Archinect - The Dirty South - New Orleans

'World Fair'-ness of Black Market Architecture

2015-05-11T16:48:00-04:00

For his project, Andrew Llewellyn explored what can happen when architectural remnants of the 1984 World’s Fair are infiltrated by an outlaw operation. Taking a closer look at the last World Fair in the United States and the only to close due to bankruptcy, Stefann Plishka interviews Andrew about the Fair’s impact on New Orleans and how black market architecture fits in so well with the city’s sordid reputation.

The World's Fair is a ripe and popular topic for architects to unpack - what was your particular interest at the outset? What was your takeaway?

The 1984 World’s Fair in New Orleans was the last in the United States and the only World’s Fair to declare bankruptcy during its run. It took four years to plan and was only up for six months. Other cities got iconic buildings from their World Fairs - like the Eiffel Tower in Paris or the Space Needle in Seattle. But New Orleans only ever wanted a new convention center, and not an iconic one at that. It was as if the 1984 World’s Fa...

Queens of New Orleans

2015-01-11T12:46:00-05:00

For his project, Colin Lienhard investigated the history/"herstory" of different typologies of 'The Queen' in New Orleans. By mashing up disparate historical and contemporary narratives through axonometric representation, he explored the unique condition for women in New Orleans as how perspectives have changed over time. Stefann Plishka interviews Colin about the challenges of queen-ness in the South and how to design an architecture fit for a queen.

Stefann Plishka: In confronting the "herstory" of New Orleans, you converge the narratives of many different types of women. This resulted in an extraordinary architecture, but one created from ordinary, vernacular architectural elements. What does this say about the legacy of women in the south, particularly in New Orleans?

Colin Lienhard: From the beginning I thought of New Orleans as an atypical situation, probably stemming in part from its origin as a French and Spanish city. For most of its history, the city didn’t have typical sex...

Architectural Investigation of NOLA's "Terminally Unwonted" Monuments

2015-01-09T13:32:00-05:00

“Live from New Orleans:

Citizens awoke this morning to news of the radical dismemberment of the city’s controversial history. Twelve monuments rife with embedded complexity have been tagged and scheduled for excavation from their sites north of the Mississippi River and will be ferried south to Algiers Point, a place itself with an often overlooked history.

Citizens will be able to engage these reappropriated and increasingly complex histories as the site is transformed into a new ferry terminal and museum of controversial monuments.

The museum curator and design architects have provided a catalogue of the intended project: both historic and projective in nature. The city has documented the sequence of monumental movements, each monolith wrapped and concealed on its controversial transit across the Mississippi.

Transit Shots

These monuments range from traditional and figurative to unconventional landscapes. A few that will make their way south a...

The Dirty South, Fall 2014

2014-12-23T17:08:00-05:00

The second installment of Jennifer Bonner’s “Dirty South” studio at Georgia Tech's School of Architecture immersed itself in the culture and history of New Orleans. Continuing the analogy of East Coast/West Coast rap wars in the 1990s and the emergence of the Dirty South artists Outkast and Goodie Mob, the graduate studio pushed forward the unique identity of Dirty South architecture. From the French Quarter to the Garden District and 9th Ward to Algiers Point, we criss-crossed the Big Easy looking for patterns, peculiarities, and idiosyncrasies. Using the framework of a guidebook of B-side tours, members of the studio established research questions to explore and expose the unique conditions of the city.

Our sojourn to the Crescent City illuminated nooks and crannies ready for architectural delight. From mis-using Charles Moore’s Piazza d’Italia with a new streetcar depot to erecting a labyrinthine bureaucratic skyscraper on the city’s highest and driest point to creating an “under...