Dezeen School Shows: a native wetland ecosystem for a flood-risked neighbourhood in New Orleans is among the projects from students at Tulane University.

Also featured is a permanent solution for scaffolding in New York City and communal spaces for the Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh.

Tulane University

Institution: Tulane School of Architecture and Built Environment
Course: ARCH 5990/6990 – Thesis Studio for Bachelor of Architecture and Master of Architecture
Tutors:  Ammar Eloueini, Juan Medina, Emilie Taylor Welty, Iñaki Alday Fallon Samuels Aidoo, Edson Cabalfin, Margarita Jover and Sergi Serrat

School statement:

"A thesis at Tulane School of Architecture and Built Environment is the pursuit of innovation in the field of architecture, by connecting urgent architectural topics, societal concerns and personal lines of inquiry.

"It is identified by first investigating an architectural topic and establishing a position, then developing a design proposal through which the topic is explored and the position is demonstrated.

"A thesis must be informed and intentional. The works presented by the 2026 Undergraduate and Graduate Thesis class cover a broad array of research and design proposals that analyse the past, challenge the current and hypothesise on the future, ranging from large-scale urban systems thinking to advanced material innovation.

"Together, the projects conceptualise strategies for collective existence as they imagine complex multi-scalar environments that merge real with projected scenarios.

"The following are select projects from the 2026 graduating class of the five-year Bachelor of Architecture and the graduate Master of Architecture."

Landform: The Convergence of Landscape and Architecture by Katherine Burkhart

"The concepts of the artificial and the organic have long occupied a central place in philosophical, theoretical and artistic discourse. Their greatest potential emerges not in isolation, but through direct juxtaposition and integration.

"A similar dichotomy exists within architecture and landscape architecture, where contemporary projects often position the organic alongside the artificial to emphasise the strengths of each.

"Yet true integration between these extremes remains uncommon in the built environment, particularly at the scale of individual buildings.

"This thesis proposes the complete integration of architecture and landscape as a unified design process. By merging the organic and the artificial, it establishes a new mode of intervention that preserves and amplifies the qualities of both."

Student: Katherine Burkhart
Course: ARCH 5990 – Thesis
Tutors: Ammar Eloueini and Juan Medina
Email: burkhartkate70@gmail.com

Rooms for a Village: Architectures for Shared Rural Regeneration by Alex Cohen

"Across rural France, villages are slowly losing the spaces and rituals that once sustained collective life. Shops close, populations thin and public life recedes, leaving behind fragments of a shared past.

"This thesis asks how architecture might participate in rebuilding these conditions while preserving rural identity. In the village of Mainsat, it proposes an intervention.

"Based around a catalogue of artefacts, which together form an archipelago of small civic 'rooms' embedded within existing structures and landscapes.

"Anchored by an abandoned building-turned-library, these artefacts can spill out, allowing interventions to unfold over time, extending public life across the commune and positioning architecture as a slow, ongoing act of care, repair and collective renewal."

Student: Alex Cohen
Course: ARCH 5990 – Thesis
Tutors: Ammar Eloueini and Juan Medina
Email: cohen.alex.514[at]gmail.com

Parametric Patternmaking: Cultural Codes and Contemporary Fabrication by Abbas Ghaffar and Seyedeh Delaram Khoshhal Ziabari

"This thesis explores how Iranian architectural heritage can inform contemporary wearable design through computational fabrication.

"The project reinterprets muqarnas, a centuries-old system of geometric vaulting, as a generative framework for creating body-scaled structures.

"Drawing on the evolution of Iranian corner-making techniques, the research translates architectural principles into wearable forms using parametric design tools.

"A recursive symmetry method developed in Grasshopper generates geometries tailored to the human body, balancing complexity with wearability.

"The final collection includes a 3D-printed bodice, a folded skirt inspired by Rasmi-bandi patterns, and a mask, proposing a new dialogue between cultural heritage, digital fabrication, fashion and architecture."

Students: Abbas Ghaffar and Seyedeh Delaram Khoshhal Ziabari
Course: ARCH 6990 – Thesis
Tutor: Ammar Eloueini
Emails: abbas.ghaffari[at]gmail.com and delaramkhoshhal[at]gmail.com

Invisible Fragments: Strengthening a Small Informal Settlement within a Transforming Buenos Aires by Camilla Greppi

"Located in Buenos Aires, Barrio Saldías is a small, often forgotten, informal settlement positioned at the edge of major urban transformations.

"This thesis strengthens the community without erasing its existing fabric or displacing residents. Through selective retrofitting, structurally viable homes are improved with safer circulation, pitched roofs, windows and doors, while underutilised warehouses are reused for essential programs like education, healthcare and food access.

"New incremental housing follows the scale and spatial logic of existing dwellings, allowing families to expand horizontally over time.

"An abandoned rail corridor becomes a railroad park, creating a public spine that reconnects Barrio Saldías to Villa 31, the port and the broader city."

Student: Camilla Greppi
Course: ARCH 5990 – Thesis
Tutors: Ammar Eloueini and Juan Medina
Email: camillagreppi[at]outlook.com

Levande Bottenvåningar – Living Ground Floors: Reimagining the Ground Floor of Boston's Seaport District
by Asha Hokanson

"Drawing on the Swedish concept of Levande Bottenvåningar, the ground floor is reimagined as an active threshold between the building and the city.

"Rather than relying on fixed walls and permanent partitions, space is organised through adaptable elements such as furniture, level changes, vegetation and variations in column density, allowing for flexible and evolving patterns of occupation over time.

"The ground floor is envisioned as a porous interface that encourages interaction, supports diverse programs and responds to changing environmental conditions.

"In response to rising sea levels and increasing flood risk, micro-topography mediates between water and occupation, transforming the ground into an adaptive, resilient landscape that accommodates periodic flooding while maintaining opportunities for public use, social engagement and everyday urban life."

Student: Asha Hokanson
Course: ARCH 5990 – Thesis
Tutors: Ammar Eloueini and Juan Medina
Email: ashahokanson@icloud.com

Defining Domesticity: Communal Spaces in Rohingya Refugee Camps by Emma Lindley

"As of 2025, there are 41.6 million refugees worldwide, 6.6 million of whom live in refugee camps. The complex issues involved in refugee situations often result in protracted sites: the average person lives in a refugee camp for 20 years.

"Thus, refugees are stuck with short-term shelter solutions during long-term occupations.

"Refugee camps need to be addressed not as a collection of shelters, but as urban zones that work to extend and improve the quality of domestic space.

"This thesis proposes a series of communal spaces located in voids throughout the Rohingya refugee camps in Cox's Bazar.

"Programmatically, these spaces take shape as a kitchen/ dining area and a public bathhouse, providing clean and dignified everyday spaces for refugees."

Student: Emma Lindley
Course: ARCH 5990 – Thesis
Tutors: Ammar Eloueini and Juan Medina
Email: elindley[at]tulane.edu

Cultivating Community: The Revitalization of Rosenwald Schools by Abigail Sakawat

"The Rosenwald program operated from 1912 to 1932 across 15 states in the rural South. The program worked to educate African American children and address the overall lack of resources during the Jim Crow era by promoting empowerment and self-reliance through education.

"Despite their impact, many of these schools remain vacant on sites that face new, complex issues, including food insecurity.

"This thesis reimagines the program's original philosophy to address contemporary issues of food insecurity at the Beauregard Parish Training School in DeRidder, Louisiana.

"Through rehabilitation and additions, this project provides spaces for community gatherings, food distribution and education on different cultivation methods, reconnecting the community with the school's legacy while bolstering existing food resources."

Student:
Course: ARCH 6990 – Thesis
Tutor: Fallon Samuels Aidoo
Email: abbisaka[at]gmail.com

Pneumatic Expansion: AIRchtecture in New York's Scaffolding by Caleb Schroeder

"New York City's scaffolding has become a ubiquitous, overlooked feature of the urban landscape, occupying sidewalks and facades for years or decades beyond its lifespan.

"Originally conceived as a temporary maintenance device, scaffolding now operates as a persistent infrastructural framework that mediates between buildings and streets.

"This thesis reframes New York City's vast stock of scaffolding as a prolonged condition supporting occupation through the insertion of inflatable volumes.

"Operating in a temporary condition, these modules position impermanence as a generative spatial strategy, enabling architecture to transform in response to surrounding urban conditions.

"The outcome explores how inflatable interventions can expand beyond architectural typologies, recasting scaffolding not as a provisional maintenance device, but as an active framework for evolving urban occupation.

Student: Caleb Schroeder
Course: ARCH 5990 – Thesis
Tutors: Ammar Eloueini and Juan Medina
Email: cschroeder1me[at]gmail.com

Urbanism As Continuum by Walter Workman

"Urbanism as Continuum proposes urban grafting on the block scale as an alternative to demolition-based development in New York City's industrial districts, treating architecture as an open-ended framework rather than a finished object.

"By threading an autonomous structural system through active warehouse districts, new housing accumulates incrementally above working industrial floors, generating mixed-use density without displacing the economies below.

"Existing building stock is preserved and woven into new construction, allowing the neighbourhood to grow from within, thickening its fabric rather than replacing it and sustaining the social continuity that erasure-driven development forfeits.

"Current tenants are given control over their future in the neighbourhood with a stronger voice towards move-out dates and have increased leverage for negotiations with future developers."

Student: Walter Workman
Course: ARCH 5990 – Thesis
Tutors: Ammar Eloueini and Juan Medina
Email: wworkman[at]tulane.edu

From Post-Disaster to Paradise: Finding the Future of the Lower Ninth Ward by Hayden C Blodgett

"Since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, much of New Orleans has recovered its pre-storm identity. This is not the case in the Lower Ninth Ward, where levee failures flooded 100% of neighbourhood housing; today, life in the neighbourhood remains precarious from severe chronic vacancy, invasive species and dwindling services.

"Drawing on bayou living precedents throughout Louisiana, this thesis recovers the ecological function of native wetland ecosystems and improves the quality of the neighbourhood through integration of a constructed canal-bayou network.

"This network improves the neighbourhood's socio-ecological function by providing armature for new housing, increased social services, improved drainage and other ecosystem system services which allow the Lower Ninth Ward to evolve beyond post-disaster stagnation into a more paradisaical place to live."

Student: Hayden C. Blodgett
Course: ARCH 6990 – Thesis
Tutor: Iñaki Alday
Email: hblodgett[at]tulane.edu

Partnership content

This school show is a partnership between Dezeen and Tulane University. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here.

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