URBANbuild
Tulane URBANbuild is a comprehensive program which provides community design services to actively support the rehabilitation of neighborhoods subject to damage in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. Faculty and students engaged in URBANbuild studios are deployed to neighborhoods throughout the city to develop creative and sustainable urban design strategies, innovative designs for new housing, and proposals for site-specific urban interventions and large-scale mixed use urban environments. As an integral component of the URBANbuild program, faculty and students are also designing four housing prototypes for each of the study neighborhoods, and constructing one prototype house in partnership with community non-profit agencies that specialize in affordable housing and neighborhood redevelopment. Prototype 1 on 1930 Dumaine Street, the first of four house prototypes to be built over the next two years, was completed in the summer of 2006, in partnership with Neighborhood Housing Services of New Orleans, UJAMAA and Project Home Again.
The intention of URBANbuild is to aid in the reconstruction of New Orleans and to support the provision of quality affordable housing to underserved communities, by furnishing urban planning and neighborhood design services, as well as by providing designs for low-cost and environmentally responsive housing prototypes to areas in the city which have historically been dominated by blight and abandonment. URBANbuild is providing urban research and analysis as well as comprehensive neighborhood plans and strategies for urban revitalization for four target areas in New Orleans: the Upper Treme (6th ward) and Tulane/Gravier neighborhoods; New Marigny/St Roch neighborhood (7th ward); and two neighborhoods in Central City. As a part of the neighborhood planning strategies, the program is also providing historic building analyses and inventories, research and design models for low rise high density housing, and generating design strategies for the rehabilitation of urban corridors, infrastructural redevelopment and the expansion of cultural and recreational opportunities within these neighborhoods. In addition, over a two-year period, the program will design 16 single and multi-family housing prototypes, and construct 4 new house prototypes to be built in the city, one for each target area.
Faculty:
Ila Berman, Director, URBANbuild; Associate Dean, Tulane University
Byron Mouton, Co-director, URBANbuild [Design-Build Studios]
Alan Lewis, Director, Tulane City Center
Mona El Khafif, Visiting Assistant Professor, Urban Design
Scott Bernhard, Associate Professor, Housing Studios
