gather, a solo show of new work by Marianne Desmarais, Professor of Practice and Director of Undergraduate Architecture, will be on display Summer 2020. Desmarais' work will be on display July 11-Aug. 2 with an opening from 6-9 p.m. on July 11 at Staple Goods, 1340 St. Roch Avenue, in New Orleans. The show is created with support from the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans, Joan Mitchell Foundation in New York, and Tulane School of Architecture.

Artist statement:

My work engages material and structural behavior to explore the relationships between parts in a system or an assemblage. In response to a curiosity, I develop a rule-set that leads through process to patterns, complexity, and the emergence of new formal properties. This evolution of operations reveals a shifting space between the flat and the dimensional, between liquid and solid states, and between layered moments in time.

In recent work, air-filled packing materials and plastic containers are the starting point for an examination of the logics and breakdown of material culture. Familiar and ubiquitous, these discards have pillowed the objects of our desire in protective isolation and then are expected to simply disappear. Designed for specific function and single use, these anti-forms are proliferating, their accumulation littering the ground and filling the sea. Fabricated of ever thinner plastic, they are paradoxical empty space-fillers engineered to be full yet weightless.

Through a strategy of encapsulation, I am shifting attention to these anti-forms by altering relationships to gravity, time, and perception. Reversing their solid/void relationship renders a shape that is both specific and indistinct. We know the primary object, it can be seen and touched, but the slippery forms of its packaging are curious, exaggerated, liminal. I am interested in this perceptual whole that oscillates between closeness and flows to expansiveness.

Using a synthetic rubber coating I am sequestering plastic detritus before it accumulates in trash heaps and waterways. Working with a material that changes state, from viscous liquid to flexible solid, produces a fluidity in the work that yields expansive surface and open forms.

As each sculpture is produced, its leavings and traces are collected and pushed forward into the next piece; nothing is discarded. Marks catalog the reality of each physical transformation then transfer subliminal characteristics to the intervening surface.

To keep students engaged and their creativity going over the summer, Tulane School of Architecture is launching a new Instagram competition, starting June 10. The TuSA Summer Instagram Contest will cover six categories of representation styles, design, and art. Six juries of school faculty will vote each week for the top five winners, and prizes will be awarded. 

The competition is open to incoming, current, and newly graduated students (Class of 2020). This includes students who are minoring in programs at the school and who have taken courses via programs run by the school. 

To submit an entry, students must post their single image/animation entry on their Instagram account, indicate the competition category they are entering, and tag @tulanearch and #TulaneDesignCompetition. The entry post must be made during the week of the competition. The competition is limited to one entry per student, per category. The entry must be work created by the student. This could be new work or previous work produced in the last year. Finalists will be asked (via private message on Instagram) to verify their student status by providing their full name, Tulane ID number, and Tulane email address.

The first place winners of each category will receiving a $100 prize. The four additional finalists of each category will receive $50 prizes. Prizes will be given in the form of direct payments to current students and honoraria to newly graduated students. 

The faculty jurors include: Marianne Desmarais, Ammar Eloueini, Ruben Garcia Rubio, Bruce Goodwin, Margarita Jover, Irene Keil, Judith Kinnard, Tiffany Lin, Carol McMichael Reese, Wendy Redfield, Cordula Roser Gray, Ken Schwartz, and Ann Yoachim. The juries will not receive student names, only the work submitted. 

Winners will be announced with a post on the school's Instagram account and Instagram Story every Wednesday, starting June 17, and will follow the schedule below.

• Week 1: Drawing/Painting/Sketching by Hand. Opening date to post entries is Wednesday, June 10. Deadline to enter is 5pm Sunday, June 14. Winner and finalists announced Wednesday, June 17.
• Week 2: 2D Drawing/Elevation/Section. Opening date to post entries is Wednesday, June 17. Deadline to enter is 5pm Sunday, June 21. Winner and finalists announced Wednesday, June 24.
• Week 3: Digital Rendering/Perspective. Opening date to post entries is Wednesday, June 24. Deadline to enter is 5pm Sunday, June 28. Winner and finalists announced Wednesday, July 1.
• Week 4: Animation. Opening date to post entries is Wednesday, July 1. Deadline to enter is 5pm Sunday, July 5. Winner and finalists announced Wednesday, July 8.
• Week 5: Physical Model. Opening date to post entries is Wednesday, July 8. Deadline to enter is 5pm Sunday, July 12. Winner and finalists announced Wednesday, July 15. 
• Week 6: Collage. Opening date to post entries is Wednesday, July 15. Deadline to enter is 5pm Sunday, July 19. Winner and finalists announced Wednesday, July 22. 

This page will be updated each week with winning entries as the winners are announced.

Week 1 Winning Entry: Bay Area Perspectives by James Poche

Week 2 Winning Entry: section / elevation through a city in a sphere by Seth Laskin

Week 3 Winning Entry: “Interactive Investigation and Recreation Center of Lake Peigneur” by Leah Bohatch.

Week 4 Winning Entry: Marble Madness by Natalie Rendleman

Week 5 Winning Entry: T-House model by Jacob Silbermann

Week 6 Winning Entry: "Oasis" by Ian Shaw

For questions about the competition, contact Naomi King Englar at nking2@tulane.edu. 

Zarith Pineda (A '15) was recently interviewed by the global architecture platform ArchDaily. Pineda is an architectural and urban designer, as well as the founder of Territorial Empathy, a research laboratory that specializes in mitigating urban conflict through architectural interventions. The nonprofit’s work includes architectural projects, as well as mapping and data visualization projects related to redlining, public school funding, air quality, access to healthy foods – and most recently providing assistance to service agencies and organizations responding to the COVID-19 crisis nationally and internationally – focusing on domestic violence and racial disparities in the pandemic response efforts.

Specifically, Territorial Empathy recently launched a grant program, COVID-19 Empathy Grants, to donate pro-bono services to organizations or communities that could benefit from the nonprofit's work. Organizations and individuals can submit information through a form on the COVID-19 Empathy Grant webpage.

“At Territorial Empathy we believe that empathy is the key to solving the pressing urban issues of our time. Now more than ever, design thinking, projects, and teams have a responsibility to inspire inclusion and connectivity. Our mission is to bring together urbanists, architects, and data scientists to work on behalf of the people in places that are often overlooked. By shedding a light on their perspectives and aspirations, we aim to support their fight for equity,” Pineda told ArchDaily.

Pineda graduated from Tulane School of Architecture in 2015 after earning her 5-year M.Arch. In 2017 she received an M.AUD from Columbia University, where her research on water diplomacy, spatial justice, and conflict urbanism awarded her the prestigious Lowenfish Memorial Prize. She has also taught Digital Design Techniques, Urban Theory, and Data Visualization as Adjunct Associate Professor at Columbia. Zarith has practiced at a number of national/international architectural and urban design firms where she was involved in a broad range of institutional, residential, and planning projects. Zarith’s work has been published and exhibited in New York, New Orleans, Washington D.C., Paris, Brussels, Venice, Amman and Tel Aviv.

To read the full interview on ArchDaily, click here.

Tulane School of Architecture has launched a new set of Summer 2020 courses. Students can get a jumpstart on their studies with a special set of more than 20 courses at Tulane School of Architecture. Students can use this time to explore a new interest or just keep creative energy going. 

 

The summer courses are open to all Tulane students, as well as undergraduate and graduate students from other universities, colleges and schools. 

 

Offerings include design, architecture, photography, drawing, making, design thinking, historic preservation, real estate, and social innovation and social entrepreneurship. View all the courses here. Registration deadlines vary, depending on the term of the courses. 

 

Registration Instructions:

 

• Current Tulane students should register through the Gibson portal Schedule of Classes.

 

• Undergraduate Visiting Students should register for summer courses at Tulane School of Architecture through the Newcomb-Tulane College system: NTC 2020 Visiting Student Application. All visiting students are required to have earned at least a high school diploma, or its equivalent, by the start of the summer session. Students are expected to have completed the stated course prerequisites by the start of the session. Enrollment is for Summer only.

 

• Graduate Visiting Students (and incoming graduate students) should register for summer courses at Tulane School of Architecture directly through the school by contacting William Wildman, Assistant Director of Admissions, at wwildman@tulane.edu.

 

Judith Kinnard, FAIA, Tulane School of Architecture Professor of Architecture and Harvey-Wadsworth Chair of Landscape Urbanism, was recently interviewed by Julia Gamolina for Madame Architect. Below is an excerpt from the piece, titled "Designing the Future: Judith Kinnard on Academia, the Profession, and Expanding Boundaries," published April 30, 2020.

Given some of the sexism that still exists today despite so much awareness of it, I can’t imagine what it was like at a time when the same awareness wasn’t there. Was it at UVA that you became the first tenured design professor that was a woman?

Yes. There was one tenured history professor and one planning professor who were women, but none in design. I was at UVA for about twenty years, and it was a great place to teach and to practice. During that period we won four national design competitions with our practice, and this helped us develop a series of ideas involving architecture, urbanism and the landscape. Because we established a degree of national recognition, this led to my successful tenure case.

Then, I became Chair at UVA for five years, between ‘98 and 2003, working with Bill McDonough as the dean and three other wonderful chairs in landscape architecture, history of architecture, and planning. We introduced some themes that hadn’t been advanced in the past - design build and also studios that weren’t directly focused on buildings. I worked very hard to advance the dual-degree path with landscape architecture, facilitating a number of students to get both their Master of Architecture degree and their Master of Landscape Architecture degree. Thomas Woltz and Serena Nelson are great examples of this period in the school's history.

That’s fantastic. What did you do after UVA?

After a few years, my husband became the Dean at Tulane, in 2008. They offered me a full professor position with a generous endowed chair called the Harvey Wadsworth Chair in Landscape Urbanism, so we moved to New Orleans three years after Hurricane Katrina. We both felt compelled to contribute to the rebuilding of New Orleans in a more just and sustainable way. Some refer to “opportunity” in the post-Katrina setting, but we have avoided that word for obvious reasons. We felt that it was a responsibility.

The transition was a little bit tricky - I’ll say that being the wife of the dean was not my preferred role [laughs]. We’ve been very careful in our careers to maintain individual identities, so that aspect of it was a bit challenging. However, I had been asked to run for President of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, and a few years later, I was also elected as president of the National Architectural Accrediting Board (NAAB). So I had my own leadership identity, independent of the school, while maintaining and advancing strong teaching goals at Tulane. That was important for me - the leadership roles I’ve had outside of academia were highly visible opportunities to show how one can combine teaching, research, creative work and national service to the profession. I hope that I have served as a good role model.

To read the full interview in Madame Architect, click here.

Two Tulane School of Architecture graduate students - Casey Last (M.Arch) and Brandon Surtain (M.Arch/MSRED) - are part of a group recently selected for Tulane's new Sprinting to the Front Lines design competition. Their group was one of only six selected.

Sprinting to the Front Lines is a rapid funding mechanism for Tulane students to respond to the COVID-19 outbreak. Teams of current Tulane students were invited to submit a proposal that would directly impact the health and wellbeing of the New Orleans community during the COVID-19 outbreak. Projects were selected by a panel of three faculty at the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine and the six were selected from 50 applications submitted. Funding for Sprinting to the Front Lines was made possible by a generous donor.

The awarded students, their faculty mentor, and their project’s description are listed below. Work is set to begin by April 20, 2020.

Pass Dat Joy: A project in pursuit of creativity, joy, and community support in the wake of the COVID-19 global crisis

To create “Pass Dat Joy” a family art toolkit with resource packets, which will be distributed to resource-insecure families via a school feeding site and pantry delivery service operated by our community partner, Homer A. Plessy School in New Orleans. These toolkits will be designed to alleviate some of the stress facing families by pairing creative materials for children alongside informational materials for parents. The artwork created by the students is to be exhibited and shared online via social media #passdatjoy.

Student Team Members: Shaymaa Abdalal, PhD student in TRMD, Johanna Nice, PhD student in TRMD and Program Manager of Highly Vulnerable Children Research Center, School of Social Work, Casey Last, master's student in Architecture, Abi Mbaye, master’s student in English, and Brandon Surtain, master’s student in Architecture
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Lesley-An Noel, Phyllis M. Taylor Center for Social Innovation & Design Thinking and School of Architecture

For more information about Sprinting to the Front Lines, click here.

Carrie Norman, Tulane School of Architecture Assistant Professor of Architecture and co-founder of Norman Kelley, was recently interviewed by Madame Architect. Below is an excerpt from the piece, titled "Opening Credits: Carrie Norman on Getting Her Start and Topics That Need to be Foregrounded," published April 8, 2020.

How did your interest in architecture first develop?

Growing up in Cincinnati, Ohio, I remember the dinner table was constantly over-crowded with floor plans, material swatches, and architects’ scales. My mom was and still is an amazing interior designer, and as a single mom supporting three kids, her work would often come home with her and she loved walking me through the projects she was working on. These were my bedtime stories. On occasions I could pick up a slight antagonism towards the architect. “They create problems I have to fix,” she’d say, and then we’d go on a sort of Where’s Waldo tour through the drawings and she’d point them all out. For a long time I thought architects only made problems that other people had to fix [laughs]. 

I would also frequently join her on work sites. I’d study the floor plan and try to memorize a route through all of the rooms of the project. Then I’d try to reenact the route in the real building. To be honest, I still kind of do this, and it still amazes me that buildings start out as mini versions on paper. Throughout my youth, architecture was both a comforting bedtime subject and a wild adventure.

Where are you in your career today?

In the opening credits [laughs]. Professionally, Norman Kelley is a young architecture practice, and we’re scaling up, patiently. Academically, I am a junior faculty at the beginning of my career as an educator.

Up until recently, my career and teaching was based in New York, where I’d been living and practicing for over a decade. The past ten years has included a number of important milestones for me, professionally, including getting licensed, co-founding my own practice, and beginning a career in teaching. Now, in New Orleans, I hope the next decade is filled with as much personal and professional growth. In particular, I hope to develop as a teacher, and simultaneously expand our office into new contexts.

Looking back at it all, what have been the biggest challenges?

Scaling up is a challenge. Right now the range of our work spans XXS to S. Without experience with larger scale projects, it’s difficult for a client to stomach the risk of hiring us. It’s funny, at SHoP, I never worked on a project less than a million square feet. Now, our largest completed project is 5,000 square feet. We’ve come close to receiving work for larger projects on a few occasions, but each time we’ve come up short.

We’re not in a rush for the big projects but we also don’t want to get pigeon-holed into doing the same kind of work over and over again. To grow as architects, we need that diversity of project types. For now we try to do our very best to translate big ideas into small projects, be it furniture-scaled objects, or rehabilitated interiors.

To read the full interview in Madame Architect, click here.

The publication Madame Architect featured Tulane School of Architecture alumna and Advisory Board member Clara Wineberg (A '90), Principal at Solomon Cordwell Buenz Architects (SCB).

Clara is a leader of SCB’s Residential Research and Development Group, working to constantly expand the firm’s market knowledge and vision for the future of the urban residential experience. Her focus on urban mixed-use projects is driven by design and performance, providing counsel to clients with an understanding of risk and the ability to provide guidance in difficult design and technical scenarios. Clara has also been actively engaged in the firm’s expanding practice on the east coast and in Texas.

Click here to read the full interview in Madame Architect.

A project by four Tulane School of Architecture students is featured in the recent 2019 Emerging Professionals Exhibit by AIA. The theme for this year’s AIA Emerging Professionals Exhibit is “Designing for Equity," and it's based on the Guides for Equitable Practice and the AIA value “We believe in the power of design." The 15 digitally exhibited projects are a representation of best practices for a more just and equitable profession.

The Tulane project team includes students and alumni from the Master of Sustainable Real Estate Development program Keristen Edwards, Lina Alfieri Stern, Muhanad Alfardan, and Veronika Suarez. Their proposed project, Hotel Inspire, is an accommodation for travelers centering the experiences and needs of people experiencing disabilities.

The vision for this hotel project was inspired by the experiences and vision of all avid travelers, no matter their physical circumstances. Every hotel operation is unique but one aspect shared by all hotels - if they are to operate profitably - is to retain the loyalty of existing satisfied customers and to attract new ones. If this is true, there is a market of 26 million people traveling with disabilities in the U.S. every year that like any other traveler, would simply wish traveling to be accessible and memorable. Not all hotel guests are the same or have the same abilities, at Hotel Inspire, upon arrival to the in-room experience the guest is given ownership to accommodate their environment according to their needs and preferences while also providing the expected practicalities. Guest rooms offer ample space to move freely, shower and sleep safely and feel luxurious and comforted no matter their support needs. The highlight feature of this hotel is the ramp, no longer should guests fear to wait at the top of the stair in the event of an emergency. Hotel Inspire is a place where there are no barriers but more options for enjoyment, safety, and comfort.

For more images of this project and more information about the 2019 AIA Emerging Professionals Exhibit, click here.

The BDA Berlin (Association of German Architects Berlin) has selected the urban design scenario “Reißverschluß” for Berlin-Hohenschönhausen by Irene Keil, a Senior Professor of Practice in Architecture at Tulane School of Architecture, and Jörg Pampe, ARGE Keil Pampe, to be included in an exhibition and the subsequent publication “BERLIN-ATLAS - Architektur als Kritik an dem, was da ist” (Berlin Atlas, architecture as a tool of criticism on the status quo). The exhibition was at the BDA gallery in Berlin from September 24 - October 24, 2019.

From the curators Andrew Alberts and Urs Füssler: "When architecture works within the context, it critiques the existing. It transforms, changes, integrates, re-conceptualizes, adds, amputates, juxtaposes, defamiliarizes, mis-interprets, elevates, exaggerates or refines, densifies and liberates. It offers an affirmative critique - by showing possibilities."

From the architects Irene Keil and Jörg Pampe: "The scenario “Reißverschluß” (zipper) is part of a series of proposals/scenarios for Berlin-Hohenschönhausen, a bedroom community of communist era housing slabs to the east of the city, established around the crossing station of several major infrastructure lines: commuter rail, regional rail, tram, and bus. In this underused zone lies the highest potential for connectivity and for the development of jobs, services, commerce and additional housing. The various scenarios explore and test the compatibility of new architectural figures with the existing buildings. The scenario “zipper” is based on the concept of interlocking - the spatial organization of the existing housing quarters and the new figure complement and complete each other; individual slab or object buildings become part of space defining edges or spatial terminations. New spaces are inserted into the vastness of the voids created by the configuration of 11-story housing slabs."

The curators were looking for representations of un-built projects for specific places in or around Berlin. The Berlin Atlas is an on-going project aiming to produce an alternative Stadtkarte (urban map) conceived by a multitude of authors and their ideas for the city. Preceding the atlas, a brochure with the selected proposals is being published yearly.