Courses

This research studio explores ceramic material assemblies as a locus for expanding architecture’s ecological agency. The studio operates across several domains—the material, the communal, and the contextual—to explicitly meld technical knowledge with ecological and social agendas. Projects engage in the tectonic scale of material prototypes, the building scale of domestic architecture, and the ecosystemic scale to synthesize pragmatic questions of fabrication and assembly with social and ecological questions about how architecture can adapt to a changing climate.

Research at the material scale focuses on the production of 3D printed ceramic components and how these systems might open up new forms of ecological performance at an architectural scale. Working in teams, students have deployed this work in a design of a small residential building for a site in New Orleans, with a focus on alternative approaches to domesticity and on the building envelope’s capacities to modulate climate control, assist with water management, and provide habitat for more-than-human species of plants and animals. This work seeks to reposition the building envelope, traditionally thought of as an impermeable barrier between inside and outside, between humans and “nature,” as a deeper, thicker, and more porous assemblage, actively negotiating the sometimes competing and conflicting demands of structure, enclosure, privacy, and habitat. It is in this negotiation that architecture’s most elemental purpose—as a boundary, a device of separation—transforms into one of connection, kinship, and ecological stewardship as the envelope becomes recast as a scaffold for multiple forms of life.Full-scale prototypes for this research have been produced in the Digital Ceramics Lab, a new partnership launched in spring 2024 between Tulane School of Architecture and the Newcomb Art Department.

Faculty: Adam Marcus

The New Orleans Public Space Project proposes to examine the transformations needed in the city’s public space in order to address its long-term sustainability through the street network’s capacity to address water management, mobility changes, connectivity across neighborhoods, urban ecology, heritage revitalization, and relation with its main geographical features. The project is structured in four parts: Streets, mobility and water management, Barriers, disruptions and reconnections, Heritage streetscape recovery, City and river stitching.

Faculty: Sean Fowler, Iñaki Alday

The Gulf Coast Climate Futures Research Studio, funded by the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine’s Gulf Research Program (NASEM-GRP), is a multi-year design research initiative that explores strategies for climate adaptation in the Gulf Coast region, spanning from Houston to Mobile. The studio adopts a methodology for territorial analysis, diagnosis, and generating hypotheses for transformation at regional, metropolitan, and architectural scales.

Through interdisciplinary collaborations with specialists from various fields and collective ways of working, students engage in map-based analysis and synthesis of regional systems related to energy, water, ecosystems, and urbanization. Utilizing GIS mapping techniques, students investigate the complex interdependencies between these systems and their impact on the built environment.

The studio aims to imagine equitable and ecologically sustainable futures for the Gulf Coast, grounded in the region's historical and contemporary realities. By examining the legacy of extractive practices and environmental degradation, students develop critical perspectives on the challenges facing the region and propose innovative strategies for climate mitigation and adaptation.

Throughout the course, students cultivate skills in regional scale map-based analysis, verbal and visual storytelling, teamwork, and design thinking to address complex challenges at the intersection of climate change, social equity, and the built environment.

The course culminates in multi-scalar design proposals that envision transformative interventions for specific sites within the broader regional context. These proposals serve as a foundation for further research and collaboration, contributing to ongoing efforts to build resilience and promote sustainable development in the Gulf Coast region.

Faculty: Liz Camuti with Margarita Jover

What is sustainable design? The Mintz Global Research Studio for undergraduate and graduate architecture students aims to consider this question in the context of the tropical Andes in partnership with FCAT (Fundación para la Conservación de los Andes Tropicales), a non-profit based in Ecuador dedicated to the conservation of tropical biodiversity. Through investigating materiality and building function, community input, and the environmental importance of the region, the studio aims to create a site-specific sustainable design framework and applications as well as offer insight into sustainability in the region. The studio was guided by principles of sustainability and questions of community-engaged design within the context of decolonization. Local materials and new technologies were also explored in adapting construction to the tropics.

Throughout the semester, the class worked closely with FCAT staff and stakeholders, researchers and experts. The class asked the question: How might we design different possibilities addressing FCAT Ecuador’s needs in the present and the desire to grow in the future? Discussions and feedback sessions were held at multiple points during the semester. By midterm, the class developed multiple options under four building types: housing, field station, commissary, multi-purpose hall/laboratory. During Spring break, the class visited the site of FCAT’s forest reservation the Choco area, in Cube, Esmeralda Province as well as the capital city of Quito in Ecuador. By the end of the semester, the class presented consolidated and revised versions of the four building types within a planned masterplan for the site.

Faculty: Edson Cabalfin, Ph.D. with Ann Yoachim, Nick Jenisch, and Emilie Taylor Welty of the Albert and Tina Small Center for Collaborative Design

New Orleans occupies the Mississippi Delta, the complex ecological system formed by the soil deposits interacting with the river and the gulf. In this soft, fluid ground, finding stability is a constant challenge. With a thoughtful application, modular precast concrete paving systems can reestablish a symbiotic relationship between the built environment and landscape as infrastructure and public amenities. By leveraging the digital design and fabrication techniques, the geometry of the ground surface can be performatively and aesthetically aligned; to detain, retain or permeate water, mitigate flooding, and aesthetically embrace the reflectivity of the water surface, contributing to the spatial quality of the context, encouraging the productive occupation of the ground plane.

The studio initiates students to the complex relationships between technology and society. By leveraging accessible open-source databases, digital modeling, and fabrication techniques, the studio systematically addresses the complex, social-cultural, ecological, and economic (infrastructural) relations through the performance of surface geometry of the ground plane relative to water in three distinct scales. At the component and street scales, we aim to slow down the storm runoff by momentarily storing it where it falls. On an urban scale, we aim to detain overflow from the drainage system during peak storm intensity to maintain the demand at capacity.

The studio prioritizes the design process informed by visualized quantifiable parameters through simulations and prototyping to find “the equilibrium” beyond individual beliefs and aesthetic preferences. The design methodology and resulting solutions are internationally relevant, as the water-related issues are no longer unique to our region.

Faculty: Kentaro Tsubaki & Charles Jones

Addis Ababa has rapidly evolved from a small military outpost to a sprawling metropolis and has doubled its population to over 4 million in recent years. This unprecedented demographic boom has brought not only uncontrolled urbanization of the city but is also testing the administration's ability to provide basic services to the population: water pollution, water scarcity, flooding, lack of basic infrastructures/facilities… If these urban issues are not addressed in the present, climate change will be added to the continuous growth of the population, and both will exacerbate the already present problems. This academic research aims to design a holistic urban resilience and regenerative strategy for Addis Ababa, whose main elements are the more than 50km of river tributaries that weave the city. For that, the project proposes a new "ecological infrastructure" that uses the rivers as the main element to tackle the city's most urgent challenges and, given the city's morphology, to reach most parts of the population. The methodology of the project is organized into three different nested scales. The first analyses and diagnoses the city's development from different perspectives. The second scale proposes solutions to the urban issues found in the analysis through a comprehensive strategic plan, in this case, for a specific area: the Upper Kebena River watershed. Finally, the third, and most minor scale, includes specific architectural interventions at the most urgent and significant sites.

Faculty: Rubén García Rubio

The Yamuna River Project is a long-term, inter-disciplinary research program whose objective is to revitalize the ecology of the Yamuna River in the Delhi area. The design studio will engage with the role of Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning in our current environment. This is the 7th edition of this research studio and the first of a new phase commencing at Tulane University. Iñaki Alday – Dean and Koch Professor of Architecture and Principal, aldayjover architecture and landscape – and Pankaj Vir Gupta -- Professor of Architecture and Principal, Vir Mueller Architects/Delhi – initiated the project with a series of research studios beginning in 2013-14. The first phase (2012 - 2019) of the design / research studios, concluded with a vision for Delhi’s urbanity – anchored around the Yamuna river and Najafgarh drain. The studio proposals sought to rejuvenate the civic environment, improve local infrastructure, and reorient patterns of urban settlement in order to ameliorate the lives of local residents and enhance public access to Delhi’s culturally and ecologically vital Yamuna River.

Faculty: Iñaki Alday, Pankaj Vir Gupta, Andrea Bardon de Tena

In New Orleans, the Inner Harbor Navigation Canal -inside yellow line at the image above- has constituted in the recent past a large industrial and economic infrastructure for the city of New Orleans and the region. Today these five miles of waterfront property in close proximity to key low-density residential neighborhoods and the city center are in a state of economic decay, poor ecology and disarticulated urbanity. Students at Tulane School of Architecture guided by a multidisciplinary team of faculty will document these properties and buildings, research comparable examples and best practices worldwide, and propose innovative Design-Research [DR] projects to engage stakeholders and citizens at large through a public conversation about how best to utilize and sustain this industrial and waterfront property over the next fifty years. The ultimate goal of this Research Studio [RS] is to drive university knowledge towards the public sphere and to reinforce the debate about the future of the city of New Orleans -our commons- in a political moment in which many decisions about the future of cities are taken in private global spheres away from citizenry. The role of Design-Research on this type of large-scale urban transformations is key for two main reasons: one is educational, and the other is political. The educational motivation is to teach students and the public at large that Architecture which includes Urbanism is a holistic discipline able to formalize, visualize and offer large scale transformations and long-term urban scenarios that seek urban equity, improved ecology and sustainable economy. The political motivation is a reaction to the fact that, during the last five decades, Architecture has too often operated as an acritical service provider for private interests. Today more than ever, it is necessary that both Architecture and Urbanism recover a political agenda renewing the one of the early modernity, a political agenda that aims to serve the common good and the long-term biological and poly-cultural survival on Earth. The word ‘political’ is here understood in its Greek meaning ‘politikos’, one that simply means ‘concerning citizens’, and since citizens are all of us, political issues are the ones concerning all. Both agendas, educational and political are intertwined in this Research Studio. Because the reality of our democratic system, political agendas are today short termed and cannot take on long term urban issues that affect the majority of citizens. One possibility is to use Urban Visions generated by Research Studios as catalyst to activate a plural debate about the future of post-industrial ports and more specifically, the future of this Inner Harbor Navigation Canal in New Orleans.

Faculty: Margarita Jover

This survey course explores the basic tenets of climate change science as a foundation for further studies in the theories, models, and practices of sustainability, mitigation, resilience, and adaptation in the built environment. Through critical reading and analysis of central bodies of literature, students are provided a conceptual and empirical basis for exploring applied practices and policies that are advanced in the name of climate change. As such, this course examines both decarbonization and responses to and preparations for climate impacts. The practice component of this course focuses on sustainability in building and site design; community resilience in urban planning; engineering resilience in buildings and infrastructure; ecological resilience in environmental management; multi-hazard risk assessment in disaster risk management; and adaptation processes in the public and private sectors that drive the construction, financing, and management of the built environment. Concepts and methods are explored through a variety of interdisciplinary practices ranging from coastal planning to asset management. Students will develop a critical understanding of relevant public policies and institutions, design and engineering techniques, economic strategies, and planning models.

The application of building modeling using computer simulation tools plays an integral role in the design and evaluation of energy-efficient and sustainable buildings. Architects use this simulation to understand and assess building performance at various stages of the design process. A basic understanding of energy systems, and the ability to design and manipulate them, will be essential as we move into a future where climate change has become a reality, and environmental regulations on the built environment will tighten.

Creating energy-efficient homes is becoming increasingly crucial for our environment and for the well-being of individuals and communities. This course looks at efficiency through the strategic implementation of both passive and active systems. Students will learn about a series of building design strategies including active systems for Heating, Ventilating, and Cooling as well as passive strategies such as thermal insulation, high-performance glazing, outdoor solar shading, the use of thermal mass, and night ventilation passive.

Faculty: Sonsoles Vela Navarro

The Heritage Risk Lab builds expertise in understanding, planning for, and mitigating the impacts of climate change is one of the greatest societal challenges of the 21st century. Heritage resources are a vital category of cultural assets that will be affected by these global events and trends. Cultural heritage, encompassing a broad array of materials and spaces, including archaeological sites, historic buildings and structures, and cultural landscapes, provides tangible connections to the past for communities, a sense of a shared identity, and crucial economic development opportunities. Ensuring their durability for future generations is pivotal for healthy, sustainable communities.

Faculty: Fallon Samuels Aidoo

This course provides students with applied skills and experience in synthesizing real estate projects. It builds upon student’s introductory coursework in real estate finance, sustainable urbanism, and architecture and design. As prospective developers, students should begin to have firsthand knowledge of the complexities of development including the development process itself; good design; and synthesizing constraints into an implementable physical development project. This course is rooted in the creative process as real estate development is inherently a creative problem-solving profession. As real estate development is a team-based profession requiring the collaboration of multiple disciplines, the approach of this course is based on lectures and site visits leading to innovative team-based student work that results in an implementable development.

This course explores advanced topics and case studies in the applied science and economics of producing, investing in, and managing sustainable real estate. The recurring theme of people, place, and profit is redefined within the context of user demand, asset management, building operations, and financial acumen. Students trace a narrative of the process that begins with market analysis and conceptual design and ends with decommissioning and recycling. Throughout the course, the central subjectivities and applications of sustainability will be challenged to critically evaluate aspects of social, financial, and environmental sustainability. In particular, the course seeks to understand the extent to which empirical science can inform risk-adjusted investment decisions. The course includes a systematic review of various rating systems, environmental technologies, project alternatives, project delivery models, and commissioning standards, as well as the supporting risk management systems and contracting provisions defining contemporary industry practice. Students will move from asset-specific evaluations within the boundaries of a site to understand how portfolios of assets are managed across various scales and geographies. The course intends to further the division between the greening and browning of real estate assets to impose higher standards in design, construction, and management. In this sense, the future will be defined by a world in which all real estate is low impact, sustainable, and possesses a designed adaptive capacity to accommodate future user demand and environmental performance.