College of the Arts

Coastal Community Resilience Studio

The Coastal Community Resilience Studio (CCRS) is a collaborative effort between researchers, faculty, and students from across the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. The School of Architecture and Design (SOAD); School of Geosciences; Department of Sociology; Anthropology, & Child and Family Studies; the Institute for Coastal Ecology and Engineering; and the Regional Application Center all contribute to the productivity of the group. The Resilience Studio addresses the complexities of restoration and preservation along the Louisiana coast. CCRS has created a new framework that is transdisciplinary and systems-oriented to link disturbances, land use transformations, and climate change to natural processes and human system adaptation, with special emphasis on the Chenier Plain in southern Louisiana.

The Resilience Studio proposes to lead faculty and students toward the following objectives:

• To provide an integrated academic home for the emerging programmatic needs of systems design in the Louisiana Coastal Zone (e.g. ecosystem restoration, regional planning, and water resource management)
• To facilitate an integrated multidisciplinary educational model that integrates undergraduate and graduate education from multiple colleges
• To develop student-driven collaborative research projects involving at least three of the following fields of study: coastal science, environmental science, landscape architecture, architecture, civil engineering, systems engineering, environmental engineering, sociology, anthropology, political science, economics, and geographic information science

Building Institute

The Building Institute (BI) is UL Lafayette’s integrated project delivery, develop-design-build institute. The Building Institute provides an opportunity for students to act. It is founded upon the belief that the act of making meaningful architecture requires our students to take responsibility for their designs: culturally, socially, politically, fiscally, and technically. This Institute has put a structure in place that allows participation in service-learning by the entire student body and faculty thus institutionalizing pedagogy and service. Students design and build projects which range in size from small site installations such as seating and play areas to large scale projects such as pavilions and housing. Most importantly, the built-work is located in the community and serves the community.

Our students work hand-in-hand with local contractors to build the homes that achieve sustainability standards such as the National Homebuilder’s Green Building Standard or LEED. The Building Institute is structured through a graduate design studio in the fall, the construction documents course in the spring, and the construction course in the summer. Students receive academic credit for each course and, in addition, several team leaders receive paid summer internships that allowing them to accrue IDP (Intern Development Program) credit.The project goes from the head of the student, to paper and model, and finally to the built-form.

Community Design Workshop

The Community Design Workshop (CDW)’s mission is to assist in the rebuilding of Lafayette’s downtown area and its traditional neighborhoods, as well as assisting surrounding small towns and cities throughout the state. It gives our students hands on experience by helping cities, small towns, and neighborhoods visualize their potential as communities.

The CDW has collaborated with many state and local government agencies on urban design and planning projects, and with small town and neighborhood redevelopment efforts. CDW projects are developed and explored through the architecture studio and are continued in the summer by employing University faculty and students.

It gives our students hands on experience by helping cities, small towns, and neighborhoods visualize their potential as communities. The Workshop is designed to educate the public about good community design and planning principles, to assist communities to envision their future by establishing a collaborative effort with its citizens through public workshops and charrettes.

Sustainable Development Lab

The Sustainable Development Lab (SDLab) is a research & practice lab that integrates design research and entrepreneurship as a model for market based, design driven economic development that prioritizes individual opportunity along with the public good. The core of SDLab focus is on the integration of entrepreneurship and design, primarily through housing and density development and entrepreneurial opportunities related to the development work. The Lab promotes research in the areas of density, housing, building science, fabrication and culture through a number of cross-disciplinary collaborations (co-Labs).