‘fieldwork’
2025
An exploration on how
environments we see
shape identity, emotional
tension, and morality.
Seeing your first oil pump as a child is
enough to raise questions. Seeing a
hundred everyday as a teenager is enough
to form a belief.
Once a ruling marker of society, the oil
derrick is now being dismantled. The
decommissioning of Los Angeles’ largest
extraction site erases not only its
function, but also a symbolic
“thinking-starter” embedded in the
landscape.
On this ground, a new campus emerges —
a place where silent destruction gives
way to learning. A high school is chosen
deliberately: the formative stage where
beliefs are tested, rendered, and shaped
into a body of conviction.
The derrick, replaced by a geothermal
heat pump, now conditions classrooms
with clean energy. Its dismembered parts
are repurposed into a new statuesque —
an uneasy monument to both greed and
nourishment. Its attachments form mass
hinges moving panoramic sliding bunker
doors to reenact the pursuit of hiding.
Its presence reminds us
of ambition’s cost, transforming erasure
into a pedagogical lesson.
Art+Architectural Thesis
USC Spring 2025
B.ARCH