Architecture Program Report Tulane University New Orleans ...

supports the identity of architecture as a unique community, intensifying
the common purpose and creative energy of the school. The low student/
faculty ration allows nearly all students and faculty to become
acquainted, and the approach to education, while structured, is
nonetheless informal and direct.
One of the original professional schools at Tulane, the charter of the
School of Architecture supports the underlying mission of providing a
professional education within a broad-based university context. Tulane
University’s focus on both teaching and the discovery of new knowledge
as mutually beneficial endeavors permeates the School of Architecture,
whereby the ‘teaching laboratory’—the design studio—remains the
fundamental basis of architectural education. The notion of the discipline
of architecture as a rarified body of knowledge is actively resisted within
the School; rather, knowledge is critically examined and applied in
programs, courses, and activities arrayed across the curriculum. Hence,
curricular areas are not conceived of as segregated units, but as
reciprocal exchanges of ideas and modes of endeavor.
The university libraries provide significant resources for research. In
addition to its general collection, Howard-Tilton Library (the main library
for the Uptown campus) has located its main architecture collections
within the School of Architecture. In addition to 23,000 volumes and more
than 260 periodicals, there are approximately 26,000 volumes on
architecture and related subjects located in the main library. The
Southeastern Architectural Archives (ranked by Forbes as “one of the
three best architectural archives in the country”) and the Louisiana
Collection provide students with direct access to original documents. In
addition, Tulane’s Amistad Collection archives material on African-
American Culture, located directly across from the School of Architecture
on the main quadrangle, is a unique and notable resource. External to,
but highly accessible, are the collections of the Louisiana State
Museums at the Cabildo and the Presbytere. In addition, the Historic
New Orleans Collection and the Louisiana Collection in the New Orleans
Public Library provide singular sources of archival material dating back to
the founding of the city of New Orleans. All faculty and students are
members of the New Orleans Museum of Art.
Since 1970, Architecture classes have been taught in the Richardson
Memorial Building, the School of Architecture’s current location. This
handsome Romanesque-revival structure accommodates all of the
activities of the school and personifies architecture on campus. While
originally designed for medical education, it nonetheless accommodates
the functions of the School of Architecture. Renovated after a fire in
1985, the well-lit and spacious laboratories are effective as design
studios, allowing all of the students in a given year to work together, or in
the case of upper-level providing an optimal mingling of groups and
consequent cross-fertilization. A range of public spaces accommodates
lectures and seminars while also servicing formal and informal design
reviews. The school has a well-equipped woodworking shop, a digital
media and modeling center, and a computer graphics center and, as is
evidenced in the student work, all three maintain a high profile within the
school.