Issuu

NewZine

2026

Building with the environment What’s Inside? Pg 6 | A New Facility for Teaching, Research, and Collaboration: The Graduate Hub Pg 8 | Designing with and Against AI: Voices from the Built Environment Pg 12 | 2026 Faculty Cohort Joins School

Issue 06

Contents THE LEADERSHIP

THE SCHOOL

THE DISCIPLINES

THE STUDENTS

THE ALUMNI

THE ADVANCEMENT

On the Cover:

LandForm: The convergence of Architecture and Landscape B Y K AT H E R I N E B U R K H A R T ( B . A R C H ‘ 2 6 ) , T H E S I S 2 0 2 6

This undergraduate thesis project, LandForm: The convergence of Architecture and Landscape, proposes the full-tilt integration of landscape and architecture as one unified process and discipline at the building scale. The collision and subsequent meshing of the two design principle extremes, the “organic” and the “artificial,” results in a new and more successful method of intervention that preserves the strengths of both. Rather than a grey area, we see the existence of a new color.

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LETTER FROM THE DEAN

“The world does not need more gatekeepers; it needs more architects.”

elcome to the latest issue of our NewZine with a quick review of the 20252026 academic year, the first back in our fantastic Richardson Memorial Hall. As you may have seen through the Dean’s Dispatch, your visits to New Orleans or just conversations, the school continues to enjoy a fantastic time of optimism, energy and creativity. Our undergraduate Design and Real Estate Development programs are well consolidated and with a strong presence at the larger Tulane. The newest programs, in Sustainable Urbanism and Landscape Architecture and Engineering, started a year ago, perhaps small but extremely promising. Historic Preservation continues to have an invaluable impact on the heritage of the region. Architecture is booming despite all the national headwinds — growing again with a new faculty cohort (see p. 12). Regarding architecture, while we feel a healthy stride, we are surely affected by the issues regarding education and the profession. That is why I felt obligated to engage in the presidency of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) in a four-year commitment starting in July 2026. Architecture faces a paradox: at a moment when the world urgently needs designers who can reimagine how to inhabit our planet without destroying it, we are producing fewer architects, not

more. The path into this profession has become longer, costlier, and narrower — filtering out precisely the voices and perspectives we most need. This is the time for ACSA to lead the fundamental conversation about who gets to become an architect, how they get there, how to expand access, and whom architecture and the fields of the built environment ultimately serve. My conviction comes from three decades of work combining practice, education, and public service. As founding principal of aldayjover architecture and landscape, I have spent my career working in public projects, demonstrating that architecture can serve communities often excluded from its benefits, as well as redesigning how cities live with rivers in Spain, India, Latin America, and along the Gulf Coast. Tulane School of Architecture and Built Environment is positioned at ground zero of climate change, where serving vulnerable communities is central to our mission. Through initiatives like the Yamuna River Project, I have learned that transformative change requires building coalitions across disciplines, institutions, and nations not only with humility, but with ambition. What I hear time and again is this: our faculty are exhausted by accreditation burdens that consume resources better spent on students. Our graduates face years of underpaid work before they can practice independently. And too many talented young people, dis-

proportionately from underrepresented backgrounds, do not reach the last professional step, or never find us, or we don’t find them. At the same time, rigorous professional education is essential, and a medieval apprenticeship system without education is unacceptable if we want to build an equitable profession. These problems share a common root: a credentialing system that treats entry into practice as an endpoint to be earned through endurance, rather than as a beginning. Architecture cannot be just for those who can afford it. A graduate with a professional degree needs to be able to practice and serve society — with their much needed creativity — without unnecessary hurdles. The world does not need more gatekeepers; it needs more architects. It needs architects empowered to bring their imagination to the profound challenges of our time, from every community, every background, every corner of this country and the world. The students in our studios today will inherit the consequences of what we build — or fail to build. While these are not easy times, they are most definitely urgent, and I believe we can do substantial changes for our students, the profession and the society we serve.

I Ñ A K I A L D AY

NEWZINE PRODUCTION TEAM Rawad Nahhas Executive Editor + Writer

Catherine Restrepo Design Director, Photography

Karl Dixon Layout, Design, Photography

Evan Allbritton Writer NewZine

THE LEADERSHIP

LETTER FROM THE CHAIR Eric Van Aukee (A ‘82) AIA, LEED AP

Dean’s Advisory Council Chair Principal, Perkins&Will

t is with gratitude and enthusiasm that I have accepted the role as Chair of the Dean’s Advisory Council of the Tulane University School of Architecture and Built Environment. The School continues to educate, lead, and inspire the profession of design and architecture. It is a beacon of innovation in one of the most iconic cities in North America and its influence on regional, national, and international design, sustainability and research cannot be understated. As a leading institution of higher learning, Tulane and the School have shown unprecedented growth as a first choice of matriculating students in North American, Central America, the Caribbean, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia and the world. My journey as a graduate of Tulane and as a professional was enhanced by the rigor and diligence of the University and the creativity of the New Orleans community. I credit the

“The continually expanding programs, degrees, and research advance at Tulane offer a more holistic understanding of the role the built environment has in causing, mitigating, and adapting to climate change.”

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School and the City as major contributors to my personal growth and success. Tulane continues to inspire graduates, students, faculty and collaborators in new and different ways. I want to thank Ken Schwartz for contacting me over a decade ago and asking me to join the council. We celebrate his amazing career, leadership, and contributions to Tulane and New Orleans. My fellow board and council members, who embraced me and encouraged me to actively participate in supporting the School and who have continued to generate enthusiasm and support, are the lifeblood of this council. I thank them for their continued support. I want to also recognize Lloyd N. “Sonny” Shields for his leadership as the Council chair I first served with and the continued role that he plays in Tulane and our mission. As Tulane University School of Architecture and Built Environment looks forward to another century of leadership, Dean Iñaki Alday and his remarkable team and Faculty offer a renewed opportunity for advancing education, research and innovation in design, sustainability, preservation, real estate, sustainability, architecture, urban design, landscape, environment, and climate change. The continually expanding programs, degrees, and research advance at Tulane offer a more holistic understanding of the role the built environment has in causing, mitigating, and adapting to climate change. Creativity in design, form, beauty, technology, and material science are constantly being advanced at our alma mater, and I encourage you to join me in this amazing future that

Tulane offers. My goal as chair is to support the Dean and the School as they boldly create initiatives in expanding the universal role that Tulane can play in advancing an understanding of design, architecture and the built environment. Advocacy for community, socio-economic advancement, urbanism, sustainability and response to climate change will be embodied in the development of the Center on Climate Change and Urbanism within the School. The recent creative collaboration between the School and the School of Science and Engineering programs at Tulane offer a significant opportunity to innovate around landscape design, earth sciences, and civil engineering. All these initiatives and the faculty and students require our continued support. Advancing these and other initiatives of Dean Alday are my primary objective. I am honored to be your servant in helping to continue the building of a culture of advocacy and sponsorship. I hope you can join us in supporting one of the fastest growing schools of architecture in the country! I could not succeed in this next chapter of leadership as Dean’s Advisory Council Chair without the amazing work of my friend and colleague, Angela O’Byrne. Please join me and the council in recognizing and thanking Angela for her professional passion and leadership as past Chair of this esteemed group. We appreciate her personal commitment and continued participation on the council. Success and best wishes for a wonderful year!

THE LEADERSHIP

THE 2025-2026 DEAN’S ADVISORY COUNCIL Eric V. Aukee AIA, LEED AP, A ‘82 Sherman Oaks, CA

Angela O’Byrne A ‘83 New Orleans, LA

Stacy A. Bourne FAIA, A ‘90 St Thomas, VI

Laurie J. Petipas RA, A ‘75 San Francisco, CA

James E. Bry A ‘91 Miami, FL

Richardson K. Powell A ‘76, A ‘77 Lake Wales, FL

Jamie H. Bush A ‘93 Los Angeles, CA

Welling ton J. Reiter A ‘81 Phoenix, AZ

James L. Dewar III A ‘94 Palm Springs,CA

Michelle A. Rinehart EdD, A ‘91 Atlanta, GA

Steve L. Dumez New Orleans, LA

Christopher M. Roth A ‘91 Chicago, IL

Ronald J. Finvarb Miami Beach, FL Matthew D. Frank A ‘91 New York, NY Robert G. Hale Jr. FAIA, A ‘77 Los Angeles, CA Jonathan B. Halle A ‘93 Potomac, MD Brad A. Hastings AIA, A ‘82 Bishopville, MD Nicole Hobson-Morris A *01 Baton Rouge, LA Robert A. Ivy Jr. FAIA , A ‘76 Columbus, MS Jay M. Kaplan Houston, TX Kathleen F. Laborde B* 91 New Orleans, LA Joanna L. Lombard AIA, A ‘75 Miami, FL

Christopher A. Sgarzi NCARB, LEED AP, A ‘86 Concord, MA Lloyd N. Shields A ‘74, L *77 New Orleans, LA Jonathan P. Siegel A ‘92 San Francisco, CA Gabriel A. Smith FAIA, A ‘88 Brooklyn, NY Ione Rubenstein Stiegler FAIA A ‘83 La Jolla, CA David C. Thompson A ‘91 Studio City,CA Manjiv S. Vohra G *89 Burlingame, CA J. David Waggonner III FAIA New Orleans, LA Simcha Z. Ward A ‘11 Charlotte, NC

Leonardo E. Marmol Los Angeles, CA

John C. Williams A’ 11 New Orleans, LA

Ann Merritt Masson NC ‘74, G *92 New Orleans, LA

Marcel L. Wisznia A ‘73 New Orleans, LA

Jenifer Wells Megalli AIA, LEED AP, A *17 New York, NY

Peter M. Wolf PhD, G *63 New York, NY

Brad M. Meltzer A ‘90 Miami Beach, FL

Photos by Catherine Restrepo, TuSABE

Homecoming 2025 Recap

lumni, parents, students, supporters, and friends celebrated the Wave 2025 Weekend at a special Tulane School of Architecture and Built Environment Homecoming Reception on Friday, November 14, 2025. As the first Homecoming in the newly renovated and reimagined Richardson Memorial Hall, guests had the opportunity to tour the building, as well as view student work on display, and hear an update on the School from Dean Iñaki Alday. The event also celebrated the 20th anniversaries of URBANbuild and the Albert and Tina Small Center for Collaborative Design, both of which continue to serve as pillars of applied practice in the School’s curriculum. And alumni classes celebrated milestone reunions from the following cohorts: 1975, 1980, 1985, 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015, and 2020. See photos from homecoming at www. flickr.com/photos/tulanearch/albums. NewZine

THE SCHOOL

Historic Renovation Expands Educational Space for Tulane School of Architecture and Built Environment STORY BY NAOMI KING ENGLAR

he Tulane University School of Architecture and Built Environment is working with local developer Gulf Coast Housing Partnership (GCHP) to renovate 24,000 square feet in an historic building that once served as a department store and warehouse in Central City. Located along the Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard corridor, the three-story building at 1833 Polymnia St. will be transformed into an educational facility meant to expand opportunities for teaching, research and collaboration for the school’s graduate students. The new facility, named The Graduate Hub, will include one large studio space, classrooms, a lecture hall, research labs, advanced fabrication labs, meeting rooms, a lounge area and offices to accommodate up to

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120 students, faculty and staff. The Graduate Hub will support the evolving needs of architecture and design education and the school’s current graduate student population. Importantly, it’s a complement to, not a replacement of, the school’s historic home in Richardson Memorial Hall, which reopened in March 2025 after its own renovation on Tulane’s uptown campus. “Providing this dedicated facility means we will offer a unique graduate student experience within urban contexts that enhance our students’ built environment education,” said Iñaki Alday, dean of the School of Architecture and Built Environment, noting the facility’s plans for a specialized Historic Preservation lab, a dedicated outdoor fabrication space, a large event hall and other research

and teaching resources. Plans for The Graduate Hub renovation aim to restore the vitality of the building, originally built circa 1900, as a contribution to the vibrant and culturally significant Central City neighborhood. The façade will be thoughtfully preserved, including plans to retain four large, exterior support beams that have braced the south side of the building for over a decade. The design team is led by local firms CCWIV and Colectivo. “The design combines the careful preservation of the building with an exciting textile façade that reuses the existing bracings on the side,” Alday said. “The intersection of preservation and reuse is present throughout the project, which has been noted with approval and enthusiasm from local historical review groups like the

THE SCHOOL

Renders courtesy of Colectivo

New Orleans Historic District Landmarks Commission and Louisiana’s State Historic Preservation Office.” The Graduate Hub’s location was selected due to its proximity to the school’s longstanding community-based design center on Barrone Street, the Albert and Tina Small Center for Collaborative Design. The Small Center, which will remain in its building at 1725 Baronne St., has a 20-year history of working with local nonprofits and community organizations to provide design services and educational programming. Having the two buildings adjacent to each other creates opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration and shared fabrication resources. Off-street parking will be available, and the school is working with the University to provide transportation to the Graduate Hub beginning fall 2027. Construction is scheduled to begin in fall 2026 with completion expected in summer 2027 and classes starting in fall 2027. The school will serve as primary tenant in the building under a 10-year lease with an option to extend. Building owner and developer (GCHP) has led the approval pro-

cesses for all state, local and federal oversight requirements, including submissions to the New Orleans Historic District Landmarks Commission and Louisiana’s State Historic Preservation Office. “We are excited to partner with the Tulane School of Architecture and Built Environment to bring new life to this historic building,” said Kathy Laborde, president and CEO of Gulf Coast Housing Partnership. “This project aligns closely with GCHP’s mission and builds on our work along the Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard corridor, while creating a space that will help educate the next generation of architects, designers, preservationists and developers.” Additionally, GCHP has met with neighborhood businesses and nonprofits to share plans for the renovation and gather feedback, including the Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard Merchant and Business Association. “The Graduate Hub can contribute to the vision and the continued growth of the corridor,” said Jiarra Rayford, president of the Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard Merchants & Business Association. “I look forward to the foot traffic it will bring, the intentionality behind choosing this

part of the community and the economic stimulus it will provide to our small business owners. Most of all, I look forward to the collaboration it creates with the community and residents, and the boost it will bring to our overall quality of life.” New Orleans City Councilmember Lesli Harris (District B), who represents the community where The Graduate Hub will be located, also noted the project’s potential for positive neighborhood engagement and economic impact. “The Tulane School of Architecture and Built Environment Graduate Hub represents a meaningful investment in Central City and the continued revitalization of the Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard corridor,” said Harris. “I’m excited to see Gulf Coast Housing Partnership and Tulane University invest in a way that preserves our historic built environment while creating new opportunities for education, economic activity and stronger connections with the surrounding community.” For more information about the project, visit the FAQ website at architecture.tulane.edu/the-graduate-hub.

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THE SCHOOL

Designing with & Against AI Voices from the Built Environment

Photographs courtesy of Meghan Saas, Assia Crawford, and Kate Burkhart

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omewhere between the utopian promises and the existential panic, architects, planners, and designers are quietly figuring out what AI actually means for the work of shaping cities and spaces. Across Tulane School of Architecture and Built Environment (TuSABE), faculty are grappling with the same question: what does it mean to work alongside a tool this powerful? Meghan Saas, Director of the Design program at TuSABE, shared that “AI should serve as a collaborative tool rather than the beginning or end of the creative process,” emphasizing the importance of human thinking and questioning, something AI cannot replicate “the machine gets in the way of the making process.” She discussed her cautious approach to allowing AI use in the classroom, particularly using platforms trained on opt-in artist materials. Saas also addressed concerns about AI’s impact on ownership issues, highlighting the murkiness of intellectual property laws and the importance of teaching students to think critically about AI’s limitations, including its tendency to amplify existing biases. Assia Crawford, Assistant Professor in Architecture, sees AI as a mirror, and a skewed one: “AI is very good at producing things that exist that are widely documented, and what we widely document is very skewed.”

AI is very good at producing things that exist that are widely documented, and what we widely document is very skewed. Assia Crawford

She adds that who’s producing the information and what kind of information actually gets used in terms of these datasets is very much curated by a tiny portion of society. Crawford raises a serious concern about cognitive dependency. She points to studies suggesting that when we outsource mental tasks to AI, the associated brain functions begin to disengage. The quality of AI output, she argues, is entirely determined by the quality of the questions you bring to it, which requires deep specialist knowledge, not just surface-level familiarity. She is skeptical of AI as a design generator. She describes it as a “backward-looking tool.” It references precedents without cultural specificity or contextual awareness, blending Egyptian, Greek, Gothic, and Renaissance architecture without distinguishing them. Crawford also challenges outdated statistics on AI’s water consumption, noting that the widely-cited figures come from far less efficient models. Her graphic novel, “BIOS in Search of Zoe”, used the equivalent of 3–6 toilet flushes of water. That said, she acknowledges the net environmental cost is real. John Renne, Director of the Real Estate Development Program at TuSABE, speaks on AI’s immediate impact on real estate and urban planning. His most concrete example is uploading entire zoning codes into an LLM to run regulatory scenarios. What once required specialized attorneys is now accessible to any practitioner. He also reframes AI as NewZine

THE SCHOOL

a neutral tool. In Transit-Oriented Development contexts, AI helps pursue multi-modal optimization (transit, walking, cycling) to reduce car dependency, but the values guiding that work remain a human responsibility. Renne touches on his work in urban resilience and AI: “Building AI literacy gives me better tools to pursue the resilience work, and the resilience work keeps reminding me what the tools are ultimately for.” In class, Renne requires disclosure of AI use and holds students to their own standards of judgment. He’s also co-developing OralExam.AI with a colleague, using AI to scale oral/Socratic exams, which are harder to fake than written work, as a response to authorship concerns. Ira Concepcion, Visiting Assistant Professor at TuSABE, finds that architecture has always absorbed technological shifts: hand drafting to CAD to BIM to AI. Concepcion frames AI not as a rupture but as a continuation of that evolution. Counterintuitively, Concepcion argues that large firms face more friction adopting AI due to bureaucracy and standardization. Solo practitioners and small firms are more agile, and AI gives them capabilities previously only available to larger offices. The danger, in his view, is firms attempting to algorithmize the design process itself. Design requires synthesizing intangible inputs: client conversations, site observations, personal instinct. That cannot be reduced to data. On a notably contrarian take, Concepcion argues the cost-benefit of AI’s energy consumption will ultimately favor environmental outcomes: “with anything that we build — even buildings — the first buildings we built were very inefficient. But we had to go through that iteration to get the highest performance buildings that we have today... we’re just in the infancy of this technology.” What these four voices share is a refusal of the binary. None of them are dismissing AI; none are surrendering to it. They are, instead, doing the harder work of determining what to protect. The built environment has always been shaped by the tools available to those who build it. The question AI forces, is which humans get to hold the tools, and what they are asked to give up in return.

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THE SCHOOL

School Welcomes Eight New Faculty

avan Vadgama joins the faculty as Visiting Assistant Professor and Fellow in Architecture and South Asian Studies. Based between Berlin and New York, Vadgama studies how cities draw lines around property, care, and belonging, research that began with his Princeton thesis on Ahmedabad’s gaushala, or urban cow-shelters, and has since grown into CattleDAO, a speculative blockchain governance interface for the city’s stray cow care network, and the traveling exhibition Holy Cow, Stray Cow! At Tulane, he plans to expand that inquiry into a global mapping of care infrastructures and a multispecies urban shed prototype, while bringing computational and speculative methods into studio teaching. A recent resident at Akademie Schloss Solitude, Vadgama holds degrees from Princeton and the Universität der Künste Berlin, and is eager to see what the Gulf region’s own contested infrastructures can reveal in conversation with his research in Indian cities.

ixi Chen is the new Architecture and Asian Studies Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor. Born in Shanghai and raised outside Chicago, she runs the creative practice XXS–Xixi Studio, which examines diaspora and memory through work recently featured in MIT’s Thresholds, MoMA PS1’s Greater New York, and the Asia Art Archive’s collections in Hong Kong and Brooklyn. At Tulane, she’ll continue developing Ghost Houses, a project reconstructing demolished ancestral homes in Shanghai through oral history, pursuing both a participatory public archive and a manuscript on the city’s housing policy, alongside an elective seminar on global Chinatowns. A licensed architect who has practiced at Michael Maltzan Architecture and 2x4, Chen holds degrees from Columbia and the University of Illinois, and hopes New Orleans’ own layered history of displacement and memory will inform her research.

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obert Hutchison brings over thirty years of practice as he joins the school as Professor of Practice in Architecture, alongside a career of teaching at the University of Washington and Washington State University. His self-funded research uses architecture to sit with questions it never intends to build: after Memory Houses examined personal loss, his current project, Memory Landscapes, turns to Japan’s Tohoku coastline, devastated by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, reimagining its tsunami walls as public space. The project, informed by a fiveweek, 750-kilometer walk along the coastline, will be published by Park Books this fall alongside interviews with Japanese architects and community members. Hutchison sees New Orleans, shaped by the shifting Mississippi delta, as a similar laboratory for studying the fragile relationship between engineering, ecology, and social resilience.

ra Concepcion, AIA, WELL AP, joins the faculty as a Visiting Assistant Professor in Architecture. Senso Architects, his practice studies how light, sound, material, and atmosphere shape the body, influencing stress, attention, and recovery, while his research through Senso Labs asks how AI can sharpen architectural judgment rather than replace it. A 2019 graduate of Tulane’s Master of Architecture program who has taught in the core studio sequence since 2023, Concepcion wants students to treat research and narrative as the beginning of design, not a step before it. As AI reshapes the discipline, he sees his role as helping students stay authors of their own ideas, using new tools without losing the thinking underneath them.

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THE SCHOOL

ohn Dwyer joins the School as a Professor of Practice in Architecture and the new Director of the Albert and Tina Small Center for Collaborative Design. Dwyer is currently working with city leadership in Philadelphia to advance housing-first as both policy and architectural typology, tackling youth homelessness through graduate housing along the city’s Market East corridor. He hopes to bring that same systemic approach to the Small Center, building on its 20-year legacy of trust-driven, participatory design in New Orleans neighborhoods rebuilt after Katrina. For Dwyer, the questions guiding that work are simple: who benefits, who is served, and who decides. The return holds personal weight, too, he left New Orleans 18 years ago after a project fell through, and calls this appointment a chance to come home.

alu Borja López, an Ecuadorian architect joins the School as Professor of Practice in Architecture. Borja has been a partner and principal at Al Borde Architecture Studio since 2009, an experimental practice built on collective authorship, local materials, and opening the design process to the people who use it. Her work has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale, the Sharjah Architecture Triennial, and the Chicago Architecture Biennial, and recognized with the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture and the Schelling Architecture Medal. She is currently studying award-winning collaborative practices across Latin America to understand what makes their design methods distinct. Trained in both architecture and development studies, with a recent fellowship in Spatial Justice at the University of Oregon, Borja sees design-build teaching and participatory practice as two sides of the same skill: facilitating collective creation.

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THE SCHOOL

ulia Hedges is the new NASEM Gulf Landscape Fellow and Research Assistant Professor, working within the Gulf Coast Climate Futures Program to study the region’s marginal and orphan oil and gas wells. Reading these underground assemblages as “prophetic views into our environmental futures,” she traces relationships across scales and systems to imagine what comes after extraction. That approach, building narratives across processes, histories, and artifacts to generate new architectural knowledge, carries through her work on vacancy Birmingham, and her MLA thesis reimagining the Jewish summer camp as a diasporic, anti-territorial practice. Most recently a Visiting Assistant Professor in Landscape Architecture at Auburn University, Hedges holds an MLA with distinction from Harvard’s GSD and a BA in architecture from Yale, and arrives at Tulane eager to read the Gulf Coast’s contested landscapes alongside her students.

agdalena Valdevenito Belmar joins the School as Assistant Professor in Architecture. A Chilean architect and founder of the Santiago-based practice affirma, she works at the intersection of technical detailing and community-making, treating building assemblies as both a design and political act. Her recent work with the nonprofit San Isidoro takes an “acupuncture” approach to school infrastructure across Santiago, small, minimal interventions, like a completed shaded plaza at Politécnico San Luis, that add up to a larger network of social investment. Valdevenito holds degrees from Columbia University and Universidad Católica de Chile, and describes her teaching as horizontal, rooted in radical pedagogy that pushes students to question the architect’s role as distant expert. She sees New Orleans’ layered history of disparity, disaster, and resilience as fertile ground for that ethically grounded approach.

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THE DISCIPLINES

Our Proudest Moments S T O RY BY E VA N A L B R I T T O N

School Joins World Monuments Fund Academic Collaboration

Dean Iñaki Alday Elected to ACSA

his Spring, Dean Iñaki Alday was elected Second Vice President of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) for a four-year commitment. After his first year, he will become Vice President, then President, and lastly Past President by year four. Along with contributing to important conversations about education in architecture, Alday hopes “to bring the values and perspectives of our school into national and international conversation.”

Four Students Selected For Metropolis Future100 List Metropolis Magazine named four recent graduates in its Future100 cohort, a list of the top graduating architecture and interior design students in the United States and Canada. The selected students are: Camryn Francis (M.Arch *26), Asha Hokanson (B.Arch ‘26), Max Kaplan (B.Arch ‘26), and Seyedeh Delaram Khoshhal Ziabari (M.Arch *26). Their work deeply reflects the school’s values, and their achievements are well-deserved.

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TuSABE’s Historic Preservation Program, Columbia University, The University of Pennsylvania, Carleton University, and the University of Duhok are working together as founding academic partners of the Suzanne Deal Booth Institute for Heritage Preservation, an initiative of the World Monuments Fund, to expand opportunities for field-based learning. Through the collaboration, graduate students will get to actively work on preservation projects around the world.

THE DISCIPLINES

Richardson Memorial Hall

Photo © Alan Karchmer

Photo by Nick LiCausi, TuSABE

New Interdisciplinary Minor Prepares Students to Address Climate Change In February, TuSABE, the Celia Scott Weatherhead School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, and the School of Science and Engineering launched a new minor in Climate Change: Science and Practice. Directed by Favrot II Associate Professor of Sustainable Real Estate and Urban Planning Jesse M. Keenan, the minor’s mission is to equip students to advance climate change mitigation and adaptation. The program is open to all Newcomb-Tulane College students.

Tulanians Honored at AIA New Orleans Design Awards

Richardson Memorial Hall wins AIA Louisiana Honor Award

This summer, members of the School won multiple honors at the AIA New Orleans 2026 Design Awards. This year’s awardees include: Calvin Gallion, winner of the Emerging Professional Young Architects Award; The Albert and Tina Small Center for Collaborative Design, which won the Growing Local Pavilion, Small Scale Award of Merit; and finally, our own Richardson Memorial Hall, Tulane University by Trapolin-Peer Architects won the Adaptive Reuse and Renovation Honor Award.

Shortly after the completed renovation of Richardson Memorial Hall, Trapolin-Peer Architects won a AIA Louisiana 2025 State Honor Award for its design. Their revitalization of the nearly 120-year-old building strikes a balance between preservation and forward-looking design, establishing a unique yet cohesive feel throughout. The award alone is a great honor, but the recognition also reflects the School’s broader mission — to shape a built environment that is both alive and meaningful.

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THE DISCIPLINES

Per Program STO RY BY EVAN ALLBR I TTON

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Photo by Catherine Restrepo, TuSABE

THE DISCIPLINES

t the Tulane School of Architecture and Built Environment (TuSABE), we believe that the study of architecture should not be one-size-fits all, because addressing the world’s challenges isn’t either. With a TuSABE education, students are prepared across multiple disciplines, bringing a unique perspective to the built environment while sharing a commitment to interdisciplinary collaboration, environmental justice, and social responsibility. By studying across fields, our students don’t just learn the principles of architecture and design, but learn to apply them to create a more equitable future for all.

Architecture

he Architecture program at TuSABE provides students with the research and field experience they need to be the innovative builders of the future. Offered through two Bachelor’s degrees, two Master’s degrees, and an undergraduate Minor in Architecture, TuSABE allows students to follow their own path. Architecture faculty achieved remarkable things this academic year, from awards on campus to international organizations. In the fall, Adam Marcus Favrot IV, Associate Professor of Architecture, and Rubén García Rubio, Associate Professor of Architecture and Urbanism, received tenure promotions, and Emilie Taylor Welty (M.Arch *08) Favrot II, Associate Professor and Director of Architecture, was recognized in the Forbes 2025 America’s Best-inState Residential Architects. In November 2025, Associate Professor of Architecture, Christopher Meyer, and Professor of Practice in Architecture, Shawna Meyer, won an AIA Miami Design Award for their practice Atelier Mey’s revitalization project Penumbra, located in Miami’s Coconut Grove. Assistant Professor of Architecture, Assia Crawford, was also honored last November with her

Photo by Karl Dixon, TuSABE

election to the board of the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA), an international network of digital design researchers and professionals. Faculty work was also awarded grants and featured on campus. In the spring, Crawford was again honored, but this time with a Tulane COR Fellowship grant for her research on sustainable building materials. At the end of the school year, visiting faculty Emek Erdolu, Architecture and Computation Fellow, and Alper Turan, Architecture and Design Fellow, completed their two-year fellowships with research presentations. Erdolu’s presentation focused on the exhibition and symposium “Reimagining Generative Design,” which connected recent architectural engagements with artificial intelligence to the longer intellectual history of architecture. Turan meanwhile presented the student-built installation that he led, called “Fluid Monuments: Playground,” which stood in front of Richardson Memorial Hall (RMH) as an interactive art installation. In addition to faculty work, our

Architecture program offers our students the opportunity to get field research and travel during the school year through various travel research studios. In 2025, research studios were based within Louisiana, in other parts of the U.S., including San Francisco, and abroad, with students visiting Humayun’s Tomb in India and the remote village of Vals, Switzerland. Each studio is its own experiential learning opportunity, enhancing the work students do on campus each semester.

Design

uSABE’s Design program equips students to use design as a language and apply creative, solutions-based thinking to the most complicated and pressing challenges. Through an iterative design process, students navigate complex challenges and embrace design as an agent for positive change. The program is available as a Bachelor of Arts or as an undergraduate Minor. The Design program offers courses across design disciplines, including NewZine

THE DISCIPLINES

Real Estate Development

Above: Photo by Catherine Restrepo, TuSABE | Below: Photo by Nico Eckstein, TuSABE

offerings focused on New Orleans. One such course is Textile class run by Patti Dunn, Professor of Practice and the Textiles Lab coordinator, in which students reimagined Mardi Gras throws to be more sustainable. Dunn’s students made carnival throws such as fanny packs and neckties entirely out of recycled and reclaimed materials. This was in partnership with the local nonprofit ricRACK, an organization working to divert and recycle textile waste. Another standout of the Design Program is its annual Showcase + 20

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Runway Show. Put together by the Showcase Design class, every small detail is planned and executed by the students. Through working towards a real event, the Showcase Design class offers students insight into real-life exhibition design while celebrating the work of the entire Design program. The final show features work from over 100 students, with projects including graphics, branding, typography, public pavilions, wearable designs, lighting sculptures, 3D-printed ceramics, and furniture prototypes.

he Real Estate Development program blends finance, economics, sustainable design, urbanism, and law into an interdisciplinary, real-world learning experience in one of the country’s most dynamic cities for development. The program is available as a Bachelor of Real Estate Development, an undergraduate Minor, and a Master of Sustainable Real Estate Development which was relaunched this summer online. This spring, Assistant Professor Yeonhwa Lee and Professor of Practice Will Bradshaw led a service-learning course focused on exploring and supporting affordable housing models. Students enrolled in the class were able to partner with People’s Housing + (PH+), a New Orleans-based organization that operates a community land trust and works to build a permanently affordable rental portfolio. By the end of the semester, students applied their skills from the classroom to produce and present research reports to PH+ the program also held its inaugural Student, Alumni, and Community Awards Celebration on May 13th, bringing together students, faculty, alumni, and industry partners to mark the end of a remarkable school year. The event will continue annually and will honor graduates alongside members of the New Orleans real estate community.

Landscape Architecture and Engineering

uSABE’s Landscape Architecture and Engineering program prepares students to address the environmental challenges facing vulnerable landscapes, including coastal communities and urbanized rivers like our home of New Orleans. Students graduate with skills needed to lead environmental and engineering solutions for a changing world.

THE DISCIPLINES

The program is offered as a dual interdisciplinary Master of Landscape Architecture and Master of Science in River-Coastal Science and Engineering. This academic year, faculty won numerous awards and research grants. An especially awarded faculty firm was aldayjover, a practice led by Dean Iñaki Alday and Professor Margarita Jover, which won first place in multiple Spanish design competitions. Their winning designs include a strategic plan for applying climate adaptation to the dry rivers system in Terrassa, Spain. Their public space design reimagined the Tres Xemeneies (Three Chimneys) at the mouth of the Besos River in Barcelona. They also received the international Holcim Foundation Award for their design of the Southern River Parks in Madrid. Other faculty members who received honors were Assistant Professor, Liz Camuti, and Research Assistant Professor, Leah Kahler. In the fall, the team was selected for a grant from the Landscape Research

Group’s 2025 Research Fund themed “Landscape and Mobility: Understanding Movements of People, Species, and Ecosystems in the Anthropocene”. More faculty work focused on our local environment such as Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture, Wes Michaels’ Harbor of Refuge project in Terrebonne Parish, which he developed through his firm Spackman Mossop Michaels (SMM). SMM’s work aims to provide places for boats to ride out hurricanes with a larger mission of developing safe harbors across the Gulf Coast. In November 2025, Michaels won the Louisiana ASLA President’s Award for the project which highlighted excellence in analysis and planning.

Historic Preservation

t TuSABE, the Historic Preservation program is committed to working with living communities to build more sustainable futures. Focused on New Orleans and the broader Gulf South, the PRES program engages climate

change, coastal land loss, cultural continuity, and community resilience while valuing traditional trade knowledge and practice. We view and utilize the past as a tool for positive change. TuSABE offers a Master of Science in Historic Preservation, a Graduate Certificate in Historic Preservation, and an undergraduate Minor in Historic Preservation. Like all projects at our school, the work is rooted in experiential and community-focused learning. During Tulane’s fall break, students from the graduate program devoted their time to restoring graves and tombs through a workshop led by Program Director Heather Veneziano as part of a pilot project with the World Monuments Fund (WMF) and the Preservation Resource Center of New Orleans. The project, called Bridge to Crafts Careers (B2CC), is open to anyone interested in pursuing restoration and preservation professionally. In February 2026, the program also expanded its partnership with WMF through the newly established Suzanne Deal Booth Institute for Her-

Photo by Catherine Restrepo, TuSABE NewZine

THE DISCIPLINES

itage Preservation. Along with backing from the WMF, the Institute is an academic collaboration between TuSABE’s Historic Preservation program and other leading universities, including Columbia, Penn, Carleton, and Duhok. The Institute seeks to expand graduate opportunities for field-based learning, research, and training, all while engaging students with active projects across a global portfolio.

URBANbuild

ounded in 2005, URBANbuild is a design-build program where students take on both the design and construction of prototypical homes for New Orleans neighborhoods. Working alongside community partners, students are involved in every stage of the process, from initial design concepts to the final build. By the end of each URBANbuild project, a new home gets completed in New Orleans Neighborhood. Through this process,

students learn firsthand how design can improve the quality of life for the people who need it most. The end of the 2025-2026 school year marked URBANbuild’s 21st completed home. Led by Lacey Senior Professor of Practice Byron Mouton, the UB21 project spanned the full academic year, with the design phase occurring in the fall before ground-breaking began in January. Like the URBANbuild homes before it, UB21 was made possible by our faculty leaders, community partners, and incredible student commitment.

Albert and Tina Small Center for Collaborative Design

he Albert and Tina Small Center for Collaborative Design is also a design-build center like URBANbuild, but focuses on smaller — yet still crucial — contributions to advance the ongoing efforts of its partner organizations. The Small

Photo by Nick LiCausi, TuSABE

Center produces everything from visual narratives to built structures, and its work is always focused on equitable process, meaningful outcomes, design excellence, and inclusion. At the end of the fall 2025 semester, the Small Center also completed a design-build project for Myrtle Banks, which was the product of students’ research studio work. Their finished structure, which is next to the historic Myrtle Banks building, was unveiled during a ribbon-cutting event with partner Growing Local Collaborative and New Orleans City Councilwoman Lesli Harris, and is part of an onsite demonstration farm and farmer’s market space.

Center for Climate Change and Urbanism

uSABE’s Center for Climate Change and Urbanism (CCU) is rooted in one central goal: to bridge communities of practice and scholarship to define our role in mitigating and adapting to climate change. Directed by Favrot II Associate Professor of Sustainable Real Estate and Urban Planning, Jesse Keenan, CCU is interested in exploring how the built environment causes climate change and responds to it — and most importantly, how we can help. One of CCU’s biggest events this year was “Multiplied Displacements: The Climate-Housing Nexus,” a three-day conference in January jointly hosted with the University of Toronto School of Cities and the Boston University Initiative

Photo by Nathan Rich, TuSABE 22

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THE DISCIPLINES

on Cities. Focusing on the idea of displacement as the basis of both urban studies and migration studies, the conference was grounded in interdisciplinary collaboration to explore how human mobility is shaped by climate change impacts and the broader mechanisms of the global housing crisis. The conference brought together leading scholars from across the world to discuss the complex factors shaping housing, making visible the often unseen connections of displacement processes.

Career Services and Student Affairs

areer Services and Student Affairs, led by Director Kristen Jones, hosted multiple types of networking and informational events this academic year, including Lagniappe Wednesdays. A standout was Career Days 2026, an annual event that includes three days of information sessions, an in-person job fair and student interviews, offering our students valuable professional development and career connections. Many of our school’s alumni also participate in career service opportunities. One of the ways alumni get involved is through the Alumni Council, a global group of alumni who offer direct mentorship and programming to all TuSABE students and graduates. The Alumni Council further assists students in securing pre- and post-graduate internships. We are so grateful for their continued commitment to the school.

Dean and Epstein Fabrication Labs

he Dean and Epstein Fabrication Labs support TuSABE students with both coursework and personal projects, offering access to advanced tools like laser cutters, 3D printers, plotters, paper and material cutters, and assembly work

Photo by Catherine Restrepo, TuSABE

tables. Students can purchase materials onsite and submit digital files for production. The lab’s location in the recently renovated building streamlines access to key resources, fostering collaboration and faster design iteration. This hands-on work enhances students’ understanding of fabrication processes, bridging the gap between digital models and physical making.

Social Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship

he Social Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship (SISE) program provides an interdisciplinary approach to solving

the world’s most pressing problems, from climate change and housing to health inequity, urban resilience, and poverty. With the understanding that these problems are vast and systemic, the SISE program is grounded in the principle that multiple disciplines need to be at the forefront of problem solving, and most importantly, need to work together. That’s why this program is open to all Tulane students regardless of major. By equipping Tulane students with crucial analytical and leadership skills, SISE is working towards a more united and interdisciplinary vision for solving problems to result in more ethical, sustainable, and effective solutions.

Tulane School of Architecture and Built Environment thanks Cordula Roser Gray, Senior Professor of Practice in Architecture, for her more than 20 years of dedicated teaching at the School, including many semesters spent as a Thesis Advisor, guiding fifth year Architecture students, as core studio coordinator and as a frequent collaborator of the Tina and Albert Small Center for Collaborative Design. Throughout her time at Tulane, Roser Gray’s teaching goals centered on addressing the environmental, social, and humanitarian dimensions that invite and require thoughtful architectural solutions. Her involvement with the broader community beyond Tulane reflects her deep dedication and passion for the world of architecture and design. She will now devote her focus to crgarchitecture, her multidisciplinary, collaborative design firm based in New York.

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THE DISCIPLINES

Thank you to departing faculty! Ken Schwartz

Dean Emeritus and Emeritus Professor of Architecture BY IÑAKI ALDAY, DEAN AND RICHARD KOCH CHAIR IN ARCHITECTURE

he period between 2008 and 2018 was crucial at Tulane School of Architecture and Built Environment. Only three years after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans and Tulane were very much in process of reconstruction. Some faculty and previous deans had departed, and the school’s leadership

rested on the shoulders of Associate Professor Scott Bernhard as interim dean, and in an extraordinary and committed group of faculty. Professor Ken Schwartz, FAIA, took the responsibility of guiding the school for the following 10 years, a period that solidified the school’s ethos: dealing creatively and beautifully with the most pressing issues. During Ken’s tenure, the school became a model for community-engaged design, and our City Center became the highly recognized Albert and Tina Small Center for Collaborative Design. It has populated New Orleans with excellent built examples for the use

of our community partners and has supported organizations with design visions that often ended in built facilities. URBANbuild continued flourishing and building one house each year. Professor Schwartz’s social sensibility led to the foundation of the Phyllis Taylor Center for Social Innovation and Design Thinking in 2014, a Tulane organization that he has directed since then. After these and many other accomplishments, Ken has retired as Dean Emeritus and I want to express my gratitude, on behalf of myself, faculty, staff and alumni, for all his contributions and his dedicated service.

Judith Kinnard

Emerita Professor of Architecture and Harvey-Wadsworth Chair of Landscape Urbanism BY TIFFANY LIN, FAVOROT V ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN

ew educators leave a legacy as profound as that of Judith Kinnard. Throughout a distinguished career spanning nearly five decades, Judy has shaped generations of architects, educators, and civic leaders through her extraordinary commitment to teaching, mentorship, and service. A nationally respected leader in architectural education, she served as President of both the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA), and the National Architectural Accred-

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iting Board (NAAB), while breaking barriers as one of the first women to teach design studios at Syracuse, Princeton, and the University of Virginia, where she became the first woman architect to earn tenure. For those of us fortunate enough to be mentored by Judy, her greatest impact has always been personal. She believed in the potential of young faculty, investing time, trust, and guidance that helped shape careers as surely as she shaped curricula. At Tulane, she transformed the beginning design curriculum by integrating landscape-based inquiry, developing first-year design studios and the second-year Jefferson Island research sequence—work that continues to influence what we teach today. Judy often describes teaching as an act of weaving connections among

ideas, people, and communities. Her career embodies that metaphor. Through her leadership, generosity, and vision, she has woven together a community of students, colleagues, and alumni whose work continues to advance both architectural education and professional practice. As one of the faculty members Judy has welcomed and supported at Tulane, I am deeply grateful for the opportunities, perspective, and friendship she has shared. Her influence extends far beyond her own accomplishments and is reflected in the countless architects and educators whose lives and careers she has helped to advance. We celebrate her retirement with tremendous admiration and gratitude for the inspiration she has brought to our school, our profession, and each of us personally.

THE STUDENTS

Commencement Awards 2026

Catherine Restrepo, TuSA Photo by Catherine Restrepo, TuSABE NewZine

THE STUDENTS

AWARDS AND ACADEMIC HONORS Angela O’Byrne Alumni Award Stacy A. Bourne, FAIA Tulane 34 Award Jonathan Orlando Hall, M.ARCH & MSRED Leadership in Core Values Award Aliyah Ryann Murph, M.ARCH

ARCHITECTURE American Institute of Architects Medal for Academic Excellence Seyedeh Delaram Khoshhal Ziabari, M.ARCH Emma Elisabeth Lindley, B.ARCH American Institute of Architects Louisiana Celebrate Architecture Scholarship Katherine E. Burkhart, B.ARCH Thomas J. Lupo Awards Camilla Greppi, B.ARCH Asha Trefny Hokanson, B.ARCH John William Lawrence Memorial Medal Alexander Benjamin Cohen, B.ARCH Outstanding Undergraduate Thesis Award Katherine E. Burkhart, B.ARCH Alexander Benjamin Cohen, B.ARCH Alpha Rho Chi Medal Alexa Michelle Trapani, B.ARCH Graduate Design Excellence Award Camryn Maine Francis, M.ARCH Bachelor of Science in Architecture Award Nicolas Ian Eckstein, BS Graduate Leadership Award Ryanna Jane Henson, M.ARCH Outstanding Graduate Thesis Award Abbas Ghaffari, M.ARCH Seyedeh Delaram Khoshhal Ziabari, M.ARCH

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Architecture Research Center Consortium Medal Abbas Ghaffari, M.ARCH Tau Sigma Delta Bronze Medal Rio Ferrand-Rodgers, M.ARCH Maxwell Scott Kaplan, B.ARCH Jacqueline Ann Hemman, B.ARCH

Design Innovation Award Ella Reese Touchstone, BA Faculty Design Award Cole R. Hildebrandt, BA Design Honors Thesis Award Kendra Johnson, BA

Thesis Commendations Katherine E. Burkhart, B.ARCH Alexander Benjamin Cohen, B.ARCH Camilla Greppi, B.ARCH Jacqueline Ann Hemman, B.ARCH Asha Trefny Hokanson, B.ARCH Maxwell Scott Kaplan, B.ARCH Susan Doris Kresch, B.ARCH Emma Elisabeth Lindley, B.ARCH Caleb Christopher Schroeder, B.ARCH Joshua Bruce Warsaw, B.ARCH   Walter Buchanan Workman, B.ARCH   Hayden Curtis Blodgett, M.ARCH   Abigail Sakawat, M.ARCH Hannah Idell Hebinck, M.S.ARCH

Design Leadership Award Rachel Eri Passer, BA

Tau Sigma Delta Katherine E. Burkhart, B.ARCH Camilla Greppi, B.ARCH Asha Trefny Hokanson, B.ARCH Emma Elisabeth Lindley, B.ARCH Caleb Christopher Schroeder, B.ARCH Nicolas Ian Eckstein, BS Bryn Alexandra Mortenson Ryan Petrovich, BS Danielle Eloise Miller, BS Seyedeh Delaram Khoshhal Ziabari, M.ARCH Zackariah J. Kirsch, M.ARCH Jonathan Orlando Hall, M.ARCH & MSRED Brooks Buddy Barrios, M.ARCH & MSRED Abbas Ghaffari, M.ARCH Hannah Idell Hebinck, M.S. ARCH

REAL ESTATE DEVELOPMENT

DESIGN Design Capstone Prize Sarah Grace Martin, BA Design Excellence Award Shyla Rani Krishnappa, BA

HISTORIC PRESERVATION Distinguished Thesis Award Ashlon Richburg, M.ARCH & MSHP Outstanding Pursuit of New Directions in the Field Award Hayley Soo Chung, MSHP Outstanding Community Engagement Practicum Award Karina Lynne Roca, MSHP

Most Outstanding Senior in Real Estate Award Charlotte Louise Chase, BS Academic Achievement Award Ryan Petrovich, BS Academic Distinction Award Logan Michael Ebner, BS Graduate Leadership Award Matthew Lee Remondet, MSRED Graduate Service Award Riley Elizabeth Wemhoener, MSRED & M.ARCH

FACULTY Malcolm Heard Award for Excellence in Teaching Adam Marcus

THE STUDENTS

Photos by Catherine Restrepo, TuSABE NewZine

THE STUDENTS

Karina Roca and the Living Craft of

New Orleans

Ironworks

Photos courtesy of Karina Roca 28

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STO RY BY R AWAD N AH H AS

THE STUDENTS

arina Roca (MSHP *26) can drive down streets across the French Quarter and point to railings, gates, and hinges she has welded or restored by hand. A blacksmith for six years, she works in iron, heating metal past 2,000 degrees until it glows white and gives like clay. Along the way, she has fallen for the broader world of traditional building trades that gives New Orleans much of its character. Roca grew up in the greater Boston area and moved to New York City at seventeen for college. She first came to New Orleans on a

research trip and kept returning, pulled by a built environment she describes as an unusually honest storyteller, shaped by West African, Spanish, and French hands. As an Afro-Latina woman, she says, she had grown up seeing little representation of people of color, or women, or both, in restoration ironwork. That changed when she saw a PBS feature on Darryl Reeves, a master blacksmith who runs Andrew’s Welding and Blacksmith Shop in the 7th Ward. Three months before the pandemic, she made the move permanent, trained through Loui-

siana Green Corps, and talked her way into Reeves’ shop, where she is now his right hand. For Roca, restoring historic ironwork is never only technical. The material she handles carries the expertise of West African and enslaved craftspeople whose names were rarely written down. She can point to the Adinkra symbols embedded in the city’s gates and balconies, West African motifs of spiritual and cultural meaning, and notes that they even top the lightning rods of St. Louis Cathedral. That history is part of why she enrolled at the

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Tulane School of Architecture and Built Environment: to pair her craft with formal research and interpret what she touches more meaningfully. “So many people come to New Orleans to witness the built environment,” she says. “But what happens if we stop and ask, who built this?” Balancing both worlds was rarely easy; Roca often welded at six in the morning and sat in class until eight at night. But she came to

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see the forge and the classroom as intersecting rather than parallel. From Reeves she absorbed patience and humility alongside technique. “Regardless of if the world is calling you an apprentice, a journeyman, or a master, you’ll always be a student,” she says. “And the moment you lose sight of that is the moment your craft gets stalled.” That belief now shapes her work off the anvil. As program manager for Bridge to Crafts Careers at

the Preservation Resource Center, Roca introduces young people to the traditional building trades through a partnership among the PRC, Tulane’s Historic Preservation program, and the World Monuments Fund. This fall, the program will use St. Louis Cemetery No. 2 as its classroom, restoring abandoned historic tombs. The need, she stresses, is urgent: the region’s master craftspeople are aging, and few young people are stepping in

THE STUDENTS

behind them. Her aim is to train the next generation, in her words, “to not be just labor in a shop, but to be culture bearers and stewards of both tangible and intangible heritage.” That work has earned recognition. This year Roca received the Living Trades Award from the Louisiana Trust for Historic Preservation, an honor celebrating practitioners who keep rare, hand-wrought techniques alive, and one Reeves himself received not long before her. She was among several with Tulane ties honored at the Trust’s 2026 awards, alongside Heather Veneziano, the School’s Historic Preservation Program Director, who received the Education Award, and Allyson Hinz, named the Sue Turner Preservationist of the Year. Roca’s vision reaches further still: a trade school, and a reimagined Reeves shop that doubles as a studio and gallery for New Orleans ironwork. As she and Reeves discuss shop succession, she is preparing to take the helm and continue a lineage of Creole ironworkers — keeping the city’s oldest crafts, and the stories held in them, standing for the next 250 years.

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THE STUDENTS

Photo by Kenny Lass, TU

From Katrina to Cancer, Jonathan Hall’s Path Led to Tulane STORY BY BARRI BRONSTON, TULANE UNIVERSITY

Jonathan Hall knows a thing or two about building — and rebuilding. As a graduate student earning two master’s degrees from the Tulane School of Architecture and Built Environment, Hall has applied his studies through such programs as URBANbuild, helping construct housing in some of New Orleans’ most challenged neighborhoods. “It’s not just about designing a building,” said Hall, who graduated with a Master of Architecture and a Master of Sustainable Real Estate Development. “There’s a greater purpose in what we do.” Those challenges began in 2005 when his family, then living in Pass Christian, Mississippi, lost every32

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“For me, architecture is about helping to design and build community.” J O N AT H A N H A L L

thing in Hurricane Katrina. He was 18 and planning to study architecture. Instead, he joined the Army National Guard to ease the financial burden on his parents. While training in El Paso, Texas, for a second deployment, he was diagnosed with cancer. “I felt a pain in my side and thought it was kidney stones,” Hall said. “They ran blood tests, and found I had an extremely elevated white blood cell count.” The diagnosis was chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), a treatable blood cancer that required a stem cell transplant. His brother, a partial match who donated his stem cells, ultimately helped put the disease in remission.

THE STUDENTS

“I saw it as a sign that I needed to move on from the military and do something else,” said Hall, who is married with two children. “I had a newborn. I needed to be home. It made me realize how precious life is and that I needed to pursue my dreams.” He earned a Bachelor of Science in Architecture Engineering Technology from the University of Southern Mississippi in May 2023 and began graduate studies at Tulane a month later. “Right off the bat, I loved everything about the school, from the academics to the research to how rooted it is in the community,” he said. “For me, architecture is about helping to design and build community.” Hall is especially interested in creating sustainable, affordable housing and communities that are resilient to environmental and social pressures over time. Through Tulane’s URBANbuild program, he helped construct a duplex in the Lower Ninth Ward for a nonprofit that supports individuals transitioning out of homelessness.

He also worked with classmates to design and build a pavilion on Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard in Central City that will serve as an outdoor classroom for food education and urban agriculture. Hall’s impact extends beyond the construction site and classroom. He has served as president of Tulane’s chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architecture Students and worked as a teaching assistant to gain insight into his long-term goal of becoming a professor of practice. Known for supporting others, Hall makes a point to check in with students and offer encouragement, something he says was modeled by his professors. “I don’t do things for recognition,” Hall said. “I just want to be positive and make a positive impact.” As he looks ahead, he hopes to remain in New Orleans, work for an architecture firm, become licensed and eventually move into teaching. “This was my second chance,” he said. “I didn’t want to let it pass me by.”

Tulane 34 Award Jonathan Hall was one of the recipients of the 2026 Tulane 34 Award, the most prestigious honor bestowed upon graduating students across Tulane University. Named in honor of the year Tulane was founded, 1834, the awards celebrate 34 students who have demonstrated outstanding leadership, service and academic excellence at Tulane.

Right: Dean Iñaki Alday and Jonathan Hall at the 2026 Diploma Ceremony. Photo by Catherine Restrepo, TuSABE NewZine

THE STUDENTS

Student Digest

STO RY BY EVAN ALLBR I TTON

Tulane Design Showcase + Runway Show 2026

s we reflect on the 20252026 academic year, we keep coming back to the accomplishments of those that make our school so special: our students. This year, Tulane School of Architecture and Built Environment (TuSABE) students went above and beyond — whether in their work on campus, in research projects, or in nationwide competitions — and have explored what it means to be the architects and designers of tomorrow. Coursework at TuSABE is not merely an academic exercise. Instead, our school asks the urgent questions that the world needs answered, and our students are already answering them.

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Above: Photo by Karl Dixon, TuSABE | Below: Photo by Catherine Restrepo, TuSABE

THE STUDENTS

National and International Competitions

his year, TuSABE students received numerous awards, from regional organizations to national and even international competitions. This academic year began with two recently graduated Architecture students — Alec Rosen (M.Arch *25) and Akhil Singh (M.Arch ‘25) — winning the 2025 Concrete Masonry Competition. Hosted by Association for Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA), competitors were tasked with designing a state-of-the-art fire station using concrete masonry products as the primary materials. Rosen and Singh’s winning submission was a proposed fire station in Lahaina, Hawaii, designed with the intention of contributing to the effort to house displaced residents and rebuild infrastructure after the 2023 wildfire. At the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA) Conference, a team of six TuSABE students won first place in the ACADIA prize, also known as the Computational Design Award. Their winning design, AXIS, is a mixed-use project in Kansas City, Kansas’ Strawberry Hill neighborhood that seeks to amplify the existent energy of the site. The team — the largest from Tulane in recent years — included Minh Hoang Dang, Diya Karthic, Kristina Hoang, Meghan Huang, Miguel Gamez Alvarez, and Nia Fletcher, who organized the group as a third-year participant. Fletcher, a rising fifth-year B.Arch student, was also elected to serve as one of two student representatives on the NOMA Board, which she has been involved with since her freshman year. Another design focused on a site’s surrounding environment was Alex Cohen’s (B.Arch ‘26) proposal to transform New Orleans’ Florida Avenue Bridge. Cohen’s project received an Honorable Mention at the seventh annual international Félix Candela Competition, which asked partici-

pants to design or reimagine a space for spiritual inquiry in an urban environment. Under the mentorship of Dean Iñaki Alday, Cohen’s design explored the relationship between the industrial properties of the Florida Avenue Bridge and the surrounding natural environment, guided by the belief that humans are inherently connected through water.

Hands-On Learning

n addition to participating in competitions and organizations outside of their required coursework, TuSABE’s resources allow students to gain hands-on experience both in New Orleans and abroad. On campus, a team of TuSABE students once again designed and built a temporary Sukkah structure in Tulane’s Pocket Park for the Jewish harvest holiday Sukkot. This year’s sukkah was made entirely of wood using a notching technique, removing the need for any hardware. Another group of students, joined by Professor of Practice in Design Meghan Saas, attended the Shop! MarketPlace, an annual retail design industry conference. As participants in the 2026 panel, “Watch This Space: Young Designers Weigh in on What’s Next,” these recent graduates — Abbas Ghaffari (M.Arch *26), Delaram Khoshhal (M.Arch *26), Cole Hildebrandt (BA Design ‘26), and Estefania Cardona Forero (BA Design and BS Marketing ‘26) — shared the values of their programs and their personal insights with professionals from across the country.

Historic Preservation Work

ur students have also engaged in meaningful preservation work this academic year. In the Historic Preservation program, recent graduate Allyson Hinz (MSHP *‘25) completed her project with the nonprofit Restore Grand Isle to help place the island’s Oleander Hotel

Photo by Catherine Restrepo, TuSABE

on the National Register of Historic Places. Hinz’s work, which she began in 2023 as part of the Introduction to Historic Preservation course, has ensured the landmark’s preservation as part of Louisiana’s coastal heritage.

Student Travel Fellowship

ndependently, students are already exploring their architectural and design niches, but the school is also supporting their ambitions through funding and travel opportunities. One of TuSABE’s proudest offerings is the Student Travel Fellowship Program, which funds summer research projects across the world. The 2026 program awarded over $42,000 in funding to 13 students and 10 research projects, which span Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America. The 2025 cohort presented their research in March, with focuses ranging from the intersections of fashion and architecture in New York City to the study of ironwork traditions in Spain and Morocco. The 2026 projects are ongoing, and we can’t wait to see what our students learn and bring back to the school.

he 2025-2026 academic year was filled with remarkable student work, achievements, and, above all, true passion. Looking to the fall, we are excited to see our students continue to grow as architects, designers, and researchers, and contribute to the needs of the communities around them. NewZine

THE ALUMNI

Alumni Check-In

STO RY BY EVAN ALLBR I TTON

ust like the city we inhabit, the Tulane School of Architecture and Built Environment (TuSABE) is all about lifting up the members of our community, no matter how long they’ve been away from campus. Our alumni remain a valuable part of the TuSABE community after they graduate, with many continuing to support the school and acting as mentors to current students. As they excel as innovative architects, designers, and leaders, our alumni continue to exhibit that at TuSABE, we’re inspiring the leaders of tomorrow. This year, alumni had their work featured in publications and exhibitions, were appointed to leadership positions, and so much more. To start off the 2025-2026 academic year, alum Zarith Pineda (M.Arch ‘15) and her design collective Territorial Empathy helped with a project in New York City’s South Bronx. The project, called H.earth, was a collaboration between Territorial Empathy, local Oaxacan restaurant La Morada, and the Bronx Land Trust, and it sought to create a space of care, culture, and resilience in the community. The project was also featured in Dwell and FRAME magazines, two prestigious design publications. Another alum-led project is Brandon Pourch’s (M.Arch ‘04) initiative to make Halloween costumes for children in wheelchairs. For the past 11 years, Pourch’s program, Jax Adaptive Halloween Costumes, has relied on the work of volunteering architects, designers, and building supply companies in Jacksonville, Florida, to make this holiday more accessible. While TuSABE alumni work can speak for itself, it would be remiss to not mention their many accolades. This year, recent alum Alec Paul36

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Photo courtesy of Zarith Pineda

THE ALUMNI

Photo courtesy of Alec Paulson

son (B.Arch ‘22) was honored with a 2026 Student Merit Award from the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) for his undergraduate project Hybrid Bridge: A Multi-Level Civic Infrastructure for the Upper Kebena River. Hybrid Bridge was developed as part of a TuSABE research studio, the Addis Ababa River City Research Project, and proposed to redesign the bridge above the Upper Kebena River to better address humanitarian needs, integrating pedestrian mobility, flood adaptation, re-housing, and public amenities into one structure. In May, Hybrid Bridge became one of only 15 winning projects out of 79 submissions representing 10 countries and 24 U.S. states. TuSABE alumni have also been appointed to multiple roles across higher education, global practices, and architecture associations this year. Last fall, alum Liz Martin-Malikian (M.Arch ‘87) was appointed Chair of the Department of Architecture and Interior Design at Miami University of Ohio. In an interview with Metropolis Magazine, Martin-Malikian outlined a new academic agenda focused on integrating decarbonization, systems thinking, environmental justice, and Indigenous knowledge into core curricula. Her approach is based on interdisciplinary collaboration and site-based research in order to foster what she calls a “liv-

ing laboratory,” where students are prepared for climate-responsive design and addressing current needs. Another alum in a new teaching and leadership position is Gina Reichert (M.Arch ‘97), who was appointed by Cranbrook Academy of Art as an interim faculty for the 2025–2026 academic year. Reichert also co-led the school’s Architecture program in her role. Congratulations to these alumni for their continued commitment to architecture education! On the professional side, TuSABE alum Clara L. Wineberg, American Institute of Architects (AIA), LEED AP (M.Arch ‘90) was appointed this spring as Principal and Practice Leader at Perkins Eastman, a global design practice. In this role, Wineberg will use her expertise as a leader across housing and community-centered environments to support the firm’s strategic growth across residential, senior living, and mixeduse communities nationwide. Alum Ellen Hatton (M.Arch ‘97) was also honored for her professional work by AIA | DC, where she is currently serving as the 2026 Chapter President. Hatton has been on the AIA Board of Directors since 2020. She was recently included in the Forbes Magazine lists of America’s Best-In-

State Residential Architects (2025) and America’s Top 200 Residential Architects (2025), it is only fitting that she be elected to such a prestigious position. Aside from direct practice or teaching architecture and design, TuSABE alumni are also succeeding in other disciplines, such as writing and filmmaking. In December 2025, alum Igor Siddiqui (M.Arch ‘98) published his nonfiction book, Oblique Experiments: Claude Parent’s Architectural Installations (1969–1975). Siddiqui’s book explores how French architect Claude Parent designed a series of temporary interventions in an attempt to convert his theory, known as the oblique function, into practice. As an architect and professor at the University of Texas at Austin, Siddiqui used his knowledge and resources to include rarely published archival materials and his own original drawings in the book. Studying architecture not only teaches research skills, but provides students with the creativity to pursue whatever they want. Alum Keith Gerchak’s (M.Arch ‘93) dual career in architecture and filmmaking is emblematic of this. Reflecting on his work before the theater release of his debut film, Lost & Found in Cleve-

Clara L. Wineberg, AIA, LEED AP NewZine

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Musco Center for the Arts, Chapman University. Photo courtesy of TheatreDNA.

land, in November, Gerchak affirmed his belief that studying architecture was fundamental to his success as a filmmaker because it taught him how to be a “master storyteller” and a skilled problem solver. Alongside being a director, he is also a principal at LA-based TheatreDNA, an architectural consultancy specializing in theater design. At TheatreDNA, he has worked on performing arts projects around the globe, getting to combine his two loves of architecture and film in his daily work. In addition to their great work, our alumni show that friendships and connections made at TuSABE are ones that last. In September 2025,

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six Architecture alumni — Errol Barron, Jim Good, Chris Knight, Chris Thomas, Mac Walcott, and Doug Wittnebel — put together a joint exhibition to share their artistic insights and to celebrate 50 years of friendship. The exhibition opened on September 5 at the Lyons Share Gallery in Fairhope, Alabama, and displayed work by all six of these incredible alumni. While they are all testaments to the value of a TuSABE education, we would also like to celebrate Errol Barron (B.Arch ‘64), Emeritus Professor of Architecture, in particular for his long academic career at TuSABE, where he became a faculty member in 1976. His work, including

his recently published book Architecture of Painting, has left a lasting impact on TuSABE and the architectural community, and we are grateful for his steadfast commitment to our school. TuSABE alumni made waves across disciplines in the 2025-2026 academic year, from designing community-centered spaces to writing books, leading organizations, and so much more. Their contributions are vast, but no matter what they got up to, it’s clear that TuSABE alumni are not just great architects and leaders, but are also committed to addressing the needs of communities around them.

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This Page: Photo by Catherine Restrepo, TuSABE | Opposite Page: Photo courtesy of Stacy Bourne

Built to Last: Stacy Bourne’s Lifelong Mission in DisasterResilient Architecture S T O R Y BY R AWA D N A H H A S

Stacy Bourne, FAIA, NOMA, grew up in St. Louis, earned her B.Arch from Tulane in 1990, and landed her first job over the phone, hired sight unseen by a Tulane alumnus rebuilding in the U.S. Virgin Islands after Hurricane Hugo. She intended to stay a short while. Thirty-five years and twelve hurricanes later, she is the founding principal of the Bourne Group, one of the country’s leading voices on hurricane-resilient design, and the 2026 recipient of Tulane’s Angela O’Byrne Distinguished Alumni Award. “Resilience wasn’t even a word 30 years ago,” Bourne says. “It wasn’t a topic. Climate change wasn’t a topic. 40

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Hurricanes weren’t a topic. Disaster recovery wasn’t a topic.” What Tulane gave her instead was discipline, a systematic way of approaching complex problems, which she has applied to one of the most urgent challenges of our time. After graduating, she stayed in the Virgin Islands to sit for her license, earned it at 27, and found herself, almost by accident, inheriting her employer’s practice. What began as Innovations by Design eventually became the Bourne Group, established in 2000 and focused on architectural renovations and post-disaster recovery. She would go on to earn a Master of Architecture and Urban Design from Wash-

ington University in St. Louis in 1998, then return to Tulane for a second graduate degree, an M.Arch, in 2004. Each time she tried to leave the Virgin Islands, another storm brought her back. “I just couldn’t leave the people that I knew there without help,” she says. That commitment deepened after Hurricane Marilyn in 1995, when community-focused rebuilding became intentional, not just replacing what was lost. Ninety percent of the Bourne Group’s work is renovations, and Bourne has come to love that constraint. Where others might want a blank site, she finds meaning in reading a building: stripping it to its essence, and then redesigning it

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around what its people need. One of those needs is safety you can feel. A client once asked for a concrete pantry, a place for him and his child to shelter during a storm. That conversation gave rise to her practice of designing built-in safe rooms, which over the years have grown into full studio apartments and resilience hubs embedded in private homes. After managing over $50 million in recovery work following Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017, Bourne has expanded that concept to the community scale. She now advocates for resilience hubs in churches, community centers, and universities. Bourne’s reach extends far beyond her own practice. As the first Black woman to serve on the AIA Board of Directors in 2009, she chaired the Diversity Council and used it to build something lasting. She amplified a small women-in-architecture event in Seattle into a national conference; supported employment non-discrimination legislation for LGBTQ architects; launched memoranda of understanding with NOMA; and coordinated with Mattel to produce the Architect Barbie in three skin tones. What started as an assignment she

“Stacy is exceptional, and at the same time embodies Tulane’s commitment to face and provide solutions to the most urgent problems. Practicing in the U.S. Virgin Islands and educated in New Orleans, she has committed her expertise to disaster preparedness and recovery for the Gulf communities. I cannot think of a higher mission.” I Ñ A K I A L D AY, D E A N

resented — she worried she was being pigeonholed — became a legacy she is proud of. “As my grandmother would say,” she recalls, “if they give you lemons, you make the best lemonade that you can.” The 2026 Angela O’Byrne Distinguished Alumni Award, presented at the Tulane School of Architecture and Built Environment’s diploma ceremony, recognized the full arc of

that work. Bourne and O’Byrne now serve together on the Dean’s Advisory Council, and the recognition affirmed something Bourne has long believed: that disaster readiness belongs at the center of architectural practice. Dean Iñaki Alday offered his perspective on the honor: “Stacy is exceptional, and at the same time embodies Tulane’s commitment to face and provide solutions to the most urgent problems. Practicing in the U.S. Virgin Islands and educated in New Orleans, she has committed her expertise to disaster preparedness and recovery for the Gulf communities. I cannot think of a higher mission.” Angela O’Byrne added: “Stacy Bourne is an outstanding architect, renowned for her work in disaster recovery. I am so impressed by her inspiring work, and delighted that we get to claim her as one of our Tulane alumni.” Thirty-five years ago, Stacy Bourne landed on an island for a short-term job. The storms kept coming, and she kept staying, not out of resignation, but out of purpose. Everything, she says now, was a training ground. “Had I not spent 30-something years doing hurricane recovery, I would not be in a space to talk about readiness.” The field is finally catching up to what she NewZine

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Photos courtesy of Gabriel Smith

Gabriel Smith’s Architectural Journey Built on Connections and Collaborations S T O R Y BY R AWA D N A H H A S

abriel Smith, FAIA, (M.Arch ‘88), has built more than a million square feet of cultural space across the United States and Europe — museums, galleries, and civic buildings that have shaped how communities gather and make meaning. But ask him what project matters most right now, and he’ll name one of the smallest: a new home for the Baton Rouge Gallery, an artist-member-driven organization operating out of a converted pool house in a public park. “The impact that this Baton Rouge Gallery has on its community is extraordinary,” Smith says. “I’ve worked on museums with unlimited resourc-

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es, but these guys are really having to push into their community, and they are the model for the way museums should work.” It’s a telling answer from someone whose career has taken him from Foster + Partners in London to the storied halls of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, through nearly a decade at Eskew+Dumez+Ripple in New Orleans, and on to lead major museum projects at Thomas Phifer and Partners and Allied Works, including the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Corning Museum of Glass, and the Museum of Modern Art Warsaw. Smith, who was elected to the AIA College of Fellows in 2015, recently launched his own

“What we do is draw stuff and talk about space and shape and form and light,” he says. “If you’re excited about those things and you’re into building, there’s nothing like being an architect.” GABRIEL SMITH

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practice, G|S ARCH, and has returned to the kind of intimate, community-embedded work that first drew him to architecture. A native New Orleanian, Smith attended NOCCA before heading to Tulane, where early encounters with professors like Mark Shapiro, who introduced him to Le Corbusier’s Palace of Assembly in Chandigarh, and Errol Barron helped shape his design sensibility. He worked his way through school in a campus archi-

tecture office, learning hand drafting from Milton Sherman at a time when computers had yet to enter the studio. “The tactility is missing now,” he reflects. “Drawing and talking at the same time is a lost art.” After Tulane, Smith took a post at SOM London, then joined Foster + Partners before earning his graduate degree from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. He returned to New Orleans in the late 1990s, teaching as an adjunct at Tulane while building furniture and running his own practice. When Hurricane Katrina scattered that life in 2005, Smith found himself in New York, and discovered that his decade of museum experience at Eskew+Dumez+Ripple made him exactly what the city’s top design firms needed. Throughout all of it, Smith says, the constant has been collaboration, and the Tulane network that keeps threading through his work. His current Baton Rouge project is with NANO, founded by fellow alumna Terri Dreyer. He counts Nick Marshall and Wells Megalli among close current collaborators. He and former student, Noah Marble from D.C., were just shortlisted for a museum project. “My real belief and the kind of work that I do is collaborative,” Smith says. “There’s no way to build a building alone.”

Left: Gabriel Smith | Right: Wells Megalli

Paintings by Gabriel Smith NewZine

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Trained as a painter from an early age and influenced by the powerful works at the Rothko Chapel in Houston, where his grandmother was its first director, abstract painting has been a lifelong pursuit alongside furniture making and architecture. Smith draws on a framework he shares with students: the balance between “accuracy of intent” and precision in craft. “That’s why you call it a practice,” he says, “because it never gets perfect. It’s always balancing those two things, as you make space and make atmosphere.” That sensibility extends to how he thinks about the users of his buildings. The best moment, he says, is when someone inhabits a space and simply

gets it, notices the ceiling height, feels order and proportion, sees the moon track past a window that was placed just so. His parents now live in the New Orleans house Smith designed for his own family and his father, an English professor who once wandered through it said: “I’m inside of your brain.” In years of teaching he has seen lots of change. For students navigating the profession today, Smith’s advice is direct: stay flexible, learn to talk to people, and take a business class. “Half of what I do is communicate,” he says. “That messaging, the ability to discern when something is important and talk about it, is critical.” And above all, stay close to making. As AI

takes on more of the design process, Smith believes the architects best positioned for the future are those who stay close to construction, who know how buildings actually get made, not just how they look on screen. After nearly four decades in practice, Smith shows no sign of slowing. His son has joined the office. The Baton Rouge Gallery project is underway. And the work, he insists, has never stopped being fun. “What we do is draw stuff and talk about space and shape and form and light,” he says. “If you’re excited about those things and you’re into building, there’s nothing like being an architect.”

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Remembering Peter Trapolin A Full Circle Reflection: Peter Trapolin and Richardson Memorial Hall By Emma Thacker, TRAPOLINPEER

ew projects brought together Peter Trapolin’s lifelong commitments as completely as the renewal of Richardson Memorial Hall. Peter earned his Master of Architecture from Tulane University in 1977, beginning a relationship with the school that continued for nearly five decades. In addition to practicing architecture, he taught First Year Design, served on the School’s Dean’s Advisory Board, participated in senior thesis juries for more than five years, and remained an active member of the Tulane alumni community. When Trapolin-Peer Architects was selected to lead the comprehensive renovation and expansion of Richardson Memorial Hall, Peter saw an opportunity to apply the principles that had guided his work for more than four decades. Having built his career championing the continued use of historic buildings, Peter believed they should

evolve to remain useful, relevant, and deeply connected to their communities. That conviction shaped TrapolinPeer’s approach to the project. Completed last year, the renovation expanded Richardson Memorial Hall while reimagining it for contemporary architectural education. The design embraced historic constraints as a framework for learning, celebrating structural conditions and establishing a consistent material language. New and renovated studios, fabrication spaces, classrooms, exhibition areas, and gathering spaces support the collaborative, interdisciplinary nature of design today, while improvements to accessibility, building systems, and resilience position the building to serve future generations. For Peter, Richardson Memorial Hall was where his architectural story began. Nearly fifty years later, helping secure its future brought that story full circle. The building now carries forward not only the education of future architects, but also the enduring legacy of one whose life was devoted to the profession.

ALUMNI IN MEMORIAM Roland A. Alpha (A ‘69) Philip M. Baldwin (A ‘68) Je-Jen Chiu (A ‘92) Valeton J. Dansereau (A ‘57) Keleal S. Hassin Jr. (A ‘68)

Davis L. Jahncke Jr., AIA (A ‘67) Lawrence D. Taffaro Jr. (A ‘70) Peter M. Trapolin (A ‘77) Raymond A. Zambrano (A ‘57)

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Alumni Council Alumni Council Co-Chairs: Adrianne Steichen, FAIA A ‘01 PYATOK Architecture + Urban Design James Rolf MPS 16 Louisiana Recovery School District; Rolf Preservation Works, LLC Atlanta Kyle McCluskey A ‘09 Jacobs Amber Stewart A *09 Jacobs Stacey Lucas A *00 Collins Cooper Carusi Architects, Inc. Austin Oren Mitzner A ‘12 Barley|Pfeiffer Architecture Boston Arielle Scher A *18 HGA Sam Naylor A ‘16 Utile Chicago Carolyn Isaacson A *18 AltusWorks, Inc.

Honolulu Frank Xiong A’14 Wiss Janney Elstner Associates Inc. Kansas City Kekeli Dawes A *18 Lamar Johnson Collaborative Michelle Barrett A ‘19 SLATTERY Design + Architecture Los Angeles Jeffrey Zolan A ‘16 DLR Group Nathan Leonard A ‘19 Metropolis Technologies New Orleans Brook Tesler MPS *14 Archdiocese of New Orleans Austin Hogans A *20 Trapolin Peer Architects Celeste Favrot MSRED *18 First Lake Properties Chris Daemmrich A ‘17 Tulane University Kaylan Mitchell A *23 Williams Architects

Leah N Bohatch A ‘23 SHoP Architects Wells Megalli A *17 Person Place Thing Anthony Vanky A *07 Columbia University Ashley Gaudlip MPS *17 FEMA Keristen Edwards A ‘20, MSRED *20 Spectacular/Black Spectacles Orlando Jordan Matthews White A*13 Walt Disney Imagineering Phoenix Chris Cody MPS *14 Arizona State Historic Preservation Office Nicole Mehaffey A ‘16 The Ranch Mine Salt Lake City Kelly Holland A ‘09 Arch Nexus San Francisco Kathryn Callandar A’15 University of Edinburgh

Emma Jasinski A *14 DesignTrust Chicago

Meghan Murphy MPS *16 City of New Orleans, LA

Josh Mings A ’12 Aggregate Studio

Nick B. Kallman A ‘20 Mirambell Realty

Seattle Nick Vann A ‘09, MPS *09 Washington State, Department of Archaeology & Historic Preservation

Me’osha Solsberry A *18, MSRED *18 Fitzgerald Associates Architects

New York Braham Berg A ‘18, MSRED *18 BBB3rg LLC

Washington, DC Brinda Sen Gupta A ‘11, MSRED *12 World Wide Technology

Ian Rosenfield A ‘15

Nick Cusimano A ‘13 Marriott International

Sean McGuire A *12 Gensler Dallas Sarah Cumming A ‘14 Overland Partners

Julia Gorodetsky A ‘20 Kids In Design Kyle Graham A ‘16 Welltower

J. Marshall Brown MPS *16 Loudoun County, Virginia, Department of Planning and Zoning

Interested in learning more about or becoming involved in the Alumni Council? Reach out to Ben Neal, Executive Assistant, at bneal1@tulane.edu or visit architecture.tulane.edu/alumni-council. 48

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T H E A D VA N C E M E N T

Advancement Report F I S C A L Y E A R 2 0 2 6 ( J U LY 1 , 2 0 2 5 – J U N E 3 0 , 2 0 2 6 )

Your support allows the Tulane School of Architecture and Built Environment to build an environment of excellence, provide transformational teaching, and work with our community to promote meaningful change. Every gift is important and makes a difference. With your continued help, we are poised to move to a new level of achievement by building on our strengths and capitalizing on the momentum of our successes.

BY T HE NUMBER S:

$1,544,305 raised this year

441 total donors

$934,994 $51,300 total commitments made to the school’s annual funds, which support its most pressing needs

total commitments from corporations and foundations this year

To learn more about how you can contribute, contact Josh Davis, Senior Director of Development for the Tulane School of Architecture and Built Environment, at jdavis46@tulane.edu. You can also visit giving.tulane.edu/tusabe NewZine

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DONOR SPOTLIGHTS John Klingman BY MARY SPARACELLO, TULANE UNIVERSITY

or more than 35 years, Professor Emeritus John P. Klingman shaped how Tulane students see both buildings and the city that holds them. Now he is extending that legacy by donating his Garden District home at 1309 Harmony Street, along with support for its ongoing care, to the School of Architecture and Built Environment. Klingman was drawn to the school’s close-knit culture, where students and faculty form lasting bonds. His gift reflects that spirit, ensuring the home continues serving the school for years to come. “For me, place is fundamental to ar-

chitecture,” Klingman said. And few places shaped him like New Orleans. The 1898 house, designed by eminent local architect Emile Weil and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, remains comfortable with little air conditioning; its original shutters plus ceiling fans show how a building can respond intelligently to New Orleans’ climate. By preserving the home as a potential residence for visiting Tulane faculty and lecturers, Klingman hopes to draw talent to a place he has come to cherish. “There’s no other city in the U.S. where I would ever consider living.”

Ken and Stacy Crumley BY MARY SPARACELLO, TULANE UNIVERSITY

ulane has been part of Ken Crumley’s story for generations. His mother, Janet Kolwe Crumley, who graduated from Newcomb College in 1966, was a high school valedictorian who received a scholarship to study English. His father, James Crumley, a 1967 Tulane graduate, pitched for the Green Wave baseball team. Today, that family legacy continues through Crumley’s son Drew, a rising junior in the School of Architecture and Built Environment studying real estate development. “Tulane has always been more than just a university to us,” said Crumley. That connection inspired Ken and

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his wife Stacy to establish a scholarship for Atlanta-area students in the School of Architecture and Built Environment. “Education has always been a transformative force in our family, and nowhere is that more evident than in my mother’s story and how her scholarship to Newcomb changed her life. Watching Drew’s experience at Tulane has brought that full circle,” Crumley said. “We think it’s important to appreciate the opportunities that have shaped your life and try to create those same opportunities for others. That’s what we hope this scholarship will do.”

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Awards Gala 2026

An Evening Supporting Student Scholarship Join the Tulane School of Architecture and Built Environment on October 22nd at the Josephine for an inspiring and celebratory evening that brings together alumni, faculty, friends, and partners to honor the achievements of our community while investing in the future of our students. The Awards Gala, hosted by the School’s Dean’s Advisory Council, recognizes individuals whose work shapes cities, strengthens neighborhoods, and advances the future of design. In its second year, this signature event celebrates leaders who embody innovation, service, and impact across architecture, education, and the broader built environment. The evening begins with a welcoming cocktail reception, followed by a seated dinner and awards presentation, and concludes with live music and a vibrant reception inspired by the spirit of New Orleans. Proceeds from the Gala directly support student scholarships, helping talented and ambitious students gain access to a transformative Tulane education.

Award Gala 2026 Awardees William Henry Shane Jr.

Wellington “Duke” Reiter

Advocate for Architecture and the City: The Advocate for Architecture and the City Award honors an individual of exceptional cultural and aesthetic impact on the Arts, especially Architecture, and the unique character and spirit of the City of New Orleans.

Distinguished Alumni Award: The Distinguished Alumni Award honors and recognizes an individual, a graduate of the Tulane University School of Architecture and Built Environment, for their singular and unique accomplishments as a leader and influencer in the community and the profession of architecture and design of the built environment.

Marc Morial Friend of the School Award: The Friend of the School Award honors an individual or organization outside of the architectural profession whose exceptional support has significantly benefited the Tulane School of Architecture and Built Environment and contributed to the growth and development of New Orleans.

Scan the QR code or visit https://alumni.tulane.edu/ architecture-awards-gala to learn more.

Carol McMichael Reese Faculty Luminary Award: The Faculty Luminary Award honors an individual member of the Tulane University School of Architecture and Built Environment Faculty, past or present, who through their commitment to education, research, scholarship, collaboration, mentorship, influence, impact and dedication to student success has attained eminence in their field and is an inspiration to others.

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