Cordula Roser Gray

Sr. Professor of Practice in Architecture

Cordula Roser Gray is an architect/designer and principal of crgarchitecture, a multidisciplinary, collaborative design firm based in New Orleans. crgarchitecture, often in conjunction with other practitioners and organizations, investigates multi-scalar responses to immediate contextual conditions, merging urban analysis, prototyping, planning and academic research with the challenges of identifying and connecting local and extended communal opportunities.

Her teaching agenda addresses environmentally, socially and humanitarian-minded aspects that invite and require the development of architectural solutions.

With experiences abroad and nationally, the firm focuses on the development of proposals that address economic, ecological and cultural aspects at the community scale, from the residential to urban and regional master planning frameworks. Before starting her own office, Roser Gray worked for Kohn Pedersen Fox, SOM and Gensler in New York and Studio EDR in New Orleans as a designer and project architect. She received her education at the Technische FachHochschule in Berlin and is an appointed Professor of Practice at the Tulane School of Architecture and a frequent team member of the Small Center for Collaborative Design. She has published several articles and papers including the forthcoming ‘Learning from New Orleans: Social Resilience for Urban Ecosystems’ and is the recipient of multiple design awards. 

Over the past several years, Roser Gray has taught and coordinated core and upper-level undergraduate and graduate design studios, as well as a series of seminars. Her goal within her teaching agenda is to educate students on a variety of levels related to all aspects of current practice, especially addressing environmentally, socially and humanitarian-minded aspects that invite and require the development of architectural solutions. As the Second Year core studio coordinator, she collaborated with the Center of Public Service on community-engagement opportunities for design students, exposed students to challenges and opportunities within the built environment of the local community and discussed a wide variety of thesis projects with the graduating class, many of them focused on community revitalization and creative solution finding at various scales. One of her main goals is to introduce students to interdisciplinary research and collaboration in order to promote the fostering of change-making through resourceful thinking. As a frequent collaborator of the Small Center for Collaborative Design, she was responsible for designing and implementing the master plan and several design-build prototypes at the Hollygrove Market and Farm, the first inner-city urban farming collective in New Orleans. She was also the lead designer for the award-winning design for the master plan for A. L. Davis Park in Central City New Orleans which was developed through many neighborhood meetings, polling, and interviews taking all aspects of communal challenges and opportunities into consideration. Similarly, the proposal for an Environmental Learning and Research Center proposed establishing long-term sustainability, resilience, and vitality for the Lower Ninth Ward, aiming to centralize leadership, organize community outreach and connect visitors and locals to their natural and built environment.