Love Island USA is a reality dating television series in which contestants live together in an isolated luxury villa, forming romantic relationships while navigating challenges, eliminations, and constant surveillance. The villa functions as both a living environment and a television set, where seemingly intimate moments become entertainment for millions of viewers.
This studio project challenges us to critically examine the existing Love Island villa and redesign its interior spaces through the lens of human behavior, spatial experience, and the relationship between architecture and media production.
Existing Villa Exterior Shot
Reality TV seems like an authentic experience, but it is actually highly produced, performed, and influenced. Love Island is much more fictional than they lead us to believe. My project treats the Love Island villa as a theater set that uses theatrical devices to expose reality TV as a constructed performance.
This is a work in progress and will be complete at the end of the Fall 2026 semester!
Through detailed plans, sections, and rendered spatial studies of the communal bedroom, fire pit, and Soul Ties lounge, the project investigates how theatrical framing, material layering, and controlled visibility shape social interactions. Each space becomes a distinct scene in which architecture simultaneously facilitates intimacy and reveals the constant presence of an audience.
