This summer, ten emerging designers across architecture, landscape architecture, interior design, experience design, and sustainability joined RIOS’ Los Angeles, Austin, and London offices for an internship grounded in hands-on project experience and collaborative research. This year’s research explored new possibilities for a public library as one of a city’s most important civic spaces.
The internship also extends beyond project work and into the culture of the studio. Interns competed with RIOS staff in a ping pong tournament, explored Downtown Los Angeles’ cultural corridor on a field trip, connected with the vendors and fabricators who help bring our work to life, and joined the office softball team. Together, these experiences make the internship as much about learning through people, places, and collaboration as it is about design. The 2026 summer intern cohort includes:
- Bo Huai Huang (Harvard GSD, M.L.A.)
- Catherine Sheridan (USC, B.A.)
- Darin Daly (Ohio State, BS.LA)
- Felipe Ortega (CSU Long Beach, B.A.)
- Hannah Young Chung (Northeastern, B.Arch)
- Isaiah Zamudio (USC, B.Arch)
- Oyku Vergon (USC, B.Arch)
- Payton Clark (Arizona State, BS.ID)
- Salvador Gutierrez (USC, M.F.A.)
- Shambhavi Mishra (Architectural Association, M.Arch)
- Taylor Rhodes (UT Austin, M.Arch)
The Library as Civic Center
At the center of this summer’s research was a question: How can a public library become a true civic heart? The speculative brief called for an adaptable public environment for learning, gathering, creating, and accessing community resources.
The interns began by looking beyond the traditional role of the library as a repository for books. They studied how libraries can respond to changing patterns of public life, evolving community needs, and new forms of learning and production. Research into landscape, climate, circulation, and civic space also considered how architecture and landscape can work together to create comfortable, accessible environments that support both individual and collective experiences.
From this research, two multidisciplinary teams developed distinct visions for how the library could evolve as civic infrastructure.
A Living Studio
Team: Hannah Young Chung (M.Arch, Northeastern), Shambhavi Mishra (M.Arch, Architectural Association), Taylor Rhodes (M.Arch, UT Austin), Bo-Huai Huang (MLAUD, Harvard), Felipe Ortega (BFA, Graphic Design, CSULB)
What if a library became a place for producing knowledge, not only accessing it? A Living Studio imagines an evolving, participatory environment where visitors become creators, collaborators, and storytellers, with the library providing the infrastructure to support them.
The proposal shifts the role of the library from archive to production. Stacked volumes shift across the site to create terraces, rooftop gardens, shaded outdoor rooms, and flexible spaces for gathering, while an open ground plane allows public life to move through and around the building. Inside, programs progress from public resources and services at ground level to spaces for making, media, collaboration, reading, co-working, exhibitions, and civic services above.
Architecture and landscape operate as a shared framework for activity. Terraced gardens move through and around the building. A flexible plaza can expand from smaller gatherings to markets, screenings, and civic events. Along the groundscape, 24/7 community amenity pods bring resources traditionally housed inside the library, from a pantry and seed bank to public restrooms and everyday services, directly into the public realm. Together, these elements imagine the library as adaptable civic infrastructure that supports how people access, create, exchange, and contribute to knowledge.
The Trail
Team: Oyku Vergon (B.Arch, USC), Darin Daly (MLA II, Harvard), Payton Clark (B.S.D., ASU), Shambhavi Mishra (M.Arch, Architectural Association)
The Trail explores how movement through a landscape reshapes the experience of a library. The team organizes the library as a journey, creating a continuous sequence of spaces that supports gathering, learning, movement, and reflection.
A continuous loop translates that journey into both circulation and architecture. Moving through the site, spaces transition from active and social to increasingly contemplative. Gateway plazas, a farmers market, and an event lawn give way to collaborative and library programs before reaching quieter spaces for reading and study. Building heights shift in response to mountain views, creating rooftop spaces for gathering and reflection.
Landscape extends the same progression, moving from oak woodland planting at the civic ground plane through chaparral to a montane forest garden. While the loop allows architectural programs to operate independently, the landscape reconnects them through planting, paving, and circulation, creating a continuous experience between city and mountain.
Across both proposals, the interns used research as a starting point for design, looking at landscape, climate, history, and civic life to imagine how a library could become more connected to its community. The work reflects a broader RIOS approach that brings disciplines together, learns from place, and uses research to open new possibilities.
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