USC LeConte College Maintenance Renovation

Originally built to house laboratory science, the LeConte College had been repurposed over time for the Department of Mathematics and Statistics — its systems and spatial logic never updated to match. A succession of partial renovations had compressed ceiling heights without resolving the building's core problems: poor air quality and no real control over temperature or humidity. This project addressed the building comprehensively rather than incrementally, with a full systems and finish replacement, complete abatement, and a new slate roof.

The original building's 4-inch block walls placed a hard limit on how much the floor plan itself could change. Rather than fighting that constraint, the design uses it as the basis for the project's defining move: opening up the central corridors on each floor and exposing their original structure overhead. What had been the building's lowest, most poorly lit space becomes its most generous — a continuous, up-lit volume that reorients how the building reads from the inside.

That move is supported by a deliberate split in the building's systems. Mechanical and electrical infrastructure is organized into two zones, with no components crossing the corridors — a decision that does double duty, simplifying maintenance access while reinforcing the architectural contrast between the new open corridors and the labs, offices, and classrooms they serve. The building's steel-framed attic, large enough to hold new HVAC units and data infrastructure outright, made this possible: vertical duct and cable drops feed straight down into the zones below, keeping chase sizes to a minimum and returning that square footage to instructional space.