Learning from Lafitte: An Interdisciplinary Place-based Approach to Architectural Research and Education

Abstract

An innovative trans-disciplinary research studio stack, designed to engage issues of coastal sustainability from a place-based perspective, is entering its second year at LSU School of Architecture. Pursued simultaneously through nested design studios, seminars, and independent scholarly research, these educational and research agendas are supported by the Coastal Sustainability Studios (CSS), a University-wide research initiative focusing on collaborative inter-disciplinary proposals for Coastal Louisiana. Faculty and students from the Departments and Schools of The Coast and the Environment, Earth Sciences, Renewable and Natural Resources, Engineering, Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Law, Economics, Geology, Geography and Anthropology collaborate on regional to community scale speculations throughout the lower Mississippi delta. This paper utilizes a CSS geography-based grant to test an NSF funded Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) framework, developed to facilitate socio-ecological research, within the context of generating proposals for coupled built architectural and natural systems. By furthering the 1977 Venturi, Scott Brown, Izenour research methodology developed in "Learning from Las Vegas”, through the integration of ecological and socio-cultural dynamics, time, and feedback loops (essential considerations within the dynamic deltaic system), a long-term architectural design and education research agenda that provides productive definitions of sustainability and resilience is emerging.