Neither. Structural Engineering.

I'm not one to discourage people from going into architecture just for the sake of it, but you legitimately sound like you are going into the wrong field.

Advice from a community is the social aspect he doesn't care about.

There is room for both at Tulane. I won't comment on UPenn, because I didn't go there and have not come across any grads in professional practice. 

I did find the social and community-building aspects of Tulane a bit off-putting at the start, but those same qualities also mean you actually have an opportunity to build real projects in the community - allowing you to actually exercise and grow the tectonic skills you hope to develop. Byron Mouton and Nick Marshall are both great builders and good designers and you will learn a good deal from them. The shop at Tulane is fairly abysmal, but if you take a few art classes, you can get access to that shop also, which has metal foundry, better welding facilities, and better woodworking facilities.

I think you will find that if you were to focus only on structure and tectonics, you would be woefully unprepared to actually practice architecture. You can ground your design sensibilities in structural principals, and I encourage you to, but you need to be well-versed in every aspect of architecture, including building social capital and designing for communities.

The thing you have to ask yourself about tulane is ,"How likely am I to become an alcoholic or dependent on drugs?" If not likely, full steam ahead - I just saw many classmates have troubles with these since it is a fairly free-wheeling city.

If you have more detailed Tulane questions, shoot me a message on here.

Hi. I go to UPenn and I am graduating with the MArch this May. If you are interested in structure, Penn Design is not for you. Winka Dubbledam is the new Chair and she's bringing in a lot of new changes. She likes the experimental designs.

Whilst you can choose professors that have a significant professional portfolio of work, e.g. Scott Erdy from Erdy McHenry, Brian Phillips, Marion Weiss, the focus at penn is on the experimental design. In the first year at Penn, you don't get to choose your studio but in the final 2 years, you do. In the final 2 years I guess you can avoid the experimental studios.

Because Penn Design is in transition (before Winka became the Chair 2 years ago, David Leatherbarrow was the interim chair for 5 years) there is a high turn over of professors. So there are some hits and misses. You may get a good professor or you may get a bad professor. So i guess you have to be lucky. When you pay all that money to go to an Ivy league school, I think you should be near guaranteed a good professor all the time.