By David SR Andreozzi, Architect, AIA/CRAN, CORA
From the glossy pages of most every architectural magazine and newspaper, this week I had the chance to tour the anointed hallowed grounds of the future of everything good in residential architecture.... the new Lower 9th Ward in New Orleans. A development created by the world's greatest architects in order to recapture the sense of community that thrived in the culturally rich community before the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.
I am 49 years young. This was the most disturbing architectural experience of my life... nothing comes close. At first glance, my impression was of standing in a true life site model of freshmen architecture projects, gone really bad... like acid trip bad. This new sculpture park is a collection of unrelated starchitect structures (some good, most not) that stand proudly to everything wrong with architecture today. Each project seems to scream "It's all about me and my architect" with little connection or appreciation of what's around them. The people of the Lower 9th Ward asked to rebuild in the same location in order to preserve their rich sense of culture and history, yet there is no such connection in sight and no apparent urban plan binding the parts together as a whole.
Further disturbing was their experimentation with new and seemingly inappropriate building technologies. In my opinion, this borders on negligent because if another devastating flood occurs, their design decisions will assure more failures than that if designed conservatively.
From a design standpoint, an obscene amount of money has been spent on some radical award winning labor intensive framing that could have been used to reduce the cost of the structures and build more homes. How much more irresponsible does it get?
Well, the buildings have been built from 3 feet above grade to 8 feet above grade to give the owners the option to drive under their house. The resultant is a random array of unrelated structures to their streetscape neighbors. Jane Jacobs, proponent of a streetscape as complimenting teeth to a beautiful smile, is turning over in her grave... I can assure you.
Brad Pitt L'Enfant, all of the starchitects, all of the judges, and all of the governmental agencies that allowed and participated in this design disaster need to step back and reevaluate their decision making.
I could write a book on what I experienced in one short hour. I would call it Learning From Las Vegas... oh, that's already been taken. Instead, I am praying to God to wash this experience from my memory. It flies in the face of everything we learned at college... the social responsibility we hold as architects. Mark my words, twenty years from now the Lower 9th Ward will be a Petri dish filled with everything wrong in architecture today.
During the last 5 decades we have changed from celebrating the structure to celebrating the famous architect. Rather than celebrating the building or the architect, perhaps the glossy magazines need to start celebrating the process. We live in a world where it has become acceptable to design sculpture, place program within it, and anoint the architect genius. We need to begin to evaluate architecture based on content, not style nor architectural star power.
The devastated community of the Lower 9th Ward deserved better!
More information on the Lower 9th Ward's current renovation can be found at Making it Wrong
David Andreozzi is a residential Architect in Barrington, Rhode Island with work spreading from Maine to the Bahamas. David currently is on the national steering committees for AIA Custom Residential Network and the Congress of Residential Architecture. Also, David is drafting a white paper for CRAN on the importance of judging architecture on content, context, and vernacular, without regards to style. His website is www.andreozzi.com