Project 4: Student Dormitory Wentao (Steven) Lyu Xinyi Gu Zixiang (Zack) Zhai Instructor: Philip Tidwell Reviewers: Dylan Wood (University of Oregon) Paul Woolford (HOK Architects) Claire Moore (HOK Architects) Marisha Farnsworth (O2 Artisans Aggregate) Simon Schleicher (UC Berkeley) Paul Mayencourt (UC Berkeley) Ramon Weber (UC Berkeley)

Design Excellence Award: Jinglin Xue Studio: ARCH 201 Instructor: Rudabeh Pakravan Introverted Zigzag "Located at a busy intersection in South Berkeley, this project responds to its active urban context with a calm, ordered exterior and an animated interior courtyard. Eighty residential units are organized around a zigzag courtyard generated by the interlocking repetition of two unit types. To encourage interaction, every two units share an inward-facing balcony. The courtyard is divided into three segments by two transparent bridges that serve as shared co-working spaces. Small, regular exterior openings maintain privacy, while larger courtyard-facing openings bring in light and connect the neighbors, forming a quiet outward presence and a vibrant inward community." @jinglin_xue0819 #architecture #studio #wurster #UcBerkeley #design

Design Excellence Award: Jacob Reeves Studio: ARCH 100C Instructor: Juana Canet and Ginés Garrido “Frame Ecology is an infrastructure study concerned with nature and impermanence. Through a catalog proposal of 7 site specific lightwood framing + fabric tensile interventions, the goal is to form a matrix of student sporting and civic spaces while also assuming the role of a singular connected ecological armature* atop a service road in strawberry canyon. The site is currently used for Berkeley Landscape Facilities Storage. The project addresses stormwater routing, native plant growth, daylight shading, and material decomposition in addition to the studio’s core programmatic requirements of basketball court and community space. In line with Italo Calvino’s notion of lightness, the proposals are highly related to the slope and the curvature of the path, both of which are to remain, as-is. How might civic spaces and landscapes adapt, accumulate meaning, and fluctuate in relevance across time.. 1, 10, 50, and even 100 years into the future? In this instance, architecture is treated as an uncertain framework, a series of proposals that can be embraced or rejected. They are easy to construct and destroy, and capable of bringing value to an overlooked and unconventional site within UC Berkeley’s beautiful and expansive campus.” *structural framework of green infrastructure; connects natural ecosystems to built environments to improve ecological resilience/enhance biodiversity/manage environmental resources. @jacobrev #architecture #studio #wurster #UcBerkeley #design

The Department of Architecture welcomed L.A.–based designer and educator Julie Riley as the inaugural Creedon Fellow this year. Riley’s work examines materials and tools of production by revisiting historical narratives and techniques. This semester, Riley’s 100D studio unfolds as both question and method—mining the plinth as site, surface, and instrument. Beginning at the base, students analyzed buildings through their interfaces below grade and entangled systems of labor. Students' work between archival images, construction sections, and anecdotal histories to provide accounts of the making, maintenance, and management of the plinth’s surface. Studio exercises span between the scale of the detail and the city block, from urban fields of movement to the intimate detail of drainage, waterproofing, and formwork. By examining the materials and tools of production, specifically the surface logic of the model and CNC mill, familiar building components and surfaces are broken down and reassembled into novel arrangements in an ongoing act of reconstruction.

Design Excellence Award: Bingyun Xue & Rae Zhao Studio: ARCH 203 Instructor: Dan Spiegel "Shielding and Shoring is a fire station and community resilience center conceived for Berkeley’s urban–wildland edge, where everyday habitation confronts the recurring threat of wildfire. The project begins with a material inquiry into how architecture can express both defense and everyday presence in the face of environmental risk. From this, a dual concept emerged: concrete as shielding and timber as shoring. Concrete, chosen for its durability and fire resistance, forms a series of walls that rise from west to east across the site, creating layered lines of defense and establishing the building’s primary spatial order. Timber, initially understood through the temporary role of formwork and shoring in concrete construction, is reimagined as a structural and spatial system. Upon the shoring, beams span between the concrete walls and stitch them together into inhabitable space. The tension between these two materials generates an architecture that is at once protective and open, austere and warm. As the building shifts from the wildfire edge toward the city, the heavy presence of concrete gives way to the lighter expression of timber, translating the project’s central concept into structure, circulation, atmosphere, and the experience of civic life." @rae_rui_ @annabxue #architecture #studio #wurster #UcBerkeley #design

Kristen Sidell and Rudabeh Pakravan are principals of Sidell Pakravan Architects, an award-winning architecture practice based in Berkeley. They believe in the power of architecture to influence context, culture, community and individual experience. Their critically informed, idea-driven designs physically materialize as distinctive, bold, and contextually resonant constructions. The firm has been named one of the top 50 architecture firms in North America by AN Interior Magazine in 2025 and has been recognized as a Design Vanguard by Architectural Record. Rudabeh is a Continuing Lecturer in the Department of Architecture and teaches undergraduate and graduate design studios. Kristen is a Lecturer and teaches studio and professional practice. In their teaching, they approach architecture as a physical exploration of space, form, scale, and volume that in practice translates to the ways architecture creates civic and social engagement. @sidellpakravan #architecture #studio #wurster #UcBerkeley #design

Design Excellence Award: Winnie Nevis Studio: ARCH 200A Instructor: Liz Gálvez “Located in West Berkeley, Broken Spine examines a systematic progression of interlocking servants and served spaces, forming a dwelling for six roommates. The overall formal system developed from a singular, cannon room – the bathroom. Two individual masses intersecting at a perpendicular angle - one short, dense mass to hold servant space – the sink, toilet, and shower – and one tall, lofty mass to hold served space – the pool. The emphasis of the intersection of these two volumes is illustrated by a partition wall, with openings in the fenestration allowing for circulation to the exterior of the rooms themselves. The singular cannon room is then expanded systematically to produce additional rooms. The organization of these rooms is linear in form, with two sets of each servant mass running as single-loaded corridors, acting as the vertebrae of the project. These dense, servant spaces enfilade from one to another, separated by junctions after each mass to allow for a perpendicular transition into the served spaces. The shared wall between the two single-loaded corridors extrudes upwards and duos as a wet wall, emphasizing the spine of the project." @winev.arch #architecture #studio #wurster #UcBerkeley #design

Design Excellence Award: Isabella Sprinkle Studio: ARCH 201 Instructor: Mia Zinni “Currently, the US is in dire need of stable, a ordable housing. Methodologies of current supportive housing are constantly evolving in various ways to address this issue. Complexities within the socio-political realm of affordable housing have become increasingly detached from architecture. My project aims to create permanent supportive housing that is contextually grounded and socially responsive. Located within a primarily single-family residential neighborhood, my design challenges the current model of permanent supportive housing, redefining the meaning of home at a greater density. The project emphasizes the connection between home and nature, household and community.” @Isabella_Sprinkle_Arch #architecture #studio #wurster #UcBerkeley #design

Student Highlight: Fernanda Loyola Cardoso & Maryrose Dipiro Studio: ARCH 203 Instructor: Dan Speigel Firehouse: Regenerative Construction “This proposal for a firehouse and community center at the intersection of Claremont Ave & Ashby Ave begins with an understanding of the site as an inflection point between many conditions, including the Wildland-Urban Interface. The project aims to challenge the contemporary relationship between architecture and combustibility by embracing the cyclical and destructive nature of wildfire. The design proposal consists of a dual-construction system, including permanent, infrastructural concrete cores which house rigid program, services, and circulation, and impermanent, combustible, simple wood-frame construction which spans between the cores to create flexible firefighter living spaces.” @fernandaloyolarch @maryrosedipiro.design #architecture #studio #wurster #UcBerkeley #design

Design Excellence Award: Annette Ho Studio: ARCH 100D Instructor: Ajay Manthripragada Under Construction “ICASF defines itself as a ‘non-collecting art museum that remains continuously under construction’. This guiding philosophy shaped the project's conceptual and material direction. The idea of non-finito is interpreted both literally and conceptually-as an unfinished building in a state of construction, marked by uncertainty, impermanence, and potential. The project is always complete, yet always adaptable. It reflects a condition where the moment of delivery defines the design, making completion a matter of timing rather than finality. This sense of temporariness is expressed through a scaffolding-like timber framework combined with tensile elements. Reminiscent of tents or temporary art installations, the tensile structure emphasizes lightness, adaptability, and transience. The work further investigates relationships between structure and staircase, the interior and exterior, and the building and its surrounding context.” @annette.arch #architecture #studio #wurster #UcBerkeley #design

Design Process Award: Timothy Chang Studio: ARCH 100D Instructor: Georgios Eftaxiopoulos Project Title: Rooms of Resistance “Located in the Mayfair neighborhood of San Jose, California, this project is about the revival of an important community space that has resisted issues that have been long ongoing in the neighborhood, including government neglect, funding cuts, threats of demolition, and high crime rates. The site currently consists of 3 entities, the abandoned MACSA Youth Center, a public middle school, and a 78-unit teacher housing project. Rooms of Resistance reinforces the MACSA Youth Center’s existence in the site by laying out a framework, like a carpet, across the urban block in under-utilized spaces and forming a grid that aligns with the community center. This framework is created by joining a series of modules together that form walls, and these walls are able to store equipment and items needed for the specific program of each space created by the grid. The spaces formed by the grid are each given a unique program. Some of these programs include a community kitchen, reading spaces, indoor multipurpose courts, and even a ceramics workshop.” @timothy__chang #architecture #studio #wurster #UcBerkeley #design