ddb NOLA

the culture of destruction

2007-02-21T18:38:00.000-08:00

What are characteristics of these destroyed/rebuilt cities? Cities that have suffered a disaster, period of persecution, or an event of extreme devastation tend to be rich in a culture of music and art - if not before their destruction, this culture develops from the wreckage of their broken buildings.

In Dresden, Richard Peter published a photo book called Dresden - eine Kamera Klagt an (Dresden - a camera accuses). It is classified as one of Dresden's Dances of Death.

a photograph in Dresden - eine Kamera Klagt an by Richard Peter. image courtesy of www.praktica-collector.de.

Dresden's art, particularly of those who were alive during the city's bombing, has a stoic aura about it. War and the static economy remain in the minds of the artists.

artwork found on the wall of a club in Dresden, according to the band MK9. image courtesy of www.mk9.org.

Dresden was known for its porcelain China and its porcelain dolls. The craft carried past the war.

Dresden dolls. image courtesy treadywaygallery.com.

Much Dresden painting includes faceless figures interacting with light, darkness, and color rather than solid objects. Perhaps there is little faith in that which is physical.

Alles, was das Herz begehrt..." ("All that the heart desires...") by Eva-Maria Korsmeier. courtesy of dresden-art.de.

"Zwei Menschen im Licht und Shatten" ("Two persons in Light and Shadow") by Jutta Damme. courtesy of dresden-art.de.

In comparison to Dresden art, the art of Hiroshima also portrays figures in some sort of physically boundless environment, but in more detail outlines the gruesome physical details of the atomic effect on the human body.

"Melting Hand" by Takakura Nobuko.

"Charred Child" by Yamashita Masato.

"Hiroshima Horse" by Shimada Tsuruhiko.

"The Last Drink" by Ono Kiaki.

the above four images are all courtesy of art-for-a-change.com.

"Monument to the Victims of Hiroshima" by Arto Tchakmaktchian. image courtesy www.naregatsi.org.

This artwork is highly descriptive, unlike the mostly ambiguous Dresden art. Hiroshima's disaster seemed to be focused on the ability of the nuclear bomb to do things to the human body that were never expected.

The art of San Francisco surrounding the earthquake of 1906 focuses on the large scale of the destruction rather than the human scale; the levelling (from shaking and burning) of an entire city.

"San Francisco Fire, 1906" by Walter A. Coulter. image courtesy the California Dept. of Conservation.

(Some of the) stills from a film (called "1906," by Jeremy Blake) exploring the famous Winchester Mansion as affected by the 1906 earthquake. Image courtesy fiegencontemporary.com.

As we study New Orleans' struggle to (re)establish its identity, my next post will explore the culture of destruction as it exists in New Orleans.

sources:
www.dresden-art.com
"Dis/Continuities in Dresden's Dances of Death" by Christiane Hertel. The Art Bulletin.
Art Academy, Dresden. www.art-academy-gmbh.com/
Art-For-A-Change: the Nagasaki nightmare.
Feigen Contemporary.

recovery:Dresden

2007-02-19T17:04:00.001-08:00

The last case study of a revived city is a study of Dresden. Dresden had a much longer and arduous recovery from being nearly leveled by World War II than did Hiroshima or San Francisco. It is believed that the firebombing of Dresden caused more than 10,000 deaths in one night. Bombing Dresden was part of a strategic effort on the part of the Allies to confront Germany from its eastern, Soviet front.

Dresden shortly after its bombing. image courtesy Wikipedia.com.

It had been a beautiful tourist destination for many Europeans for a hundred years, full of art museums and theaters. It was famous for its China.

images of the Dresden devastation as graphic as these were kept hidden from the public for decades. image courtesy bbc.co.uk.

How could Dresden regain identity as a tourist attraction, as a center for culture and art and music as it once had been? The answer, for many people, was in rebuilding certain monuments, such as the Frauenkirche, Zwinger, and the Semperoper. The problem was this: these landmarks were rebuilt to imitate as best they could their former selves; it seemed to many people like a forced and false way to pretend that the bombing had never occurred.

Dresden struggled to find its identity among its ashes. These monuments (particularly the Frauenkirche, which is still not fully restored) took a long time to rebuild, and by the time they were finished, people may have been expecting something "more spectacular."

The city began its rebuilding process through the new Socialist government's agenda: bland, socialist architecture to help the people break away from their history and nationalism. The historic buildings were rebuilt but it was over time and done by private organizations. What was laid was an infrastructure of research and industry for the Soviets. While Dresden fought to find and reestablish its identity, another land had seized control and turned it into what she wanted.

Another important fact to state is that residents of Dresden were not allowed to go to the west, while trains to the west from Prague and other countries went through Dresden. The city's populations lacked the ability to choose their own homes or destinations. The identity of post-war Dresden was defined by imprisonment and war itself. The reconstructions of those sacred landmarks almost made a mocking of current affairs around the citizens.

these dolls are famous from Dresden, made with special Dresden porcelain. image courtesy http://sonia.tululuka.net/en/travel/2004/dresden/_1577/.

design within reach

2007-02-19T05:34:00.000-08:00

The best in modern design should be accessible to the public.

This is the founding idea of Design Within Reach, a group of people who love modern design. They define MODERN as based on two principles : utility and simplicity. The design team is enthusiastic about new ways of construction and the pioneering use of new materials. This design is available for home and office at www.dwr.com. And, it as easy to purchase online as it is in one of their Studios, which not only displays the furniture, but serves as a community center and often hosts design-related events.

sources : www.dwr.com

recovery:San Francisco

2007-02-17T13:23:00.000-08:00

image courtesy the Earthquake Hazards Program.

In 1906 San Francisco was leveled by The Great Earthquake and subsequent fires. The disaster occurred at 5:12 am. The death toll has been estimated to be well over 3,000. More than half the total population of 400,000 was left homeless. Nearly 28,000 buildings were destroyed, the majority of them being wood. The length of the rupture spanned 296 miles down the coast of California and tremors were felt as far south as Los Angeles.

image courtesy of vibrationdata.com.

San Francisco today is a booming, lively city. What was the strategy to rebuilding San Francisco?

The problem with natural disasters is that there is no one to blame - no one is responsible for paying for this damage other than simply those who want it fixed. Another problem with natural disasters (as opposed to war) is that there is no sense of nationalism, revenge, or unity. It is difficult to simply define a unified set of goals for reconstruction.

With 225,000 displaced people, the army got to work immediately building emergency houses out of redwood and fir, replacing 20,000 people in these refugee camps. The cottages could be rented for $2 a month toward the full purchase price of $50. They each cost $100-150 to erect.

one of the refugee camps following the earthquake. image courtesy of bookrags.com.

The city was ready to rebuild quickly, because there was to be an international exhibition in 1915. Individual houses were re-erected quickly, many of them almost identically to how they had been before, but the building standards were lowered in order to speed up the reconstruction process. One of the more ambitious plans for the city was by urban planner Daniel Burnham, which called for avenues and boulevards radiating across the city, a civic center complex with classical style (what could have been the largest urban park in the world). The plan was dismissed but many of its components were applied to the reconstruction of the city on its original street grid. The city did build his civic center, widen many of the streets and improve its infrastructure from what it had been before, as Burnham had proposed.

the civic center as it exists today. courtesy wikipedia.com.

By 1915, the city seemed largely un-damaged and the international exposition went on as schedule.

sources:
the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, Wikipedia.
San Francisco 1906. Vibration Data.
The Great 1906 San Francisco Earthquake. USGS.com.

Restoring the Culture of New Orleans - article by Andrés Duany

2007-02-17T12:50:00.000-08:00

In this Metropolis Magazine article Andrés Duany speaks of the Caribbean way of life of New Orleans as a culture that would never be restored unless there is an uncomplicated system for building. He states that it should be a “process whereupon people can build simple, functional houses for themselves, either by themselves or by barter with professionals”.

http://www.metropolismag.com/cda/story.php?artid=2510

VirAps (Virtual Apartment System)

2007-02-15T11:30:00.000-08:00

VirAps hopes to allow for a new degree of customization in multifamily housing.
From: Jarmo Suominen

The VIRAPS-system is a database diven Web-based application allowing inhabitants to participate in the planning and design of their homes and immediate environments Flows of information and decision-making systems in the building process are relatively complex and involve a large number of players from politics, planning, financing and industry. The consumers have, until lately, had very little influence on the outcome of the process, mainly only when they've been a part of an experimental housing project. The consumers have, however, become more vocal in expressing their desires and construction companies are facing the problem of accommodating these wishes into the tight schedules of the existing building process. Furthermore, the further down the building process the changes occur, the more expensive they are for the consumer and the more pressure they put on communication within the process. Therefore the VIRAPS system has been constructed with two goals in mind: firstly to support decision-making process in the consumer end and secondly to facilitate reorganization and communication between the different companies in the building chain.
The VIRAPS-system is divided into to sections: a business-to-business section and consumer section. The business-to-customer side allows consumers make a number of choices concerning their future apartments based on the material presented on the VIRAPS Service www-pages. The VIRAPS databank gathers this material from the public sections of databanks of companies and institutions involved in the building process. From the professional point of view, the consumer becomes just another information producer within the whole building process. In the business-to-customer section choices can be made on three levels: 01.The Environment (city, area, neighborhood) 02.The Building (immediate environment, location in floor and plan, apartment size) and 03.The Apartment (organization, materials, finishes and fixtures). This division is supported by consumer studies on one hand and observations on the building chain on the other. On the professional side this division fits well with the building schedules, where certain windows of opportunity open at certain times. This is especially important in making the choices for apartment insides and possibly for the immediate environment. However, It is not enough to give consumers the freedom of choice and design. An apartment is a sum of technical, functional and aesthetic considerations. These considerations have to be met both to ensure immediate consumer satisfaction and resale value of an apartment. Therefore consumers need quite extensive support to bring their everyday experience of living in an apartment to a level where it can be used to make informed choices about their future environment. The consumer choices are fed back into the professional branch, where it will be used for two purposes. First, to design and build the kind of apartment the customer wants to buy or rent, and second to give general information of the customer preferences to the institutions (city planning) and companies participating in the system. This information helps the municipalities to target their planning and development efforts to better answer the needs of their citizens. It also allows the companies (such as developers of kitchen cabinet manufacturers) to adjust their production to the demand. The VIRAPS-system is built on using existing systems for the handling of CAD,GIS,text and pictorial information.

alternative materials: AshCrete

2007-02-15T10:52:00.002-08:00

Image of micron-sized earth elements in AshCrete

Through my research in sustainability in architecture, I've become intrigued by the studies of Pliny Fisk. Fisk has made a significant contribution to the progression of sustainability in architecture and is pioneering new techniques and materials on this path. One material I have run across that he has coined as AshCrete, is an alternative material to Portland Cement. AshCrete is made of 97 percent recycled materials.

The discovery came about when Fisk mixed a couple spoonfuls of water into a teacup filled with fly ash from a coal fired power plant. The result was a material with the compressive strength twice that of Portland Cement. AshCrete is a mixture of fly ash, bottom ash from aluminum smelters, and a dash of citric acid, borate, and a chemical from the chlorine family (not mentioned)- which he is seeking a substitute for. One concern mentioned about the production of this material is the fine silicon inherent in the composite material, which poses no threat embedded in the concrete, but may cause respiratory disease if exposed to overtime in a factory. These concerns are ones that Fisk is attempting to resolve.
Replacing Portland Cement with AshCrete would reduce the overall carbon dioxide emissions, because the manufacture of concrete generates about 9 percent of CO2 emissions globally, and secondly it would reduce the waste stream of fly ash left over by coal-fired power plants .

GreenForms House

2007-02-15T09:57:00.000-08:00

In designing the core for the dry-in house, finding green solutions gets difficult because it seems that these environmentally conscience materials come with a high price. A project in Austin, Texas sparked my interest, which shows a direct relation to the project we are working on now. In regards to eco-construction, Pliny Fisk has developed an eco-house that "grows" incrementally with the intended ease of an erector set.

The GreenForms house is constructed with simple post-and-beam framework made of recycled steel. The first prototypes have walls of pressed straw paneling, widely available in Texas. In other ecological and industrial zones, different recycled-content, pressed-panel materials such as sawdust/cement composites and nontoxic, recycled styrofoam might be used, says Fisk. All elements of the house, he adds, can be assembled with simple hand tools. Like the Dry-in House, the GreenForms house comes with a core, approximately 256 square feet made of a solar hot-water heater and air collector for passive heating, a radiant barrier system in the roof for venting of summer heat, and high re-radiating roof paints. Also for heating and cooling, a pipe snakes underneath a "very good looking" earthen floor of soil stabilized with cement, explains Fisk. It connects to a ground-source heat pump system buried, together with the waste-water system, in the yard..
The kitchen is also unique, acting as a "chunk," since it is completely mobile. On hot summer days it is able to be moved outside in a breezeway if desired. The cost estimate for ranges between $8,000-$10,000, with additional bedrooms estimated at $4000 each whenever the homeowner decides to make additions. The central idea behind the design is flexibility for the homeowner- allowing the expansion of the home to be made as the homeowner saves money, which potentially frees them from a punishing mortgage.

recovery:Hiroshima

2007-02-14T17:45:00.000-08:00

It is an obvious example of an established city violated and reduced to a mere pile of itself.

image courtesy http://www.internetbolaget.se/~stefan-a/hiroshima/atomeng1.htm

Though we are familiar with these statistics, I'll restate them. An estimated 100,000 people were killed instantly by the bomb; within a 2-mile radius people's bodies literally evaporated. Over the following months, 60,000 more people died by radiation or injuries (although neither of the numbers can really be verified due to the confusion at the time).

68 percent of the city's built environment was destroyed.

"Hiroshima" by Stephane Chabrieres. image courtesy perso.orange.fr.

When Mayor Nagin woke up the day after Katrina destroyed his city, did he stand outside and look around and ask himself, "Now what?" What did the rulers of Japan say after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

a painting of destroyed Hiroshima by Christoph Draeger. image courtesy Roebling Art Gallery.

Hiroshima was rebuilt, and it was rebuilt well. Today it is home to 1.1 million people and is a prosperous, modern city. How did a city that was wiped off the face of the planet recover? The first step was promoting peace rather than revenge; in order to rebuild, the survivors of the bombing had to unify and focus. The government of Japan agreed to allocate funding to cities damaged from the war, but only if there were approved plans for reconstruction. (The majority of Japan did not know exactly the degree of the damage of the two bombs, because the United States controlled Japan at that point and confiscated film of the incident in hopes to eliminate the threat of rebellion).

Immediately, Hiroshima's planners and (re)developers wanted to reinvent the city - the decision was made immediately because they saw no future in rebuilding an obliterated past, but rather wanted to build around a peace memorial - a city anchored by its identity. This became the Peace Memorial Park near ground zero and designed by Kenzo Tange; its center was a memorial museum. This progress moved the government to give extra aid to Hiroshima and, according to today's mayor Akiba, this was the turning point in the reconstruction of Hiroshima.

Peace Memorial Park. image courtesy planetware.com.

part of the Peace Memorial Museum (called the Peace Dome); one of the few remaining signs of the devastation of nuclear warfare in Hiroshima. image courtesy www.jal.com.

The reconstruction of Hiroshima brought its population to a higher number by 1980 than it ever had been, and it is known as one of the most pleasant tourist attractions in Japan. The interesting aspects of the city's rebirth are probably possible because of the government's tight control over what happened in Japan; the city officials decided immediately that the attitude would be peace and chose a new identity for the city and rebuilt toward that identity.

In earlier posts there is discussion about New Orleans' struggle to assert a new identity; it is only a year and a half after the hurricane but the government doesn't have the same level of authority as the Japanese government. What is the identity of New Orleans? The Japanese government and planning officials identified Hiroshima as a modern city with a devastating event in its past; the architecture and development was meant to show it. What New Orleans must do is decide whether it is a new city or an old city, a city with a disaster in its past or a city with a drastic change. Granted, NOLA did not experience near the level of damage that Hiroshima or Nagasaki did, but until a psychologically determined goal for the entire city is defined, people will struggle to rebuild their own individual lives.

The Japanese thrive off of invention and reinvention; there are new solutions to restoring New Orleans and preserving its old charm. It is the art of subtle presentation.

sources:
The Bomb Project
Bill Powell: "How Hiroshima Rose from the Ashes." Time Magazine.
"Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki." Wikipedia.

Flood Line and other Inscriptions of a Storm – The Urgency to Rebuild

2007-02-14T08:47:00.000-08:00

Our trajectory through the vastness of the devastated New Orleans by car followed a line – blurry, brown, wide, thin yet so evident as if a drawn line on the elevation of the city, every neighborhood, every house, business, structure seemed to bear this mark… a line, at times bold at times fading, at times gone. The line traversed the city on this horizontal plane as continuous yet sometimes dashed – dashed as it began to intermittently, seldom disappear behind new paint or pressure washing.

Nonetheless, it was always there present as we traversed the city, there marking and reminding us of the outstanding height of the flood of Hurricane Katrina which submerged the city more than a year ago. The height of the line also dropped and raised as we moved from neighborhood to neighborhood revealing to us visually and dramatically the topography of a city recently under water. Its height on each neighborhood shifted up and down - the height of a person, the height of a house. This section line which dissected the city horizontally marked belongings submerged, gone – washed away, disintegrated, molded.

Other marks also populated the surfaces of the city – ranging from rescuer notes on facades of houses to the markings of residents’ outcries and messages. The rescuer notes indicated the date and group which surveyed the house after the storm as well as if any bodies were found. As a kind of postscript other messages where added which indicated if a dead dog or other pet possibly was found in or more often under the house. The outcries of the residents ranged from informational to informational yet sarcastic like “my cat are fed, don’t rescue them” to FEMA critiques, to “house for sale”. The shells which bear this text, this line and other scars of the storm – dislodged sliding, torqued roofs, broken windows… disembodied structures, encased objects are former dwellings… empty, open, moldy, stripped.

White, barren, trailers at times occupied the in-between lots or front yards of these homes as temporary living structures for the out rooted families – FEMA trailers, yet many of these also stood empty. Without the infrastructure to provide life - sitting unhooked, without electricity or plumbing… months and months after their arrival.

There was a kind of abstraction to all of this devastation. The magnitude of a city overtaken by these markings of the catastrophe of the hurricane which took place more than a year ago became repetitive and numbing. So much we saw that at times a perception of normality began to overcome our experience as we moved through the city.

However, we had the opportunity to meet several residents who while devastated were still with spirit and hope to rebuild. Talking to them gave us a glimpse into the reality of this line which submerged the city. Diane who was smiling and somewhat upbeat earlier during our first meeting became quiet and subdued upon entering her house – now moldy, abandoned… empty, without walls, without objects. Later at her mother’s house, Mrs. Tilton, destroyed and now overcome by nature, she told us “we grew up here”.

We discovered that the intermittent line – the fading line is really still there. Some of her friends Diane told us, superficially cleaned off the line – took off the mold with chorine and moved back in. Seeing the exposed structure of Diane’s house impregnated with green, brown, black fussy matter made us wonder how those families could possibly breathe and live in such environment.

On the attic a few objects were evident yet Diane told me that the few things she had been able to lift and store up high were later stolen by another phase of the storm – looting. Mrs. Tilton spoke of her chandelier having been cut out of the ceiling by intruders who walked into their exposed home.

Another mark inscribed the topography of New Orleans. It caught Mrs. Tilton attention while we were talking - truck marks in the backyard of her property. The latest physical lost – minimal to all rest that has been lost, families, friends, neighbors, life’s belongings - the clean up being performed by the city took whatever they found floating about. In this case the clean up involved some belongings found spilling out of Mrs. Tilton broken and exposed storage space behind her house.

The vastness of what we saw, empty and scarred and the conversations that we had with some of the residents of Hollygrove Earl, Diane, Harvey, and Mrs. Tilton as well as other community members who are so eager to rebuild left me (us) with a feeling of urgency to move so much more quickly. It is not just one house but thousands which need to be raised quickly to get neighbors, communities back home.

100_x_better

2007-02-11T15:40:00.001-08:00

key framing the assembly of a CNC cut shelving unit/office space designed by 100xbetter

D-FAB arch

2007-02-11T15:37:00.000-08:00

From D-FAB

The architecture firm D-Fab, used a very unique method for constructing a wall in a house located in Weingut Gantenbein, Fläsch (Switzerland).
Each brick's orientation was vectorized according to a computer-modeled design intended to evoke an apparently three-dimensional image of circular forms through the pattern of the bricks and the resulting play of light and shadows. Each individual brick in the field has a function similar to that of the matrix dot in a printed image.

The brick infill panels were made in the summer of 2006 at ETH Zurich. The bricks are bonded by means of a special adhesive which makes the panel construction resistant even to tension forces. The entire production process for the 300-m2 facade was developed at ETH on the basis of initial trials in automated wall-building conducted that spring. An industrial robot constructed the panels in a fascinating spectacle: It grasped and turned each brick according to the programmed command sequence, applied precisely calculated lines of adhesive at specified angles to its underside and placed it in its exact position – brick by brick, course by course, panel by panel. Then the finished infill panels were transported from Zurich to Fläsch, where they were installed.

This computer-controlled process was employed with the goal of an extremely individualized result. By digitizing the design drawings of the facades and converting them to the scale of the bricks, they were produced materially and with relentless precision. The process makes a significant contribution to the 'iconic turn', here not in the sense of the image replacing the word, but of the expected flat wall surface or painted decoration giving way to a three-dimensional material image – to 'informed matter', in the words of the architects."

Katrina:oil

2007-02-11T12:32:00.000-08:00

As discussed in greater detail in a previous post, the oil industry had at one point been the biggest industry of Louisiana, and it was based in New Orleans and managed to stealthily destroy the environment and geological stability of the city at the mouth of the Mississippi. According to environmentalchemistry.com, the United states lost 4000 sq. kilometers of wetlands due to the construction of flood control levees. These places require a different solution. The industry all but disintegrated with lawsuits from residents and the government's environmental agencies.

The question now is what did Katrina do to affect this industry? We all remember the soaring gas prices and the oil panic in Katrina's immediate aftermath. The flooding of New Orleans was indirectly caused by this ecosystem damage from the industry, but did Mother Nature wipe out its own enemy with hurricane Katrina?

repairwork being done on a NOLA levee by the US Department of Defense.

Environmental chemistry states that recovery is not about fixing the levees. There is discussion about replacing silt to the wetlands in a controlled way to eliminate the need for flooding the area, but the wetlands could be slowly replaced by controlled flooding done by a dam. The new sediments would offset the sinking of NOLA, and perhaps lessen the drastic consequences of the next hurricane.

statistics of the oil industry as of December 2005 (immediately following Katrina). courtesy of the Energy Information Administration.

The oil industry itself across the Gulf of Mexico experienced the temporary closing of 9 refineries, most for well over a week, and 2 permanently (there were only 20 total across the Gulf). The US weekly oil supply reduced by eight percent. The US tapped into the emergency oil reserves to help soften to blow to consumers. Slowly in the weeks following the store, companies were able to restart their refineries after the destroyed pipes, platforms and moorings were fixed, but not for long before lawmakers and industrial analysts could point out how strained the refineries themselves were in the first place, susceptible to spills, fires, and malfunctions. There has not been a new refinery built in the US since 1976 due to political and environmentalist opposition.

an oil refinery after Katrina (notice some oil on the water). image courtesy carleton.edu.

Regardless of these barriers to expansion and recovery, output is on the rise since January of 2006. The Bush administration has sought $105 billion for repairs of the oil refineries and to fight off these obstacles toward rebuilding. Besides the collection and refining of the crude oil, the shipment of it became substantially difficult after Katrina. When the first refineries were back in operation, much of the oil had to be shipped around - to Corpus Christi, TX, causing more delay in getting the oil back to the rest of the nation.

The oil industry has been much faster to bounce back than the tourism industry, partially because there is more funding for it since it is much more of a nationwide issue. As it turns out, the oil industry is carrying NOLA right now, even after its steady 30-year decline. Ironically, the very industry that destroyed the foundation of the city is supporting its (non)recovery. In my last post about the tourism industry, the general consensus is that in order to generate tourism in a productive way, Katrina must be considered part of the NOLA identity and the identity must be reestablished.

There is opposition to the oil industry defining the identity of the new NOLA, just as there is opposition to the occurence of Mardi Gras. Residents feel that more emphasis is being placed on the oil industry than their displacement and individual struggles. This is a two-sided problem: the economy (and therefore reconstruction) of NOLA is dependent on these two major industries being in tact, but money is being stretched so thin that when people have nowhere to live, there is no one to work these oil rigs and tourist traps. There is a perfect balance that must be achieved to give the economy just the boost it needs while addressing the problem of the displaced residents.

sources:
"New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina, and the Oil Industry": environmentalchemistry.com
"Hurrican Katrina Underscores Tenuous State of U.S. Oil": pbs.org

PAC House, Anywhere

2007-02-11T11:14:00.000-08:00

digital renderings by LWPAC

The PAC House, by Vancouver firm LWPAC, begins to think of housing as a product, customizable to the individuals' needs. LWPAC proposes a new type of housing system, rather than a mere housing style. The PAC house does not represent a futuristic version of the "new" house. The PAC house becomes the next logical step for the building industry in this digital age. The actual appearance or aesthetic of the house evolves out of the consumer's needs, and the consumer orders his or her components based on specific desires.

The housing system relies on electronics for its success. Everything (refrigerators, televisions, lighting) plugs into the walls, which increases communication with the rest of the house as well as communication with mobile devices such as cellular phones. The walls of the house also plug into one another. This becomes important when an individual needs to reconfigure his or her layout. The proposed materials of the house - thermal plastics, steel, glass, and recyclable plastics - all begin in a liquid state and are poured into customizable molds for an even greater level of customisability. The PAC house can exist on its own or can attach to other PAC houses, which becomes important in dense urban areas.

While no PAC houses have been fabricated, LWPAC estimates that a 1500 square foot unit would cost around $150,000.

the four faces of mass customization

2007-02-11T10:40:00.000-08:00

Joseph Pine, in his book Mass Customization: The New Frontier in Business Competition, really describes and develops the term "mass customization" as a model for business that could potentially bring mass production efficiency to the scale of individual customization.

In a 1997 Harvard Business Review article, 'The Four Faces of Mass Customization', by B. Joseph Pine and James H. Gilmore, the perceived four areas of mass customization are described, as detailed by Wikipedia:

Collaborative customization - firms talk to individual customers to determine the precise product offering that best serves the customer's needs. This information is then used to specify and manufacture a product that suits that specific customer. For example, some clothing companies will manufacture blue jeans to fit an individual customer.
Adaptive customization - firms produce a standardized product, but this product is customizable in the hands of the end user
Transparent customization - firms provide individual customers with unique products, without explicitly telling them that the products are customized. In this case there is a need to accurately assess customer needs.
Cosmetic customization - firms produce a standardized physical product, but market it to different customers in unique ways.

sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_customization
http://www.madeforone.com/

mass production versus mass customization

2007-02-11T10:17:00.000-08:00

what is the difference between mass production and mass customization, and how do the differences affect production processes and constructability of goods??

mass production:

mass production relies on standardized production of large amounts of products through the uses of an assembly line.
mass production typically uses moving tracks or conveyor belts to move the objects down the line to the various workers.
generally, mass production is suited for a large, semi-homogeneous population of consumers.
the process of mass production becomes capital intensive: while the labor costs lower and production rates increase through mass production, the machinery itself requires a great deal of money initially and skilled labor to install the equipment
advantages: probablity of human error is decreased, quality of goods is increased, reduction in labor costs, reduction of nonproductive effort
disadvantage: products are hard to alter once assembly line is implemented and established

assembly line for Ford Model-T

mass customization:

according to www.madeforone.com, mass customization enables a customer to decide the exact specification of a product or service, and have that product or service supplied to them at a price close to that for an ordinary mass produced alternative
mass customization typically relies on the use of flexible computer-aided manufacturing systems to produce output which is customized per user
the use of build-to order methods, where an item is not constructed until an order is received, is an important factor in minimizing the cost of mass-customized products
the product is built to satisfy the needs of the individual customer
software-based product configurators which make it possible to add/change functionalities of a core product
often times, if a company offers "individual products," the products are not individually produced, but mass-produced with variants to appear or seem individualized
the configuration system, or interactive interface, that mediates between the consumer and the manufacturer becomes one of the major components of mass customizer's success - without an easily understood and user-friendly interface, the company will have trouble succeeding

sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_production
http://www.madeforone.com/Concepts/MCDefinition.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_customization
http://www.architectureweek.com/2005/0223/tools_1-1.html

Katrina:tourism

2007-02-11T09:24:00.000-08:00

image courtesy LBnuke

Because tourism had been the saving grace of the New Orleans economy, we will first take a look at Katrina's effect on the tourism and convention industry.

NOLA had been pulling in nearly $5 billion a year from visitors, 40 percent being from convention and meeting business. By the time Katrina occurred, it was the number one industry, with 81,000 jobs in the service sector supporting the industry. It is estimated that half a billion dollars were lost in revenue for each month that NOLA was inoperable. The majority of the hotels were left vacant or nearly so for nearly six months after NOLA. The city was lucky that its main business districts, such as the French Quarter, were able to return to a state of operation more quickly than the rest of the more affected parts of the city (many of which are still inoperable).

The main problem now is the labor force and small business owners who lost homes.

Currently officials are pushing to allocate $50 million toward reconstructing the tourism industry, but according to a CivicTourism blog post, there is a fear it will be spent on advertising, the industry prematurely claiming to the rest of the country that all is well and the city is once again ready for visitors when the reality of the situation is far from "well." Visitors would soon realize the reality of the situation and word-of-mouth would do enough damage to the industry, not to mention the homeless residents who would rather they be taken care of before the visitors. It would also once again bring the tragedy and devastation that still remains to light, which for charitable reasons could be helpful but as far as the economy goes, could be highly toxic.

controversy surrounding the return of Mardi Gras. image courtesy the BlackCommentator.

image courtesy krupsjustsayin.blogspot.com

However, it is still believed that tourism will rescue the economy of the city. Rebuilding the tourism industry will mean rebuilding and reestablishing the culture, with the disaster remembered and helping to reshape the identity of NOLA to more than ghetto and poverty. There is even controversy about whether Mardi Gras should be celebrated this year, because the tourism industry is struggling to recover but the displaced residents believe their city is abandoning them for parades and tourists.

in attempts to bring visitors back to boost the economy. image courtesy skylinemusic.com.

There is a delicate balance between the tourist industry overtaking the total recovery effort or being a part of the solution to awareness and disaster recovery.

sources:
New Orleans' Tourist Blues, MSNBC
Tourism and the New Orleans Recovery, civictourism.org

decline

2007-02-07T06:37:00.000-08:00

According to Shrinking Cities, Liverpool and Manchester, UK have experienced shrinkage due to a state of deindustrialization; previously they were two of the most industrial cities in the world. When put into one of the categories of a shrinking city defined by the research study (suburbanization, post-socialism, deindustrialization, or a combination), it seems that New Orleans' conditions fit well into the category of deindustrialization; in this post, Liverpool will be the focus for purposes of comparison.

Liverpool for two hundred years was a maritime center for commerce; in the 1930s began the decline of the textile industry which then affected the port-related industries; the population now is half that of 1930. The biggest decline in the port industry occurred post-WWII, when the unskilled labor population (mostly Irish) lost jobs with the fall of the economy and moved elsewhere. The decline of the ports resulted in NOLA's decline.

In the 1990s, the poorest districts of Liverpool had an unemployment rate of 44 percent (similar to that of the poorer districts of NOLA in the 1990's). Half of the households in these areas rely on social welfare programs. Between the '30s and the '50s a ring of welfare-funded housing was erected surrounding the city and the priority became bulldozing the slums of the city as the population declined; by the '70s the economy had nearly entirely collapsed and the city became empty as laborers had fled.

by "deprivation" they mean "employment deprivation," or "unemployment."

By the end of the cities, some districts in the inner city experienced 90 percent unemployment. The Liverpool City Council went bankrupt. The inner city had been full of multi-family housing; they were bull-dozed and replaced with single-family housing, causing considerable shrinkage. Due to the decline of industry, the inner city became a suburb.

Today, the European Union, supports Liverpool like many British port cities.

Pre-Katrina NOLA was a situation falling into this pattern; the decline of the port industry, the flight of the population outward from the city, abandoned buildings. The slums were not being demolished, though; the unemployment rates never reached the most extreme of Liverpool, even now; unskilled labor remained in the city. Despite these differences, was NOLA on a path similar to Liverpool?

The next series of posts are going to examine the effects of Katrina on industry in an extensive amount of detail. With that information, I will study cities that have undergone disasters or destruction which have had similar situations as Katrina and examine their population changes, employment differences, effects on industry and effects on housing and how they have dealt with these changes.

All images and information courtesy of the Shrinking Cities project.

CNCtech

2007-02-06T15:11:00.000-08:00

from: The LA Times

Jason Pilarski, a professor of industrial and environmental design at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, and his colleagues Patrick Dachtler, Steven Joyner and Clancy Pearson gained acclaim at the international Milan furniture fair last April by exhibiting an intricate, computer-carved bed made from the countertop material Corian. "CNC technology is really prevalent in manufacturing, but not in furniture design," Pilarski says. "People have learned how to make a buck, but they haven't learned the aesthetics of the technology and what the machines can do."

pressure treated lumber, abs, corian, cast silver, painted steel

Joyner learned firsthand when he converted a loft on the floor above MachineHistories' industrial shop. Using computer programs, he created a living space with a built-in DJ console and a clothing closet concealed behind a wall-sized door used as a screen for a projection TV. The apartment is also filled with experiments and prototypes, including a long, undulating dining table made from laminated sheet rock.

Downstairs in the laboratory, the designers of MachineHistories are shaggy-haired mad scientists, all in their 30s, speaking jargon and using computers to create 3-D collages that superimpose imagery such as flying birds with pixel patterns. On a recent afternoon, the team used a CNC router to gouge one design into Corian, then heated the slabs and bent them around a pipe to create lighting pendants that glowed like an alabaster relief.
computer controlled pneumatic system, motion sensors, memory foam, plywood

The group also has produced elaborately carved mirrors that took two days to design on the computer and an hour for the CNC machine to cut out.

"It would take a year to do that kind of work by hand," Pearson says, "and you could never get such clean lines and crisp edges."

PERFECTION is not MachineHistories' most important product. Oftentimes, the designers will throw a tweak into a CNC program just to see what the machine will do.

"When people talk about crafts, they talk about being able to sense the hand of the artist who makes things," Pilarski says. "This allows them to see the hand of the machine."

out of sight, out of mind

2007-02-06T12:54:00.000-08:00

It seems that by now [a year and a half after hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, LA] the government would have helped the victims rebuild and return to their homes. But after visiting the city, the post-Katrina devastation is real and has become stagnant. I expected teams of people working together to rebuild, just as our studio is proposing to do, but within the four days I spent in the city, I saw only one site of construction. The government has so obviously done nothing to help the situation, so it is left to the communities to fight for their homes. The communities are relying on outside funding and volunteer labor from universities and organizations all over the country to bring natives back to their homes.

Not only is the government providing little, if any, financial assistance, but the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development(HUD) is suing the residents of the St. Bernard Housing Projects [in the 7th ward] for entering their own homes. The homes were declared structurally stable and able to be repaired, but HUD would not allow them to return to their homes. HUD plans to demolish 4500 low-income housing units and replace only 800 units. Out of those 800, less than 400 units will be designated for low-income families. Therefore, only one out of ten affordable housing units will be replaced. It is outrageous to deprive people of their homes that can be salvaged and even more so to legally sue the residents that are fighting to repair and live in their homes.

In the Holly Grove community, Trinity Christian Community has taken upon themselves to rebuild their community as well. Visiting the community made the disaster a reality. We reminded ourselves that EVERY home was effected by the hurricane and that every house represented a family, whose lives were drastically changed in one day. As we drove down Olive Street, flood lines were still visible on the siding of many houses. The maximum flood height was approximately 12 to 18 inches above the line of settlement, which means that the flood nearly reached the ceiling in many homes.

Before the trip, I would have never realized that people in New Orleans were still living in the midst of destruction in daily life. It wouldn't have crossed my mind that the people are relying on people like me to help. So, I want everyone to be reminded that the post-Katrina devastation is still CURRENT devastation. The government needs to take action and get people back into their communities.

X

2007-02-05T21:11:00.000-08:00

According to gostructural.com "The USAR Task Force System was conceived after the 1985 Mexico Earthquake when, after the first three days after the disaster, more people died trying to rescue people than were rescued. Structural engineers are included in deployments to assist in searching buildings and determining the shoring required for the safety of the rescuers. As they perform search operations, the USAR Teams spray paint a large "X" on the structure to indicate the status of their efforts. The quadrants of the "X" are used to indicate when the structure was searched, which task force performed the search, what hazards are present, and how many victims are trapped in the building. If the trapped victims can not be easily removed, then the USAR teams bring in equipment to remove debris and carefully shore up the structure to prevent further collapse during the rescue.

After Katrina, FEMA USAR teams from 15 states carried out hasty/primary searches and secondary searches. The goal of the hasty/primary searches was to find and evacuate victims in the first 12 days after the hurricane. Later, secondary searches were conducted door to door in areas where flooding was higher than 5.5 feet above the floor of the buildings. Buildings were entered and re-secured during the secondary searches. More information on FEMA urban search and rescue teams can be obtained from the FEMA website at www.fema.gov/emergency/usr/about.shtm."

In terms of the picture above the house was first searched on September 15th by a team deployed from New Jersey and thankfully nobody was inside.

The slash on the door indicates that the house was not entered.

inhabitable devastation: New Orleans.

2007-02-05T11:21:00.000-08:00

Driving into Hollygrove or the Ninth Ward of New Orleans enabled the media coverage of Katrina to become calcified in my mind. Seeing someone's hopes and dreams collapsed in the middle of a piece of property humbled me with the knowledge that nothing can prevent the devastation that nature can inflict upon a city and the culture contained therein. I was abroad in Italy last fall when the hurricane hit the United States, and the physical displacement from the situation somehow made me feel like I was not a part of the disaster, or, rather, I did not have to be a part of the disaster. This past weekend in New Orleans showed me just how much I NEED to be a part of the disaster relief efforts. I felt better about leaving knowing that we would be back in April equipped with the ability to build a house for a member of the Hollygrove community.

With all of the devastation, I think that it becomes rather easy to objectify the situation or somehow quantify the effects of the storm. I caught myself doing this on a number of occasions as we were driving around. I had to constantly remind myself of the personal effects of the storm on the various individuals of the community, the effects that the storm had on the communites as a whole, and then, on a larger scale, the effects that the storm had upon the entire city and surrounding areas of New Orleans. The conversations that we had with the individuals in Hollygrove concentrated the disaster in terms of individual perspectives, and these conversations impacted me more than the wasteland that was left over in the wake of Katrina. Hearing stories of how the storm affected and devastated the individual lives of the community members left me with a feeling of urgency - an urgency to get involved, an urgency to help, and an urgency to help rebuild the community of Hollygrove.

The other side of visiting New Orleans this past weekend was the French Quarter, where the devastation was not as visible, and the tourists and students were abundant. The dichotomy that exists between the exterior neighborhoods that remain largely untouched and unrepaired after the storm compared with the bustle of Bourbon Street struck me as quite interesting. How has New Orleans reacted as a cultural center to the impact of Katrina?

static:silent

2007-02-05T11:09:00.000-08:00

1.5 years later.

There's a delicate silence in the decimated neighborhoods of New Orleans. Every so often, a pedestrian or two walk by and you can only hear broken glass and busted concrete under their shoes. Water sits in muddy pits in unkempt yards. Signs are bent at their base but still standing. Streetlights don't work but remain in place (or slightly tilted) as reminders of invention and function and necessity in a bustling urban environment.

Much of NOLA stands as artifact; each house we passed by signified someone's life - in more than just monetary terms. It is almost a museum; a day in time captured and decaying; it reminds me of the destruction of Pompeii - the occurrance of a disaster and daily lives were frozen in one place. In New Orleans, they are on a steady track to decay - mold making them dangerous and constant moisture rising from the wet ground absorbing into everything.

What reached me was this silence and this stillness. Rows and rows of houses, yet ours were the only voices we could hear. Our footsteps were the only footsteps. You could hear the wind rattling some loose debris. It is fossilization; a disaster, the decline of a sub-civilization in a place and time where possibilities could allow for so much more.

Nothing moved; how is nothing moving when the world around NOLA is moving at the fast American pace? So much sitting, so much waiting, so much of nothing. So much infrastructure remains untouched, there is no construction, there are no electricians or plumbers riding around in vans. Looking into the windows of houses, seeing toys and toilets and whatever else lying in front yards - you cannot help but wonder, where are these people? Did they give up?

Do they have pets?
Did they have pets?

1.5 years later, and NOLA is still static.

Automating the Building Envelope

2007-02-05T10:07:00.000-08:00

Robotecture is one way of exploring possible means of conserving energy. Architects would like to automate their building envelopes rather than leave energy-efficient operation to chance. Greater detail is being considered in the building envelope between the interior and the elements outside, therefore increasing the innovation and production of such design models as the "edge monkey."

The "edge monkey's" function would be to patrol building facades, regulating energy usage and indoor conditions. Basic duties include closing unattended windows, checking thermostats, and adjusting blinds. But the machines would also “gesture meaningfully to internal occupants” when building users “are clearly wasting energy.” They are described as “intrinsically delightful and funny.” Although such a product might seem as quite an investment, the costs can't be justified strictly on energy savings- they offer a more personalized occupant satisfaction, including access to fresh air, thermal comfort, etc...

deIndustry

2007-02-05T10:04:00.000-08:00

Probably the most contributing factor to the shrinking of New Orleans is the failure of industry to grow and flourish - this factor leading to the crime rate and education problems and vice versa, completing the cycle of a dying economy.

The economy that supported Louisiana throughout most of last century was the oil industry; however, it reached its peak in the 1970s and had been on a steady decline ever since. Levees and canals diverted the flow of the Mississippi, changing and destroying elements of the ecosystems and essential plants in the Mississippi delta. This has made the land vulnerable to sinking, and the drilling of oil began to literally force the level of the land to drop because it caused the pressure underneath the land dropped.

the sinking city of New Orleans due to depressurization; the red parts are sinking the fastest, and moving down the spectrum the violet parts are sinking the slowest (see legend)
image courtesy of NewScientist.com.

It was soon realized that Louisiana, specifically the New Orleans area, is anything but ideal for oil drilling. The industry began to suffer due to environmental restrictions and lawsuits (both due to sinking wetlands and oil spills), causing layoffs and slowing the economy of New Orleans. People moved, in search of work.

As mentioned in a previous post, in 1960 there were 627,525 people living in metropolitan NOLA, and pre-Katrina 2005 housed 444,000. Another important industry is the ship and port-building industry, but as the oil industry declined, so did this. Tourism became one of the major supporting industries.

The poverty rate in 1970 was 26 percent, but in 28 census tracts it was at least 40%; in 2000, the overall rate had only risen to 28 percent, but there were 47 tracts where the rate was at least 40%. In those 30 years, NOLA lost 109,000 residents. The poor stayed behind, the middle and upper middle classes left in search of opportunity.

map of the impoverished areas (above) and
map of impoverished areas compared to flood (below).
both images courtesy of the Affordable Housing Institute.

sources:
the Affordable Housing Institute
NewScientist.com
environmentalChemistry.com

educating for industry

2007-02-05T07:21:00.000-08:00

Forty percent of New Orleans students attended parochial schools before Katrina. Good for them, being able to bypass the struggling public education system and bring themselves above the illiteracy rate.

What, then, for those who had no means to move to higher educational ground?

School buses flooded after Katrina struck.
image courtesy isteve.com

The pre-Katrina city had a forty percent illiteracy rate, and it was projected that fifty percent of African-American ninth graders would not graduate high school in four years, if at all. Government and clerical work is the primary career path for an illiterate adult. Louisiana had spent $4724 per child and ranks 48th in the country for teacher salaries.

It was also estimated that 50,000 students in Louisiana were absent from school on any given day, and roughly 45 high school students dropped out of Louisiana schools everyday. A chunk of African-American men ended up in Angola Prison, a former plantation where inmates still do slave labor. Ninety percent of inmates of Angola Prison die as prisoners.

This has caused industry to abandon the city; students of these parochial schools have roughly a sixty percent rate of attending out-of-state universities and colleges; out of these students, over half will pursue their careers out of state.

It's no wonder that the education system would not be able to sustain a disaster. The city is viewing this as an opportunity to rebuild the entire system from scratch - and rebuild it better. When the population can't even move back to the city, though, it's difficult to build an entire school system.

Hardin Elementary School in Orleans Parish is still not open.
image courtesy The Seattle Times.

The educated population was fleeing the city; the uneducated population experienced such low incomes that they did not serve industry well as consumers. Unemployment skyrocketed. The next post will examine in deeper detail the failing industry of New Orleans.

sources:
Jordan Flanherty: "Notes from Inside New Orleans."
Paul T. Hill, Jane Hannaway: "The Future of Public Education in New Orleans" (the Urban Institute).

Elephant and Castle Ecopod

2007-01-31T05:46:00.000-08:00

On Monday, November 27, the Ecopod officially opened to the public. Powered entirely by solar energhttp://www2.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gify, the Ecopod displays, in bright luminous hues, digital film media and other information at night.
The Ecopod is properly named, being constructed from a recycled shipping container (which seems to be the source for many products springing up lately) and is powered with a renewable source of energy.

Right now its promoting the insertion of London's new Crosstown Tram.

.

Lazor Office: FlatPak House

2007-01-30T14:59:00.000-08:00

The FlatPak house, designed by Lazor Office, is a prefabricated system of components that creates houses that are both aesthetically pleasing and mass customizable. The price of the house, which ranges based upon the options the consumer chooses for his or her house, includes FlatPak kitchen cabinets, a KitchenAid appliance group, FlatPak bath fixtures and vanity package, clothing storage unit, exterior and interior lighting system, in-floor heating, air-to-air ventilation system, and the FlatPak patio.

The beauty of the Lazor prefabricated housing system comes in its ability to satisfy the customer's need and specific site requirements through a mass customization process. The FlatPak operates through a series of manufactured components that form a single unit in a seemingly endless number of configurations. The consumer has the ability to choose concrete wall color and cladding materials, interior wall surface, flooring materials, and one of two bath package options. The lighting system and the kitchen appliances come standard with the house. After the foundation system is assembled, the prefabricated components are placed on the foundation and the wall panels are assembled.

the IKEA boklok prefab series

2007-01-29T07:28:00.000-08:00

BoKlok - meaning "Live Smart" in Swedish - is furniture manufacturer IKEA's flatpack construction prefabricated housing series, begun in 1998. Currently, BoKlok is available in Sweden, Finland, UK, Denmark, and Norway. The typical demographic that own a BoKlok house is first-time homeowners whose salaries range from 12, 500 to 30,000 GBP. The homes are customizable in their interior spaces and finishes, but the layouts are typically the same, primarily differing from each other through the number of bedrooms contained within the BoKlok unit (one- or two-bedroom).

The following is technical data for BoKlok construction, taken from BoKlok's website:

Ground floor
Moisture-resistant chipboard on treated softwood battens accommodating service installations on structural floor (incorporating thermal insulation). Variable from site to site.

External walls
140mm timber frame, fully insulated, finished internally with plasterboard and externally with high performance cladding material (variable from site to site).

Internal and party walls
Timber-framed with acoustic insulation to meet Building Regulation requirements.

Intermediate floors
High performance, insulated cassette floor consisting of steel web, engineered joists supporting a floating, sound-insulating floor and finished with plasterboard ceilings.

Access stairs, decks and balconies
Galvanised steel structure supporting timber decks with metal balustrades and timber handrails plus plant shelves. All generously sized to form an extension to internal living spaces.

Roof
Mono pitched roof finished externally with high-performance, single ply membrane with standing seam profiles. Internally - plasterboard ceilings; roof space insulated with 300mm mineral fibre quilt.

Windows
High performance, Scandinavian, top-hung, reversible timber windows (for internal cleaning) with factory-fitted double glazed units and factory decorated.

Windows meet Secured By Design standards. Internal window sills are solid limestone.

Front Doors
High performance, Scandinavian, composite door set consisting of timber-faced, fully insulated door blade incorporating aluminium security plate to both sides; factory double glazed and decorated; incorporating three-point multi-locking mechanisms and a wheelchair-accessible, storm-proof threshold. All to Secured By Design standards.

Internal Doors
Birch-veneered, flush door blades.

Internal finishes
Walls are emulsioned and woodwork is silk-painted throughout. Kitchen wall tiling is provided between worktop and wall units; bathroom tiling is to 1800mm height around bath/shower. Bathroom floors are finished in reconstituted rubber/ lino; otherwise floors throughout are finished in high-performance hardwood laminated strip flooring.

chaos takes many forms.

2007-01-29T03:32:00.000-08:00

Now that we have an idea of what the geopolitical setup of New Orleans is (see my previous post), the next few posts will discuss some of the key components of a faltering city: economic recession (unemployment), low-scoring public education, and crime, which will be addressed in this post.

There is a lot of discussion about the alarming murder rate in NOLA since Katrina - and the violent crime numbers seem to be ever rising. There were nine murders in the first eight days of the year. According to MSNBC, 46 states have seen their violent crime rates drop in the past two years; New Orleans has seen its rise.

This is not the worst of it: New Orleans hit its crime peak in 1994; in 1995, a university experiment had police fire 700 blank rounds into a neighborhood in one afternoon, and there was not a single gunshot reported. The problem, as is often true, is rooted in money. Inexperienced prosecutors, understaffed police stations and reluctant, fearful witnesses were dubbed the reasons for this criminal outbreak.

Now, with even less money the situation seems to be worse. However, theft has been the real problem since Katrina; not murder. Looters swept the greater majority of flooded businesses in NOLA in the six months after Katrina. The homicide rate is still extremely low compared to the 1990s.

photo courtesy of tomgpalmer.com

The fact of the matter, as has been determined, is that a city that had already fallen was just knocked down further; recovery will be a long and hard and expensive process.

In the next few posts, I'll discuss a few of the other reasons cities begin to crumble, and place the NOLA (pre-Katrina) senario into the ideas of the Shrinking Cities project.

sources:
Nicole Gelinas: Will New Orleans Recover? (www.cityjournal.org)
Associated Press: New Orleans Murder Rate on the Rise Again (MSNBC)
Denny Burk: Katrina Didn't Do It (DennyBurk.com)

design for all

2007-01-28T12:27:00.000-08:00

We are all familiar with Target stores. A hip Target commercial on television or an advertisement in a magazine is quickly recognized... the white dog with the red target eye, the red gift boxes around christmas time, etc. There are even SuperTarget stores! The stores sell basically anything you could want, from clothing to home decor.

But what makes Target different from other supercenters? Target is making design affordable. The store carries products designed by:

Isaac Mizrahi
He is a designer of women's fashion. Target features his tailored suits and dresses for women. His clothes are trendy and accompanied by shoes and handbags of his design as well.

Thomas O'Brien Vintage Modern
I have a fabulous sheer seersucker shower curtain from this collection! The designs for bathrooms are clean and bold. The patterns bring a rich feel to affordable decor.

Amy Coe
Amy Coe has designed a collection of coordinating bedding and bedroom decoration for the newest eyes. She couples fun colors with intriguing designs for the entire room and its furnishings.

Victoria Hagan
She has designed a collection of home furnishings called Perfect Peices She tells the average shopper, "Start a collection of interesting objects to add to the personality of your room." Her decorations vary in design from antique to modern, allowing anyone to chose very different pieces that will compliment the same space.

Mossimo
Mossimo Giannulli offers women's fashion including tops, bottoms, handbags, shoes, bathing suits available at Target that are flattering and fashionable. His designs are inspired by south California beach. You can buy fun-in-the-sun gear from here for half the price you would spend at a department store. Mossimo also designs clothing for men and children.

Target's perogative appeals to people who want to be innovative successfully within their means. The products offered in Target are a collection of design made affordable. Target also has a collection called the global bazaar... They offer products from all over the world, available to anyone through Target stores. The international items are sold online and in the store at a reasonable price. Who wouldn't want an end table from India?

disJointed: the parish system

2007-01-27T08:22:00.000-08:00

New Orleans, both pre- and post-Katrina, has been fragmented on a number of levels, primarily due to the parish system in its metropolitan area. Each parish acted independently to become prepared for any disaster, then to become prepared for Katrina, and now to rebuild. Post-Katrina, this is causing people to move to different parishes. For example, the St. Tammany and Jefferson Parishes are more in control of the rebuilding process than the Orleans parish, and people are leaving the Orleans parish. Orleans is the central downtown parish, and it is becoming impoverished because its entire tax base is relocating.

The parish system of division is based off of the Catholic church and the strong Catholic background of the population has kept it alive. The beginnings of the settlement of Louisiana and the rest of the Mississippi Valley after the Louisiana purchase were led by missionary priests, seeking to leave the eastern seaboard where Catholicism was not necessarily acceptable, and hoping to estabish Catholic settlements. Shortly after the Mobile parish was founded, a pioneer named Bienville took fifty men with him to Tchoutchouma, an abandoned Indian village, and erected buildings, laying out the city according to chief engineer of the colony de La Tour. The first church, dedicated to St. Louis, stands in what is now the St. Louis Parish. The city was named New Orleans after the Duc d'Orleans, and thus started its urban growth.

St. Louis Cathedral (courtesy ww.AllPosters.com)

The parishes controlled all aspects of Louisiana policy. It wasn't until 1844 that new parishes were established in New Orleans, and caused a degree of separation in New Orleans. The St. Louis parish lost members of its parish, and therefore lost much of its tax base. This level of competition within the city still lives today.

While citizens of each parish no longer pay taxes to the churches, each parish still essentially governs itself in the manner of a county, but the state has little control over the tax money and therefore the rebuilding process.

a map of the parish system as it exists today
(courtesy of David Huskins, Institute for Health and Social Policy)

Holly Grove, the neighborhood in which the ddbNOLA will take place, is located in the Orleans Parish.

Sources:
Maret, Isabelle. "Washed Away by Hurricane Katrina?" Journal of Architectural Education, volume 60, issue 1.
New Advent: the Catholic Encyclopedia.

Tobi Schneidler's "Responsive Fields"

2007-01-26T21:01:00.000-08:00

Responsive Fields is a device created by architect and designer Tobi Schneidler that tracks and records hand motions as a mechanism that controls the operation of virtual "agents" that exist within the device's embedded screen. This device uses the recorded movements in order to create a dialogue between the digital interface and the full-scale prototype generated through the interface, viewed by Schneidler as a living process.

Schneidler's thoughts regarding parametric design become rather interesting within the realm of debate about parametrically designed / algorithmic architecture: "The craft [cutting edge architectural practice] was to form buildings out of data feeds somehow collected on the urban site. CAD as a tool has been retrained to become an autonomic design machine, code-named: Parametric Design. The user, the experience and the interaction with the build environment were largely dropping out of the debate."

Schneidler's other projects, as discussed through Gizmodo Gallery, demonstrate the huge potential of parametric design as it relates to mass customization. Parametric design contains the ability to connect the user's needs/wants very specifically to the end product through the idea of mass customization, creating a very interesting dynamic between the two. By linking the user directly to the digital interface, the legitimacy of this dynamic grows even further.

making customization affordable

2007-01-26T09:44:00.000-08:00

When it comes to decorating a home, consumers are looking for something different: something that says "This is my home." But not only do people want new, innovative, and unique, people want to create their own space. This is a growing trend that has boomed from home television networks such as TLC and HGTV. After watching Trading Spaces and Clean Sweep, even I think I could redesign my own home and do in within a budget. People demand choices, so these programs show how to customize your home, while being stylish and creative, all within a limited price-range.

For example, the learning channel provides do-it-yourself tips online from Jeff Beneke, who has written more than 12 books on home improvement. The "project files" give viewers step-by-step instructions on how to customize their homes based on the designs featured in Trading Spaces including : traditional plastering techniques, padded headboards, breakfast counters, wall and ceiling plywood treatments, circular storage units, freestanding room dividers, decorative painted ceiling treatments, etc. It also has tips for : building a fireplace mantle, refinishing kitchen cabinets, painting a brick fireplace, upholstering walls with fabric, and painting the carpet, or not. In addition to the detailed instructions, Beneke includes a shopping list of needed and suggested items for each project. TLC is showing America that anyone can customize and update their own homes and do it inexpensively.

readily available resources

2007-01-23T20:33:00.000-08:00

As a part of sustainable research, I began looking at materials that were more readily available to reduce costs, and what better material to look for than earth? The project below, designed by Christopher Chris PTY LTD Architecture, consists of many different colors and materials varying in texture that all collide in a rammed earth wall. The wall serves as a unifying element as well as major stability.

Earth ramming is an effective method because the method of construction can vary in complexity, depending on the form; but it allows the homeowner the possibility of constructing it him/herself. Earth architecture has been an effective form of

archiecture for many years, dating back to early Yemen periods. Architecture students at MIT are experimenting with earth ramming methods to test the soils in New England seeing how they stand up to climate conditions over time.

The earthen wall has one primary advantage over concrete -- environmental sustainability, according to Dahmen and Ochsendorf, who say that a conservative estimate attributes 7 percent of CO2 emissions worldwide to the production of cement, the primary ingredient in concrete. By contrast, preparation of a rammed earth mixture produces very little CO2 and uses no toxic chemicals. And, they point out, a building made of rammed earth creates no disposal hazard when demolished.

tsunami safe(r) housing

2007-01-23T20:24:00.000-08:00

In the wake of the Indian Ocean tsunami disaster of December 2004, most governments in the affected countries have announced policies to resettle the population away from the coastline. For instance, on January 17, 2005, the Sri Lanka Public Security Ministry announced the relocation of its coastal communities, estimated at 800,000. Building restrictions have been proposed, prohibiting construction within 100m (in the Southwest) or 200m (in the Northeast) from the sea.

Such policies, however, come at a high social, cultural, environmental and economic cost. The aim of this project is to investigate the development of technological strategies that could guarantee future safety at lower cost. In particular, the focus is on digital and building technologies. Structural guidelines extracted from the analysis of surviving structures and the implementation of an early warning system using cell phones could provide a more effective solution to relocation - promoting a less hasty, more sensible recovery of the disaster-torn areas.

While the cell phone component of this project is still in the research phase, the housing part is currently being implemented by the Prajnopaya Foundation (they are involved in the construction of over 1000 houses in Sri Lanka). Prototypes of a 400 sq. ft. house and a 1000 sq. ft. civic center have been developed. According to a simulation by Buro Happold engineers (London), the final low-tech-construction, high-tech-design structures should be over five times more resistant than the existing ones in the case of an incoming tsunami (see pdf report for additional details).

This project is coordinated by the SENSEable City Laboratory, a new research initiative between the Department of Urban Studies and Planning and the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, in collaboration with the Harvard Design School Tsunami Design Initiative group, which presented their proposal at USAID in Washington, DC in April 2005. It is a collective effort that involves experts from many countries and uses innovative design to improve the socio-economic recovery of affected communities. from trunami safe(r) house

see this link for a breakdown of the deign

high demand for AFFORDABLE housing

2007-01-23T20:09:00.000-08:00

Affordable housing is in high demand in the city of New Orleans. People want to re-build homes quickly, while affordable, so they can return to their everyday lives. But the post-Katrina situation is looking grim. Thankfully, help is coming from all regions of the United States. The University of Virginia teamed up with Habitat for Humanity on the preHAB project.

A total of 18 students from the School of Architecture and the School of Engineering and Applied Science collaborated on the prefabricated home design. They were also able to work with the house hands-on when it was constructed in Gautier, Mississippi. The design was sensitive to solar technology, multi-use spaces, natural lighting, hurricane studies, and materials. The students built the "environmentally responsive panelized house kit" in Mississippi, where it was tested. The home is one of seven preHAB houses to be assembled in communities in New Orleans.

urban Shrinkage

2007-01-23T18:23:00.000-08:00

"The new doubts, surprisingly, are largely not based on the widespread damage caused by the flood. Rather, crippling problems that existed long before Hurricane Katrina are mostly being blamed for the city’s failure to thrive." (from the New York Times)

beautiful image from the NYT

It seems that in order to understand post-Katrina New Orleans, we must understand pre-Katrina New Orleans. Widely unknown to most of the American population, NOLA was failing as a city long before the hurricane wiped it out. This is all the more reason to rebuild it better - and all the more reason to find a better solution than the neighborhoods of FEMA trailers. According to this article in the NYT, in 1960 there were 627,525 people living in metropolitan NOLA. Pre-Katrina NOLA is estimated to have housed only 444,000.

a FEMA ghetto in NOLA (courtesy GettyImages)

The last credible population survey (conducted last November) estimated the population to be at 191,000.

What were the problems causing the population of NOLA to disperse over the past 45 years before the storm? The Shrinking City research project seeks to examine the phenomenon of these fast reductions in populations. The project studies four cities and tries to find the main factor to cause their shrinkages: Detroit (suburbanization), Manchester/Liverpool (deindustrialization), Ivanovo, Russia (post-socialism), and Leipzig (a combination of these causes).

With focus on pre-Katrina NOLA, the next few posts will attempt to answer this question: Why were people leaving New Orleans?

post-Katrina NOLA: the damage assessment

2007-01-21T10:51:00.000-08:00

Is New Orleans a catastrophic wasteland, or a blank canvas for innovation and improvement?

Throughout the semester I will be focusing research on devastating conditions surrounding post-Katrina New Orleans and its potential to grow and develop. I will be examining case studies of cities that have been rebuilt after disaster, whether it be human disaster (such as war) or natural disaster (earthquakes, tsunamis, or hurricanes).

According to the Urban Institute, New Orleans had already fallen victim to a failing infrastructure when Katrina simply seemed to "finish things off." An important consideration that governments and organizations who are attempting to rebuild the culture-rich city is that it must be rebuilt better than it was before in order to survive and flourish.

To start things off, let's get an overview of some basic statistics surrounding New Orleans to date:

As of August, 2006 there were 100 metro area hotels and motels in operation with 27,000 rooms in inventory. Prior to Katrina, There were 265 hotels with an inventory of 38,338.
As of August, 2006, out of 81,000 local businesses in 10 parishes, 42,168 were currently open and another 20,268 have partially resumed operations.
Pre-Katrina there were 20 general acute care hospitals in operation in the metro area. Currently there are 12.
Nearly 228,000 homes and apartments were flooded in the metropolitan area.
FEMA estimated 450,000 to 600,000 families were displaced outside of the city as of January, 2006. The U.S. Census Bureau has been unable to tally the population as far as how much of it has returned to NOLA, but they are working on a system now.

Here is an interesting image comparing a NOLA highway interchange pre- and post-Katrina, images courtesy of globalSecurity.org.

sources
New Orleans Mayor's office
New Orleans Times Picayune
GlobalSecurity.org
The Urban Institute