Tulane School of Architecture: Richardson Memorial Hall Renovation + Addition

A comprehensive renovation/addition of Tulane’s University’s School of Architecture, expanding the historic Richardson Memorial Hall to serve as a dynamic, student-centered home for design education.

Category Education
Adaptive Reuse + Modernization
Interiors
New Build

Size 60,000 SF

Location New Orleans, LA

Year 2024

OPPORTUNITY

Richardson Memorial Hall (RMH), constructed in 1908 for the School of Medicine, has been home to the School of Architecture since 1968. Situated at the head of Tulane’s Gibson quad, the 45,000SF building underwent a comprehensive renovation with a new 15,000 SF addition. The project, which earned LEED Silver certification, successfully blends historic preservation with modern sustainability practices. We sought to celebrate the school and deliver a dynamic, adaptable, and inspiring space for architecture students, encouraging collaboration and emphasizing its role as a teaching tool for students.

Constructed in 1908 to serve as the School of Medicine and prominently located at the head of Tulane’s Gibson Quad, Richardson Memorial Hall has served as the home of the School of Architecture since 1968.

We conducted a renovation/addition that addressed structural concerns, improved life-quality and accessibility to meet modern code, and engaged students and faculty in community sessions to inform program strategy.

The reconfigured program returns a sense of entry through a sequence of thresholds leading from ground to third floor via the restored historic stair. The new building optimizes adjacencies, introduces cutting-edge fabrication laboratories, links administrative areas, and allows students and staff to better collaborate.

The project’s central design challenge was the form of the addition. We pursued a clarity of design language, seeking to consistently differentiate between new and old to expand building capacity without compromising historic proportions.

Strategy

This addition supports the building’s historic identity with reserved interventions, maintaining an expression of bold reverence in structural and material strategy. Situated at the building’s rear, it preserves the building’s iconic place while presenting a new face to the adjoining Loyola campus.

The interior program structure was informed by close collaboration with faculty and students. This engagement revealed layered priorities for each space—studios, fabrication labs, galleries, lecture halls, and outdoor areas. We worked to meet goals by reorganizing programs and sequence. A new circulation reclaims a sense of ceremonial entry, restores the historic stair to a place of prominent gathering, and consolidates fabrication zones to better resource students and faculty in research and practice.

The restoration involved extensive masonry repair and termite damage mitigation. For the addition, the least intrusive construction method involved pocketing the addition’s structural steel into the existing masonry—allowing integration without compromising the original envelope.

Within the addition’s north side, an interstitial stair provides extra square footage for faculty offices between the fourth and fifth floors. The solution presents the exterior façade as an interior interface between studio and staff spaces. Exposed trusses in the fourth floor studios, along with new “crow’s nests” and a skylight in the fifth floor, allow light to pass through the building and illuminate spaces in the addition.

In terms of material, we employed matte black steel to front the addition in a set-back position, echoing the rhythm of the existing brick and limestone façade joints. The same material frames thresholds between old and new interior spaces. Baseboards sit flush to the new walls, and were applied to the formerly-exterior masonry to form a barrier between the walls and concrete floors. Ceiling recessions improve ventilation, and the addition of two elevators and four new stairs ensure safety and accessibility.

For students, the project emphasizes collaborative design and learning experiences beyond the studio. In our project engagement phase, we involved architecture students and professors in visioning conversations that defined essential priorities and determined focus areas: galleries, review rooms, lecture halls, faculty labs, shop, studios, café, library, preservation, and outdoor areas. The faculty provided insight into the school’s pedagogy: how it was expressed through the building’s existing state, and how a renovation and addition might further teaching objectives.

Aiming to create a space that caters to architecture students' needs, we addressed challenges such as late-night access to food, incorporated circadian-aware lighting, introduced new safety technology infrastructure, and enhanced wayfinding. With multiple means of circulation, the new design celebrates the historic stairs and delivers new paths.

Outcome

Awarded a State of Louisiana Honor Award the same year as completion, the project achieved LEED Silver certification and successfully diverted 8,972 metric tons of material from landfill and conserved 1,773 tons of CO2.

It serves to meet Tulane’s institutional priorities and the needs of the academic community. The preservation allowed the school to leverage state historic preservation tax credits and ensures Richardson Memorial Hall remains a legacy landmark on campus.

The addition elevates the school’s program capacity, supports students in pursuing design learning, provides clarity of use through wayfinding, and reinforces authority through a continuous identity of place. The building now operates as a 24/7 academic home, and a living lab for the future of design education.