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housing
an alternate pattern book for gulf coast neighborhoods
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and prototype for a sub-urban house/proposals for a continuous (dynamic) community
“Within 1-3 years...250,000 people will return to New Orleans to live...” - The Rand Corporation The recently issued documents “A Pattern Book for Gulf Coast Neighborhoods” by Urban Design Associates and “A Rebuilding Strategy New Orleans, LA” by the Urban Land Institute provided both a starting point and point of departure for the semester’s work. Questions that were omitted from the Pattern Book included the following: Preservation?, Investment in the city?, Fabrication?, New Industry? The studio addresses the possibility of systems, with the application of new technologies, being applied to both the design of the suburban house and housing? What are the potentials for new building materials, advanced manufacturing techniques and built-in smart technologies to transform the ubiquitous single-family unit? Can these technologies provide a means for re-conceptualizing the house in order to achieve higher degrees of performance and flexibility in the face of disaster? What are the tolerances? Given the above statistic from the Rand Corporation, where will 250,000 people live? The semester of studio work addresses the monumental question: “How should areas in New Orleans - be re-occupied and re-built?” Similarly: “What are the essential pieces needed to bring people back?” The student’s proposals focus on the individual house together with strategies for its sub-urban organization in New Orleans; and ask the following key questions: Should a house be flood proof? Should it be floodable? What is sustainable? What is a sustainable house? How specific should a building code be? How can we integrate issues of landscape, engineering and mitigation?
Floodable or Flood Proof?
In this context of re-building, can new methods of standardization, prefabrication and customization be utilized?
Laurie Hawkinson and Lee Ledbetter with Lindsay Smith
Proposal for re-zoning of New Orleans based on existing topography. Emily Bello and Jennifer Shoukimas.