[Levee]ing Cultural Erasure

[Levee]ing Cultural Erasure

Resistant Infrastructure in Coastal Cities

To most Americans, the city of New Orleans is ‘foreign’ place, more a European than a US city. The city owes its  much of its unique culture to the influence of Spanish and French colonial settlers as they intermingled with the Africans (both slave and free) as well as the American Indian. In modern times, New Orleans is described not as a southern city, but as a Caribbean city, due to the rich amalgam of diverse cultures, ethnicities and traditions that celebrate the crashing together of native traditions with French and Spanish colonial traditions.

New Orleans draws from the traditions of the Old World cultures, but the city itself also has a powerful sense of identity on its own. It is more a celebration of a new way of life that evolved in the New World, with the incredible capacity to absorb new influences and incorporate them into the fabric of the city. The Creole cuisine, the festivals (Mardi Gras), the local music scene are some examples of how incorporation of different cultures has created a ‘novel ethnicity’ that is particular to this city and its sense of character.

The City of New Orleans suffered one of the worst engineering disasters in the history of the United States following Hurricane Katrina in August of 2005. The storm surges caused more than fifty breaches in drainage canal levees, and in two days, 80% of New Orleans was flooded, with some parts under 4.6 meters (15 feet) of water.

Eight years after the disaster, the city is still rebuilding. Despite the known dangers of living in hurricane prone areas, people continue to settle and rebuild in coastal cities after crisis, not only in the US but in other parts of the world as well. As the sea levels rise and floods become more frequent, the viability of the coastal sites and the suitability for human habitation is called into question, but the permanent migration of a large metropolitan population is not feasible either. Using the city of New Orleans as a site, this project takes the position that rising sea levels are an inevitable and permanent condition, but will engage in a process in which the architecture resists flood conditions while providing new infrastructure that will facilitate regeneration and adaptation of communities under perpetual threat but for which migration and relocation of a population is not a viable option. The project seeks to preserve and enhance the local culture of New Orleans while reacting to the inevitable climate change by proposing new infrastructure that supports the continual building of a city that faces constant erasure.The intervention is absorbed as a permanent part of the culture of the city and will reimagine the activities that give New Orleans its  unique culture and give form to formless activities while withstanding the threat of flood.

Methodology:

I. Precedent study of existing housing typologies in New Orleans, particularly the architectural influences  of the French and Spanish.

II.Is there a typological shift after crisis (Hurricane Betsy 1956, Hurricane Georges 1999)

III. The flood line in the past, and predictions of where it will be in 10 years, 50 years, 100 years.

IV. Define strategies that can withstand and engage the flood in different ways, city as an organism that builds upwards, adapting the old infrastructure as needed to support coastal cities that may become totally submerged in the future.

V. Preservation of local culture and regeneration of community in these newly reimagined spaces after crisis. (Mardi gras, The French Quarter, Stadium)

PHASE I: MITIGATION: [Levee]ing Cultural Erasure

The project will start by looking at existing typology of flood mitigation as well as typological changes after crisis. Then it will position itself as permanent intervention(s) on the site that can withstand flood as well as provide infrastructure for future adaptation as  the city expands.

PHASE II PERPETUATION: A Permanent Megastructure

The project takes a long-term reactive strategy, where the lower floors of the intervention will eventually be fully submerged. Steam engines on the lower underwater floors will generate power from the sea to power the new city. The steam travels up to a greenhouse on the roof to make artificial rain.

PHASE III. REVIVAL: Re-generation of community and culture

Mardi Gras Reimagined: A water carnival

Jazz and other local music festivals

The flooded football stadium:  becomes a swimming pool in times of high flood

Bibliography:

Jamie R; Brown, Daniel P; National Hurricane Center (December 20, 2005) (PDF). Hurricane Katrina: August 23-30, 2005 (Tropical Cyclone Report). United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Weather Service. Retrieved December 10, 2012.

Kevin Baker “The Future of New Orleans”, American Heritage, April/May 2006.

Marshall, Bob (2005-11-30). “17th Street Canal levee was doomed”  The Times-Picayune. Retrieved 2006-03-12.

New Orleans, “now under the flag of the United States, is still very much a Caribbean city….” Latin American Library, Tulane University. Archived on 2005-12-22. Retrieved 2006-05-27.