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Spring 2026 Research Studios

ARCH 4041/5051 (Undergraduate) or ARCH 6051 (Graduate)

Bioactive Craft: Material Temporality and Layers of Identity
Faculty: Assia Crawford

This studio explores the relationship between living mycelium (mushroom) materials and traditional masonry construction, and the potential to craft bioactive material ecologies that reference local architectural language and craft. The studio will offer an opportunity for hands-on making with living materials and traditional tile construction to hybridize the two systems in layers that have different lifespans and roles within a bio-composite construction. Students will gain experience in growing building components, utilizing myco-welding to construct unit-based structures of living materials and masonry vaults, experience working in a laboratory for the purposes of developing new types of material ecologies, and engage in digital and manual fabrication and testing.

The making processes will serve as the basis for a critical design exploration looking at the role of these emerging material alternatives within an age of environmental decline, loss of biodiversity and societal uncertainty. The studio will envision modes of making for an age beyond fossil fuels and capitalist modes of consumption. Students will be asked to harness their existing and newly acquired understanding of nature and ecology to imagine the next steps in human/ non-human relationships and the building realm that may support them. This will be predicated on the notion that building language is a reflection of society’s social, political and spiritual state of being.

Atacama Desert Project
Faculty: Rubén García-Rubio, Cristóbal Molina Baeza

Summer 2024 has been recorded as the hottest period in Earth's history. 1 From January to September, the average global temperature was 1.54 °C above the pre-industrial baseline. This trend positions this year to become the warmest on record. 2 The intensification of global warming is exacerbating environmental hazards and contributing to increased desertification worldwide. How will we adapt to living in a warmer climate?

The Atacama Desert Project will focus on one of the driest and most ecologically distinctive environments on the planet. The Atacama’s ecosystem supports nearly one million inhabitants and is crucial for key industries such as copper and lithium mining, renewable energy production, innovative agriculture, and advanced astronomical observatories, among others. While certain areas of the Atacama Desert have experienced decades without rainfall, the effects of climate change—including unforeseen climatic events, a global rise in temperatures, and the spread of desertification— make it an exceptional site for learning valuable lessons and testing innovative ideas to mitigate and adapt our built environments to a warmer scenario.

By participating in a journey to Chile and the Atacama Desert, students will research and propose improvements to urban settlements within this extreme ecosystem. Emphasizing social equity, sustainability, ecological integrity and risk resilience, the research studio provides an opportunity to face real-world challenges, explore impactful solutions for sustainable development in extreme environments and gain skills that can be extrapolated to similar contexts globally.

Ecological Tectonics: Architectural Ceramic Assemblies for Climate Adaptation
Faculty: Adam Marcus

This research studio will explore ceramic material assemblies as a site for expanding architecture’s ecological agency. The studio will operate across several domains—the material, the communal, and the contextual—to explicitly meld technical knowledge with ecological and social agendas. Projects will 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.

Within the broad context of architectural ceramics, this course will focus specifically on the tectonics of clay ceramic parts: how modular components can be designed, fabricated, and assembled to form larger systems of enclosure and habitation. The primary emphasis of the fabrication research will be on additive manufacturing of clay, using robotic 3D printers to reinterpret traditional typologies of bricks, tiles, and shingles and speculate how this technology can open new possibilities for texture, form, and performance. The studio will engage in intensive and iterative physical modeling and full-scale prototyping, working both in Richardson Memorial Hall and in the Digital Ceramics Lab, a partnership between the Tulane School of Architecture and Built Environment and the Newcomb Art Department.

URBANbuild 21– Development, Realization and Documentation
Faculty: Byron Mouton, and Hugh Jackson

As a continuation of efforts initiated by the Fall URBANbuild studio, the UB21 Spring studio will further develop and fabricate a “Tiny Duplex Dwelling” to be sited in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans. Louvis Services will provide a site for the realization of students’ efforts. https://louvisservices.org/. A prototypical Tiny Home has been developed for construction. However, while the dwelling scheme is established, many material options are still to be considered, and fabrication details will be tested as they evolve. This studio research will rely upon common, affordable, construction systems; however, in addition, studio participants will also work in pursuit of creative and inventive assembly methods.

Each student will record and document revisions and developments of the scheme through the careful maintenance of a Record Set of Documents. Toward the end of the Fall Semester, a permit set of documents was QUICKLY ASSEMBLED and submitted to the city for permitting. Upon receipt of the permit and the initiation of construction, revisions will be continually catalogued. The final Record Set of Documents will be prepared for presentation upon the conclusion of construction.

The spring studio group will work at the full scale of dwelling and fabrication - focusing on material issues and the development of fabrication details through the realization of a built project. Twenty substantial projects have already been designed and constructed by the School’s URBANbuild program, and students will continue to build upon the lessons offered by those accomplishments.

Design and fabrication will take place within a fast 16-week timeframe. Students will be asked to communicate with tradespeople, acquire materials, develop building skills, and respectfully interact with community members. Students will be taught to safely use power tools along with effective construction techniques and will work Monday through Saturday. Periodically, due to weather delays and scheduling conflicts, full weekends of work will be required in exchange for lost weekdays; however, every effort is made to avoid that situation.

*NOTE: students are also required to enroll in URBANbuild Advanced Technology (3credits) and URBANbuild Professional Concerns (3 credits) Together these classes constitute a 12 credit hour group that is part of the spring build semester

WWII Heritage in the Caribbean (Preservation Studio)
Faculty: Aarthi Janakiraman

This research studio will explore the legacies of World War II in the Carribean. Focusing specifically on American military architecture in the US Virgin Islands, projects will grapple with these heritage sites as places for confronting the past alongside explorations into the opportunities this architecture presents for the future. As part of this collaborative studio in historic preservation and architecture, students will focus on the adaptive reuse, analysis and documentation of historic bunkers and other types of military architecture.

Through archival research, field surveys, and design proposals students will investigate the cultural significance of these sites and the complex history of American occupation overseas. By exploring new uses that balance heritage conservation with community needs, the studio situates this overlooked Caribbean history within current debates on power, memory and global history. Students will begin the semester by investigating this history through digital and local archival resources including the World War II Museum, followed by a field visit to the Caribbean to document, analyze and study these sites with the support of local heritage partners in preparation for students’ proposals. The research studio provides graduate students in architecture and historic preservation a hands-on opportunity to explore complex and layered histories and how we can make sense of them through the design of the built environment.