Texas Tech University

Research & Outreach

The HCOA is committed to the themes of urban and community design, advanced fabrication techniques, historic preservation, and healthcare. We connect our surroundings to an increasingly globalized world and seek challenges where architecture can play a role in the health and wellbeing of diverse populations.

We seek to define research and creative output as broadly as necessary to embrace the entire field of architecture and wants to foster a presence in this region to sharpen critical acumen, expand career prospects, and value the resources of West Texas to support, leverage, and cultivate situated local knowledge within a matrix of the land, culture, and history.

We aim to create a foundational presence in Marfa, develop a reciprocal relationship with the City of Lubbock, and establish a precedent in the West Texas region from which to build interdisciplinary programs that engage Architecture, Art, Agriculture, Healthcare, and other departments and disciplines at TTU.

Architecture Design & Research Center

The Architecture Research & Design Center (ARDC) facilitates and coordinates research and design activities within the HCOA. Located on the 6th floor of the Huckabee College, the Center assists faculty and students in their research, scholarship, and creative endeavors; serves as a liaison to other research centers and institutes, and provides architectural/research services to the community.

The ARDC has four laboratories that direct research, design, service, and scholarly activity in four specializations within the MS Arch degree: Design & Health, Digital Computation and Fabrication, Historic Preservation and Design, and Urban and Community Design.

The HCOA at El Paso maintains a research initiative POST (Project for Operative Spatial Technologies). In addition, the HCOA ARDC provides a venue for faculty initiatives and ongoing research.

Urban Tech

An extension of our architecture program, Urban Tech is a place for students to think, draw, design, model and create; a product of ideas and information in public exhibition in the form of drawings and models and transportable information via digital media; and a process of civic engagement and exploration. Urban Tech uses its downtown Lubbock location for community outreach, raising awareness of the ways in which architecture can address civic issues such as sustainability, resiliency, preservation, and revitalization in the public realm.

Past initiatives include High Cotton, a homeless shelter facility; the Guadalupe-Parkway Sommerville Centers playground; and downtown redevelopment project.