Now that I've come back to New Orleans and Tulane I should probably get around to emailing Paul Petrunia or whomever about changing my school status from the ESA to Tulane but until I take that initiative, I'll just carry on assuming people can figure it out.



For my second to last studio at school I ended up choosing a studio that bases its premise on a colloquium that happened a little under a year ago. It involved bringing in varies Dutch architects, planners, landscape architects, hydrologists, engineers, politicians, lawyers, blah blah to New Orleans to do essentially a mini charette around saving New Orleans by re-thinking its approach to water. It seems that they realize that although the Netherlands and New Orleans are similar in their imminent danger to water, the situation in New Orleans is just altogether worse in just about every way possible.






So in particular we are focusing not so much on hurricane protection but on simply dealing with rainwater. Basically every time it rains in New Orleans (this weekend for example) it floods up to 5 feet of water in some areas of the city because although we have a fair amount of underground canals and larger pumping stations than exist anywhere else, they still can handle the flash-flood levels of water that come with just a rainstorm (i.e. up to 15 inches in under 24 hours) nevermind a hurricane. Bottom line, the result of the colloquium was closing MRGO, creating barrier islands, and introducing more open, wet canals into central New Orleans to alleviate flooding especially in the centre of the city and slow subsidence. So we're trying to figure out what that would look like.



We're running the studio a lot more on the lines of a quick charette on a lot of little things so that we can end up generating a lot of material that they can use for later small publications in the city rather than getting crazy focused on one area of the canal in the manner of a normal studio project. We started by dividing the proposed canal site into 4 block segments and in partners we would develop proposals along these sections.









Just a few images, no further explanation.

I finished presenting for my final review literally ten minutes ago. Literally, I just sat down and started blogging. I have to say this semester has been a more than a little bizarre just in the way it's set up, though I guess it's just my non-French self trying to figure out how studio works... View full entry

We had a small rendu today for this past two weeks of work. These are just a few images I presented, however most of the work was in models. Unfortunately my camera (like every other piece of technology around me, it seems) is on the fritz. In fact, I just came back from a harddrive failure and... View full entry

It's really bizarre, the way we're working. We've spent the last two months or so doing research on methods of approach and urban concepts, in each person's preferred direction. Now we've developed a program for the design project itself, for a different program for each person based on this same... View full entry

Last week, Teddy Cruz came, ostensibly to lead a week-long workshop/charette that the school hosts every semester (last semester it was Paul Virillio). Though in fact, from what I could tell the workshop didn't yield a who lot. However his lecture that he gave before the workshop was excellent. I... View full entry

Since our studio subject is taking place in Massy in the banlieue, it's pretty much necessary that we take into account a project that is in the works currently here in Paris, Le Grand Pari[s]. This is a project proposed by the ever-unpopular Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, two years ago... View full entry

And finally I can start back up here. The enormous gap between this entry and the last is because we only this week started the Spring semester. I think they try and make the Winter and Summer breaks equal so that people can find internships during both breaks. This happened to be also what I did... View full entry

As part of our final jury and the theme of our studio, this conference will be taking place at the ESA. View full entry

It turns out the government department with which we were partnering on our project decided that it would, in the future, hold an architecture competition on certain aspects of the canal project and thus would be unable to provide us with previous discussed materials (i.e. maps, climatological... View full entry

So about a week ago I took part in a one week charette with a bunch of American grad students from Catholic University of America (in DC) studying here in Paris. Basically it was one student from the ESA paired with one American student. It was kind of a campy project and pretty typical of an... View full entry

Well a lot of things are changing as we seem to be having a fair amount of problems with the government organization that we're partnering with on this project. Apparently they have an interest in hosting a large scale architecture design competition for a few aspects of their 106 km canal... View full entry

As our studio remained only two students, we were joined in with a studio of fifth year diploma students working under the same professor with more or less the same parameters (though larger and more intense). That is, we are still addressing this soon the be built 106 km canal in Northern France... View full entry

So the other day I was walking around in the 18th arrondissement and as I was crossing the street to get to the metro, I realized the was an argument going on in the middle of the intersection between a woman, straddling a bicycle, and an older man. Then the man shoved the woman in defiance... View full entry

And the upcoming one: View full entry

Looks like I'm getting out of here right on time: Meet Gustav. On the left side of the cone:Houston. Where I am now. Where I grew up. On the right side of the cone:New Orleans. Where Tulane School of Architecture is. Where I am and have been enrolled for three years. Didn't we just do this some... View full entry