Studio

National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) Gulf Research Studio: Exploring Regional Climate Futures

Fall 2023. Open to undergraduate and graduate students, located at NOCHI Downtown.

Lead Instructor: Margarita Jover, Professor of Architecture & Program Director of Landscape-Engineering, and Liz Camuti, Assistant Professor in Landscape Architecture

The Gulf Coast Research Studio is organized as a road map to produce a Climate Adaptation Plan for the region (from Houston to Mobile) able to catalyze funds for implementation. In this second year of the research studio, students will continue to explore critical issues in the three areas of focus defined by the Gulf Research Program namely: Future of Offshore Energy, Future of Changing Gulf Coast Lines, and Future of Healthy and Resilient Communities. The aim of these first two years of study is to work collectively to generate innovative future scenarios and associated design projects that may help advise the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine investments in long-term transformation of the region that will utilize design to move away from ‘extractivism’ and its pernicious effects on people and ecology. 

Studio

Domesticating Bigness: Speculating on a Future for Ecological Housing Infrastructures

Fall 2023. Open to undergraduate students, located Uptown.

Lead Instructor: Zaid Kashef Alghata, Visiting Favrot Professor

This research studio delves into the challenge faced by the developing world, where most people live in rural and urban areas with contrasting conditions. It explores how Western urban ideals have disseminated these binaries and analyzes the limitations of models like the European and American cities, collage cities, landscape urbanism, and new urbanism in integrating housing with sustainable infrastructure. By creating an ecological prototype based on site, the studio seeks to develop an adaptive infrastructure that hybridizes sustainable systems and different types of occupancy. This research studio expands the role of architectural discourse by applying its expertise to better understand the intricate socio-environmental relationship between livable infrastructure and the buildings they serve. 

Studio

Appropriation and Modification: Swiss Models of Regeneration of Buildings, Urban Space, and Constructive Technique

Fall 2023. Open to undergraduate students, located Uptown.

Lead Instructor: Wendy Redfield, Associate Professor of Architecture

The studio explores the underlying prerequisites of architectural sustainability in its most holistic and comprehensive sense. How, and perhaps more importantly Why are certain objects, buildings, urban spaces, and ways of making sustained while others are discarded? While these questions are cultural and theoretical in nature, they have profound global, climactic implications for human survival and quality of life. The work of contemporary Swiss architects, notably the offices of Peter Zumthor and Herzog & De Meuron, includes a number of pertinent precedents at a variety of scales and modes of making that will be the focus of this research studio. 

This Mintz Global Research Studio includes subsidized housing and airfare for travel to Switzerland.

Studio

URBANbuild 19, Phased Urban Impact

Fall 2023. Open to undergraduate and graduate students, located at the Small Center.

Lead Instructor: Byron Mouton, Director of URBANbuild and Lacey Senior Professor of Practice in Architecture

Since 2005, the URBANbuild program (UB) has focused on the topics of affordable housing and urban intervention. Over the course of nearly 20 years, a body of work has been produced primarily amidst the economically challenged neighborhood of Central City. Two years ago, following the completion of the UB16 residence, the program initiated a master planning partnership with the Bethlehem Lutheran Church of New Orleans - aiming to develop a four-unit multifamily complex in compliance with new regulations established by New Orleans’ Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance. To date, phases one and two of that anticipated complex have been completed, and this UB19 studio will envision, develop, and permit phase three of that complex. The outcome of these fall semester research efforts will be realized in the spring, and fabrication of the selected scheme will occur in collaboration with city agencies, licensed subcontractors, material suppliers, students and faculty.

Studio

Small Center, Matters of Making

Fall 2023. Open to undergraduate and graduate students, located at the Small Center.

Lead Instructor: Emilie Taylor Welty, Director of Architecture, Design-Build Manager at the Small Center, and Favrot III Professor of Practice.

This Small Center design build studio focuses on material explorations with an ongoing partners Solitary Gardens and the John Thompson Legacy Center. The studio’s collaborative design work will reimagine our relationship with building materials toward more regenerative ends and result in a series of installations across the city. The work will directly inform the spring studio project and students will be part of the 20^th year impact assessment work the Small Center team is engaged in. This studio requires shop use and fabrication and will be based out of the Small Center building.

Studio

Preservation Studio I

Fall 2023. This is primarily a preservation program studio with a few spots open to Architecture students, located at NOCHI Downtown.

Lead Instructor: Mark Rabinowitz, Interim Director of Historic Preservation and Christovich Visiting Professor of Historic Preservation, and Cynthia Steward, Adjunct Lecturer in Historic Preservation.

This Preservation Studio is the first in a series of studios for Preservation majors. The studio provides a foundation in the core principles and concepts of historic preservation practice in the United States and beyond.

Studio

The New Orleans Public Space Project

Spring 2024. Open to undergraduate and graduate students, located at NOCHI Downtown.

Lead Instructor: Dean Iñaki Alday, Richard Koch Chair in Architecture, with Sean Fowler

The New Orleans Public Space Project examines the transformations needed in the city’s public space to address 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, one for each of the next semesters: 1. Streets, mobility and water management; 2. Barriers, disruptions and reconnections; 3. Heritage streetscape recovery; 4. City and river stitching. The Fall 2023 Research Studio will focus on redesigning tertiary and secondary streets, canal corridors and other public spaces to collect, store, and infiltrate water or to reuse the rainwater in all but exceptional storms, replenishing groundwater to address subsidence and reducing energy use. To achieve this goal, New Orleans public space will need to transform mobility, urban ecology, equity, and spatial qualities. 

Studio

Ecological Tectonics

Spring 2024.

Lead Instructor: Adam Marcus, Associate Professor of Architecture

This studio will explore ceramic material assemblies and facade systems as a locus for expanding architecture’s ecological performance. The studio will begin at the scale of the architectural component and develop this research into a building proposal by the end of the semester. Making and fabrication will be central to the studio workflow all stages of the process. Students will learn techniques of extrusion, slip-casting, and 3d-printing in collaboration with partners at the Newcomb Art Department.

Studio

Sustainability in the Tropics, FCAT Ecuador 

Spring 2024.

Lead Instructor: Sonsoles Vela Navarro, Assistant Professor of Architecture

What is sustainable design? This Research Studio 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 needs, wants and desires, and the environmental importance of the region, the studio aims to create a site specific sustainable design framework and toolkit as well as offer insight into sustainability in the region.

This Mintz Global Research Studio includes subsidized housing and airfare for travel to Ecuador.

Studio

Small Center, Actions and Impacts

Spring 2024. Located at the Small Center.

The Small Center is approaching its 20^th anniversary and this research studio will be assessing the impacts of past projects while also designing and building a project of their own. The studio will include engagement with community partners Solitary Gardens and the John Thompson Legacy Center. Building on the material exploration and fabrication research of the fall semester this studio will include a collaborative design process, permitting, and construction a project in the city with the partnering organization.

Note: there is a co-requisite 3 cr Fabrication Seminar

Studio

URBANbuild 19, Phased Urban Impact/Build

Spring 2024. Located on-site in Central City.

Lead Instructor: Byron Mouton, Director of URBANbuild and Lacey Senior Professor of Practice in Architecture

Since 2005, the URBANbuild (UB) program has realized a body of housing work, primarily in the economically challenged neighborhood of Central City. Last year UB initiated a master planning partnership with the Bethlehem Lutheran Church of New Orleans, and phase one of an anticipated four unit multifamily complex was completed. This UB19 studio will build the phase three development of that complex, designed in the fall semester of 2023 in collaboration with city agencies, licensed subcontractors, material suppliers, students and faculty. 

Note: there are 2 additional 3 credit co-requisites affiliated with this design build studio

Studio

Preservation Studio II

Spring 2024. Located at NOCHI Downtown. This is primarily a preservation program studio with a few spots open to Architecture students.

The Urban Conservation Studio concentrates on documenting, analyzing, and planning for the preservation of groups of buildings and their settings as a basis for understanding the technical, theoretical, and procedural aspects of urban heritage conservation. The course includes intensive study of representative historic residential and commercial districts in the region, where students work both independently and in teams to learn professional preservation planning concepts and methods.