Ellis Puerto is probably the busiest person in the University. Still in his thirties, this grateful alumnus wears many hats: He is the Assistant Administrator of the Office of the General Services, the Director of the Institute of Planning and Design, and a full-time faculty of the Department of Architecture, where he has been teaching since 1996.
He is the architect responsible for the design of most new structures and fixtures in the campus, like the Law and Business School, the Office of the General Services, the facelift of Arthur Dingman Building, the Main Library’s new look, the Bruttenbruch Hall, the now breezy covered walk, and the still-to-be-completed stadium in USCTC. Just off his drawing board, are plans for buildings commissioned by two colleges and a school hotel (“schotel”), which, he admits is a dream project for USC.
Puerto’s buildings exude a preference for geometric forms that don’t necessarily follow function, a more relaxed and playful form of modernism. But the architect would rather avoid such labels to describe the style of his work. He modestly admits “to work around the client’s program, preference, and site specifics or constraints.” Then he would inject what he thinks would be relevant to the user or the environment. He calls this “environmental sensitivity” or the “input of green aspects, such as the use of recycled materials sourced at site, passive cooling, and water retention.”
For Puerto, designing school buildings poses the unique challenge of how “to frame and allow the interactions to take place without dictating it or giving it away.” In making over historic buildings at the Main Campus, the problem is also how to keep the balance between the old elements and the new. The building’s “old framework is the basis for the pace of the tiling pattern, the front facade color, and the fence-railing articulation.”
One wonders how it feels for a former student to have the opportunity to change the look of his Alma Mater. Puerto is obviously in this position where he could now immortalize himself in the architecture of his own school. But we have just seen that he is the type who is all ears to his clients and who would rather play in a team. “I hope I delivered something which blended well and contributed to USC's identity,” he said.
At the rate of USC’s construction boom, what does this multi-tasker do when he is not piling building blocks in campus? He is probably home “making some sort of landscape practice in the backyard, with dogs; aquarium and pond for fish turtle and marine plants; and even goats and ducks before, when I was hoping someday to have a farm.”
