URBANbuild : Architectural Networks of Real Urbanism

Tulane URBANbuild is a comprehensive community outreach program that the author initiated to provide urban design and innovative, sustainable prototypical housing solutions to actively support the rehabilitation of New Orleans’ neighborhoods subject to damage in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and to revitalize areas of the city historically dominated by blight and abandonment. This article describes the issues and challenges of promoting real urban intervention within this context and elaborates the research agenda and complex taxonomy of urban and architectural tactics generated within this program. Field, network, and topographic design strategies constitute the generative and methodological terrain for proposed urban transformations within these neighborhoods. These strategies focus on promoting the densification, diversity, and environmental sustainability of critical core urban territories within the city by recuperating and consolidating their eroded urban tissue, while advancing innovative proposals for new forms of aggregated housing, infrastructural mixed-use environments, and multiscaled, site-specific urban interventions