Architecture Program Report Tulane University New Orleans ...

1. 4. PROGRAM MISSION STATEMENT
The mission of the School of Architecture is to prepare students for leadership positions
in the design professions and in their communities. In order to accomplish this, we
provide the highest quality professional education, develop and conserve knowledge,
and promote excellence and innovation in architecture, urban and environmental design,
preservation, and history, theory and criticism.
Vision Statement
At the Tulane School of Architecture (TSA), we envision a generation of architects
dedicated to rebuilding the civic realm in America, to crafting those buildings, places, and
institutions that create healthy, vibrant, vital, sustainable cities. Using the rich physical
and cultural landscape of New Orleans as a laboratory, one which now manifests the
effects of a natural and man-made catastrophe, we have structured a liberal arts-based,
professional architectural curriculum that engages all of our students directly in an
ongoing effort to rebuild this city. Students are learning that architects are uniquely suited
to lead our nation toward an urban renaissance in this City and the region, and that their
part in that process begins here.
The approach at TSA emphasizes civic engagement and professional responsibility. All
of our students will spend at least one academic year of their time at Tulane away from
the St. Charles Avenue campus engaged in design-driven activities that emphasize
community-building and urban studies. The School has developed the Tulane City
Center, an interdisciplinary applied research facility that will increasingly be the locus of
TSA’s urban design and outreach activities. The City Center will house both new
programs—such as the recently inaugurated URBANBuild Studio and the Speculative
Urban Design Studio—as well as existing programs, like our award-winning Preservation
Studies Center (which will be re-inaugurated as the Tulane Cultural Resource
Management Program) and the Tulane Regional Urban Design Center (TRUDC). It will
also house the Urban Design Resource Network, a 'sourcebook' for new and expanding
opportunities for the City of New Orleans and the region. Thus, we envision the City
Center as a place of partnership with existing New Orleans institutions, and as a catalyst
for new partnerships as well.