Meet Dean Alday

LETTER FROM THE DEAN

It is an enormous honor to join the Tulane School of Architecture community as dean. It is also a great responsibility, and one in which I welcome your help. The continued progress of the school will require the collective effort of students, staff, faculty and alumni.

I want to thank Dean Schwartz for his extraordinary accomplishments during the last 10 years, which elevated the school in academia and the community.

I am excited and confident about the potential of the school. It is unique already, and well-positioned for the future. I am convinced that our collective duty (and desire!) is to keep pushing for excellence without reservation.

Excellence is about ideas and commitment. We will have the best ideas and the best architectural education, and we are getting ready for the challenges ahead.

We have a great group of educators and architects in Richardson Memorial Hall, and are growing. It is my pleasure to introduce you to some extraordinary new additions to the tenure track faculty.

Margarita Jover joins the school as associate professor, bringing a substantial multidisciplinary practice with international awards and a new book, “Ecologies of Prosperity.” Adam Modesitt, an assistant professor from New Jersey Institute of Technology, is a national young leader in digital fabrication. Carrie Norman, assistant professor from the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University, is principal of Norman Kelley, which was recently awarded a United States Artist Fellowship in Architecture and Design.

Read more about these individuals and another addition to our team, Ann Yoachim, director of the Albert and Tina Small Center for Collaborative Design, on pages six and seven.

Our school is located in the heart of the Gulf Coast, in which all the challenges of human inhabitation of the planet are at play. Here, we have the opportunity to define the role of architecture in front of climate change, coastal and riparian crisis, the process of urbanization under these circumstances, and the challenges for social and environmental justice. This is a historic moment in the best possible place on earth to be an architect and an educator.

I look forward to working with you,

Iñaki

Dean and Koch Chair in Architecture

The Water Park for the Expo 2008.

GET TO KNOW DEAN ALDAY

Global architect Iñaki Alday began his term as dean and Richard Koch Chair in Architecture of the Tulane School of Architecture in August. He joins Tulane from the University of Virginia, where he served as the School of Architecture’s first international chair and a tenured professor.

In 2016, Alday was appointed founding director of the Yamuna River Project, a long-term interdisciplinary program that aims to revitalize both the ecology of the Yamuna River and the essential relationship between the river and life in Delhi.

Left: Agriculture Interpretation Center at Aranzadi Park. Right: Power Plant and Video Art Center.

With his partner Margarita Jover, Alday is founder and principal of aldayjover architecture and landscape, known for its approach to the relationship between cities and rivers as well as for the urban and civic integration of “hybrid infrastructures” that include both natural and built elements. The firm is responsible for numerous architecture and landscape works in Spain, including the Water Park for the Expo 2008, the Aranzadi Park and Agriculture Interpretation Center, and the hybrid Power Plant and Video Art Center of Zaragoza.