113th Annual Meeting

Tour of recent projects by Tulane’s two award winning design-build programs, URBANbuild and Small Center. This tour is a mixture of built projects, projects under construction, and a mini geography lesson on the crescent city. In the nearly 20 years since Hurricane Katrina, Tulane’s design build programs have built over 50 structures in the city. Tour stops include award winning affordable housing prototyping approaches from URBANbuild and community-engagement based efforts such as Grow Dat Youth Farm and Parisite Skatepark. These projects showcase a breadth of scale and scope that can be accomplished in university-based design build settings.

Cost: $75
What: Design Build in the Swamp Tour
When: Thursday, March 20, 2025, 9:00am-1:00pm
Where: New Orleans
Included: Beverage & Snack
Tour Leaders: Emilie Taylor Welty & Byron Mouton, Tulane University

This workshop will offer guidance on the entire grant writing process from finding funding opportunities to preparing your best proposal with an emphasis on all research fields within architecture. Led by Corey Gracie-Griffin, Professor of Architecture, former Associate Dean for Research, and recipient of over $2.5M in external funding, participants will receive feedback on concept papers and biosketches as well as understand the larger role of external grants in the promotion and tenure process. This workshop is unique as it will provide specific advice for architecture faculty members from a peer. Participants with no previous grant writing experience as well as those who have experience are welcome to attend.

Cost: $75
What: Grant Writing for Architecture Faculty
When: Thursday, March 20, 2025, 9:00am-1:00pm
Where: InterContinental Hotel
Included: Beverage & Lunch
Tour Leaders: Corey Gracie-Griffin, Penn State University

Our values are validated through the spaces and places we design. The Design Justice training sessions explore the privilege and power structures that have defined injustice in the built environment from America’s inception. We will look at the history of the design justice movement and how the theory of practice continually advocates for the dismantling of power ecosystems that use architecture and design to create oppressive conditions throughout the built environment.

Like all institutions, Design imposes its power through policies, procedures, and practice and is subject to its own inherited biases. At the root of climate change is an infrastructure that exhausts 39% of our carbon emissions and demands 40% of our energy production. At the root of housing, transportation, and economic injustice there are remnants of redlining and convents that continue to extract wealth and codify structural or de facto segregation. At the root of unjust policing is a prison industrial complex sustained by spaces that extract human dignity and economic potential from marginalized people in the name of profit. At the root of food and commercial insecurity is the idea that retail (structures) follows rooftops, meaning the viability of a neighborhood is measured by the acceleration of housing values and individual assets. The force of these issues is often invisible but they are not insurmountable. The lasting permanence of our professional decisions requires us to pay particular attention to the injustices that result from our work and to seek Design Justice wherever possible. Architecture has the power to speak to the language of the people it serves, we as designers, are at our best when we are willing to serve the people without power.

Cost: $100
What: Design Justice Workshop
When: Thursday, March 20, 2025, 9:00am-1:00pm
Where: InterContinental Hotel
Included: Beverage & Lunch
Tour Leaders: Bryan Lee Jr, Colloqate

This walking tour will enrich participants’ understanding of queer and antiracist histories in the built environment, through a case study within the richly layered context of New Orleans’ French Quarter. Over two hours, participants will visit 10 sites significant to past and present political movements like Reconstruction, labor organizing, feminism and queer liberation. Each site is both specific to New Orleans and representative of typologies of site whose analogues can be found throughout the United States, the Caribbean, Latin America and West Africa. At each stop, we will ask attendees to respond to key questions about how the themes of the site are applicable to their own experience and practice.

Cost: $25
What: Into the Streets Tour
When: Thursday, March 20, 2025, 10:00am-12:00pm
Where: New Orleans – French Quarter
Tour Leaders: Kaede Polkinghorne, MIT & Chris Daemmrich, Collaborative School of Design

Critical housing issues in New Orleans make it difficult for residents to find accessible homes that they can afford. These pressures include the threat of short-term rentals, increasing insurance prices and planning for climate preparedness. In partnership with the AIA Housing and Community Development Knowledge Community, this tour and discussion will connect academia with practice, highlighting inclusive housing options for New Orleanians at a range of scales. We will visit AIA award-winning veterans housing; small-scale, faith-based infill initiatives; and mixed-use, health-centered senior housing. Examples and discussions will focus on opportunities to repair the damaged housing market through the intentional marriage of policy and design.

Cost: $75
What: Housing Across Scales Tour
When: Friday, March 21, 2025, 12:30pm-4:30pm
Where: New Orleans & near suburbs
Included: Lunch
Tour Leaders: Karen Kubey, University of Toronto; Ann Yoachim, Tulane University; Ceara O’Leary, University of Detroit Mercy; & Nicholas Jenisch, Tulane University

This tour will lead participants through the journey of stormwater in New Orleans through engineered, built environment, and natural system morphologies. Stops along the tour will include a historic stormwater pumping station operated by the Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans, a large-scale green infrastructure and active transportation project built and operated by the City of New Orleans, architectural solutions utilized in compliance with New Orleans’ resilient building and zoning codes, a project to pilot innovative land stewardship through resilient stormwater management, and community-based green infrastructure built by and for the residents of on of New Orleans’ most historic black enclaves.

Cost: $75
What: Green Stormwater Infrastructure Tour
When: Sunday, March 23, 2025, 9:00am-2:00pm
Where: New Orleans & Surrounding Areas
Included: Lunch
Tour Leaders: Tyler Antrup, Tulane University & Jeff Supak, Water Wise

Experience a one-of-a-kind tour that combines the Whitney Plantation and the City Culture Tour. Travel by bus to Whitney Plantation and learn about the plantation’s past and the harsh realities of rural plantation slavery. See how the city’s resilient enslaved community was able to preserve their culture through, traditions, religion, music, cuisine, and celebration. Visiting places like the levee breach from Hurricane Katrina, Studio B, Treme (the oldest Black neighborhood), and Civil Rights landmarks.

Cost: $150
What: Black History of New Orleans Tour
When: Sunday, March 23, 2025, 9:00am-4:00pm
Where: New Orleans
Included: Admission to Whitney Plantation & Lunch