Lecture by New Orleans architect Byron Mouton to focus on urban renovation, affordable housing

Lecture by New Orleans architect Byron Mouton to focus on urban renovation, affordable housingOctober 01, 2008Elaine Wackerowedwacker@syr.edu

Byron Mouton, clinical professor at Tulane University School of Architecture, co-director of Tulane’s URBANbuild program and principal of BILD Design Studio, New Orleans, will speak at the Syracuse University School of Architecture on Tuesday, Oct. 7, at 5 p.m. in Slocum Hall Auditorium. His lecture, “URBANbuild,” is sponsored by UPSTATE: A Center for Design, Research and Real Estate and is free and open to the public.

A graduate of Harvard Graduate School of Design, Mouton has more than 20 years’ experience in design-build renovation, restoration and affordable housing/new construction. In 2007, Mouton, in partnership with TSA URBANbuild, received an award by the New Orleans Ogden Museum for the exhibition “URBANbuild II.”

Tulane URBANbuild is a comprehensive program that provides community design services to actively support the rehabilitation of neighborhoods subject to damage in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. Its purpose 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 that have historically been dominated by blight and abandonment.

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 nonprofit agencies that specialize in affordable housing and neighborhood redevelopment. Over a two-year period, the program will design 16 single- and multi-family housing prototypes, and construct four new house prototypes to be built in the city.

Syracuse University School of Architecture is the fourth-oldest program in the United States and consistently rated among the top architecture schools in the country. In 2008, the school’s undergraduate program was ranked third in the nation by DesignIntelligence.

For more information, visit http://soa.syr.edu.