Home, Sweet Home is a group exhibition in May 2023 that collects work from a special-topics seminar taught by Tulane Architecture and Social Innovation Fellow Emmanuel Osorno, and a design-research project led by Tulane Architecture and Urbanism Fellow, Omar Ali and Visiting Assistant Professor, Nimet Anwar.

The exhibit will have an opening on Friday, May 19, at the Albert and Tina Small Center for Collaborative Design, 1725 Barrone Street. The opening is open to the public. Light food and refreshments will be served.

Please RSVP by May 16, 2023 at this link.

‘Evolutive Housing,’ curated by Omar Ali and Nimet Anwar, is a design-research project initiated by New Orleans-based practice, NO OFFICE. The project considers the effects of gentrification and displacement through the lens of housing in the city of Houston. Housing availability in the city is not unlike the typical offerings of a suburb: single-family homes and multi-family apartment complexes of various sizes and scales, but as housing needs grow Houston is increasingly looking to middle-scale housing types.

Cities across the country deal with housing availability issues due to restrictive zoning laws that hinder the application of multifamily housing at the middle scale. Houston is at the forefront of progressive strategies for filling this absence through its relaxed approach to zoning as well as the excess of spec middle-scale housing projects led by developers. This approach has shown to be useful but is keeping housing ownership out of reach to a large percentage of Houstonians. Houston serves as a critical case study that can be applied to cities throughout the country that are in the midst of addressing a scarcity of affordable housing. Architects can lead this conversation by partnering with Community Land Trusts and producing new strategies for socially-minded housing for not only some but for all.

The exhibit includes contributions from student Research Assistants – Joey, Tomshe B.Arch ‘25, Jose Varela Castillo, B.Arch ‘24, Olivia Vercruysse, B.Arch ‘24 – and aerial cinematography from Nicholas LiCausi, TuSA Director of Fabrication.

Funding to support this project is from TuSA, Tulane’s CELT Faculty Mentored Undergraduate Research Fund, and Tulane’s Phyllis M. Taylor Center for Social Innovation and Design Thinking and the Michael Sacks Chair in Civic Engagement and Social Entrepreneurship. In collaboration with Houston Community Land Trust (HCLT), an independent non-profit.

‘Re-New Orleans,’ curated by Emmanuel Osorno, is an architecture exhibition masquerading as a storefront display of New Orleans souvenirs. Also, Its subjects are deliberately kitschy: buildings transformed into everyday objects. Through the use of translation, abstraction, and representation, this exhibition aims to remake the touristic image of the city, proposing a new set of buildings that ought to be elevated to iconic status. Ranging from infrastructural projects to beloved local businesses, the selection of fourteen buildings focused on structures that are often overlooked, but whose history, operation, or program are significant for the functioning and making of New Orleans. Moreover, By turning them into souvenirs, the image of these buildings can be mobilized to communicate with a wider public and be used as agents of influence and change.

Furthermore, The works in this exhibition were produced by students from the Tulane School of Architecture seminar, Image & Influence: The Hidden Memories of Souvenirs, taught by Emmanuel Osorno in the Spring of 2023. The participants include Ben Cornett, Alex DiSimone, Claire Fisher, Kate Galvin, Simone Golder, Erica Guzman, Ryan Harnish, Jessica Harry, Camille Kreisel, Lauren Lake, Kayleigh Macumber, Zach Rich, Jessica Seidl, Olivia Vercruysse, Yi Wei, Chenbo Xing, and Kuangji Zhang.