ABSTRACT
Tulane City Center (TCC) functions as a community design center of Tulane School of Architecture and works on a range of Public Interest Design projects from project visioning to graphic advocacy to design build. TCC began as an idea in early 2005 and in the wake of Hurricane Katrina quickly galvanized its efforts to address the issues, opportunities, and inequities exposed by the storm. With Grow Dat Youth Farm, the focus of this chapter, the authors experimented with a multi-semester, larger and more complex form of university-based design build. Before moving to a discussion of the architectural and environmental design elements, it is important to understand the social issues that the envisioned program and project sought to address. Students are the primary fabricators of the Grow Dat Youth Farm-from foundations to finish work including a large amount of welding, woodwork, heavy machinery operation, and custom concrete work.
