The work of Tulane faculty and students recently received national recognition from the 2025 Architectural Education Awards, presented by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA).

Adam Marcus, Associate Professor and Research Director of the Center on Climate Change and Urbanism at Tulane School of Architecture, with Andrew Kudless (Alum M.Arch '98), faculty at University of Houston, received a Creative Achievement Award for their book Drawing Codes: Experimental Protocols of Architectural Representation.

Additionally, Emilie Taylor Welty, Director of Architecture, Design-Build Manager at the Albert and Tina Small Center for Collaborative Design, and Favrot III Associate Professor of Architecture, was recognized for her work with a team of students, staff, and faculty - including Jose Cotto, Nick Jenisch, and Ann Yoachim - who worked on the Sugar Roots Outdoor Classroom project, received a Design Build Award. The project was the focus of the Fall 2021 Research Studio hosted by the school's Albert and Tina Small Center for Collaborative Design in close partnership with local nonprofit Sugar Roots Farm.

The ACSA's 2025 Architectural Education Awards honor "architectural educators for exemplary work in areas such as building design, community collaborations, scholarship, and service. The award-winning professors inspire and challenge students, contribute to the profession’s knowledge base, and extend their work beyond the borders of academia into practice and the public sector."

Creative Achievement Award: Adam Marcus

This award recognizes a specific creative achievement in teaching, design, scholarship, research, or service that advances architectural education.

Drawing Codes: Experimental Protocols of Architectural Representation
Adam Marcus | Tulane University
Andrew Kudless | University of Houston

Abstract:

Drawing Codes is a curatorial and research platform for investigating how emerging technologies of design and production have catalyzed new ways to engage with traditional practices of architectural drawing. The project, pursued through curation, scholarship, and workshops, blends research and teaching into a multi-year pedagogical project exploring the impact of computation on the relationship between code and drawing: how rules and constraints inform the ways architects document, analyze, represent, and design the built environment.

The project was initiated through a multivolume series of exhibitions that commissioned 96 experimental drawings from global contributors, representing a diverse cross section through the vanguard of contemporary practice. The first volume of the exhibition included 24 commissioned works and traveled to four venues from 2017-2018. The second volume of the exhibition expanded the archive with 24 new drawings and toured five venues from 2018-2021. The third volume of 48 drawings was commissioned for the compendium book (Applied Research + Design, 2024), which includes a new introductory essay by the curators situating the project within the broader histories of architectural representation and computational design, and as well as four critical invited essays by Ila Berman, Sarah Hearne, Amelyn Ng, and John McMorrough, reflecting on the broader implications of the project.

The project has catalyzed conversations across institutions about the impact of digital technologies on architectural representation in both practice and academic curricula. It has also catalyzed a series of experimental workshops working with students to test new computational workflows of representation. At a moment when automation increasingly suffuses contemporary life—and when one might assume that architecture’s computational turn has diminished the importance of drawing to the discipline and to the profession—Drawing Codes reveals the opposite: a vital and enduring critical engagement with conventions of architectural representation as a fertile territory for invention and speculation.

Design-Build Award: Small Center and Sugar Roots

This award honors the best practices in school-based design-build projects.

Teaching Pavilion for Food Justice and Water Management
Emilie Taylor | Tulane University
Jose Cotto | Tulane University
Ann Yoachim | Tulane University
Nick Jenisch | Tulane University

Abstract:

How can design connect people with their food systems? Educating kids and connecting New Orleans with their food systems is at the core of what this teaching farm does every day. As the farm’s programming and activities grow, it reached out to Small Center, Tulane community design center to imagine the future of their educational space. The resulting entrance pavilion and teaching space reflects the farm’s mission of sustainability and food justice and alleviates the site’s water management issues. The outdoor classroom models thoughtful interventions on the land and connections with nearby crops and livestock while also modeling a resilient multi-use space in a vulnerable coastal climate.

The design-build studio research underscores the sustainability goals of the farm by delving into water management methods, sustainable materials and ecologies, and effective ways design can be used as a tool for education. The engage-design-build process was a one semester research studio conducted in collaboration with a non-profit partner organization. The built impacts are measured in both student learning outcomes and in the impact the project has had on the farm’s number of programming and events, school field trips, and reduction in the number of days the farm is closed due to localized flooding.

The pressing environmental and social issues we face are complex, layered, and seem beyond an individual’s ability to change. The semester was a case study in small collective acts that have impact & interdisciplinary collaborations that connect people to their local food systems and landscapes, and advocate for change.

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