"Tulane Prototype":One of the communities forced to leave New Orleans before the storm (and, of course, kept away by the flood) was the Architecture program at Tulane, which decided on returning to design and build a series of housing prototypes intown. The idea of sponsoring specific, urban infill projects existed pre-Katrina, but the aftermath made the project even more urgent.
As a first experiment in block-quoting:
Tulane URBANbuild is a comprehensive program which provides community design services to actively support the rehabilitation of neighborhoods subject to damage in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. Faculty and students engaged in URBANbuild studios are deployed to neighborhoods throughout the city to develop creative and sustainable urban design strategies, innovative designs for new housing, and proposals for site-specific urban interventions and large-scale mixed use urban environments. As an integral component of the URBANbuild program, faculty and students are also designing four housing prototypes for each of the study neighborhoods, and constructing one prototype house in partnership with community non-profit agencies that specialize in affordable housing and neighborhood redevelopment. Prototype 1 on 1930 Dumaine Street, the first of four house prototypes to be built over the next two years, was completed in the summer of 2006, in partnership with Neighborhood Housing Services of New Orleans, UJAMAA and Project Home Again.
I spent a few days with the faculty and students: as the video indicates, Alan Lewis led an urban planning studio contemporaneous with Byron Mouton's design studio. Both of them were working with a nice balance between strong a theoretical base and a flexible design strategy. The former looked at briding some of the formal, logistical and cultural divides that pre-dated Katrina; the latter group analyzed what made the typical shotgun house work so effectively and how it could be updated in terms of both style and technology.
Not only was the design well-articulated, but the students were able to articulate the whole strategy, which indicated a lot of passion for the project from everyone involved. The final execution, however, offers a facade to the street that is rather imposing, versus the renderings you see in the package, as well as the way in which the students talk about it. The package itself was originally even shorter (I had kept everything under 3:00 for my pitch); I went back in and reinserted comments from the Dean. And: the piece is just too fast-paced in general; it either needs to cover less stuff, have less narration, or just be a 4:00-:30 piece. Anyway.
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