i was "invited" to pay $100 to enter this competition, too

At our firm in new orleans we have several who are going to enter this competition.
Also Tulane architecture students are going to be developing prototypes, building houses, and entering this competition along with five other architecture schools around the country. I am very excited about the possiblibilities!

I am interested in developing some types of housing that can engage the community and people who will live there. Something that will include the the entire community in design and construction.. to make it their own home.

nonarchitect, thank you so much for your interest !...we are in desperate need for more ideas!

it's a great idea, having this competition, but unfortunately the idea of segregating the single-family and multi-family projects and then assigning different levels of expertise to each is insulting.

for one, there are groups of students and even individual students who could blow that multi-family thing out of the water, in my opinion. and frankly i have an idea for a single-family prototype...!

but secondly and more troubling, there is an underlying elitism at work here. it's been bandied about that new orleans should retract and communalize (in the form of multi-family housing). i agree on the first: new orleans should retract, there's just not enough critical mass for full-scale redevelopment. but it's also possible to redevelop in ways that are not communal.

new orleans seemed to me to be a city primarily marked by single- and double-family dwellings packed very close and densely yet separately. thus perhaps engendering a certain individualism in those residents who maybe owned their own homes or at least rented them. this dense-but-horizontal type of development is partly due to its lack of economic development last century, but also probably due to preference on the part of new orleanians.

indeed, i would wonder if new orleans' notorious housing projects were the most dangerous and least-developed parts of the city.

and with modern technology -- why can't we build again in the lower 9th ward? shit, they give people on beaches money to rebuild their vacation homes!

so my only entry to this competition will be the idea that NOLA code should require the ground floor of all new construction/rebuilt construction to be at least four feet above grade and that all new construction be water-resistant (i.e., no more stick and shingle).

I went to the Bring New Orleans Back presentation of the proposed Master Plan for New Orleans. I liked the plan ... but at the same time I realized how insensitive it was.
It is easier to plan green space .. than to look someone directly in the eye and tell them they are rebuilding invein and they are now designated to be green space. How do talk to someone about bullet trains when people are still in such distress??
This public meeting... was not the same as an architecture discussion the previous sunday afternoon at the ogden museum.

All of my ideas about what would make this city so wonderful changed after I went to the BNOB meeting. I feel whatever I design and show in a plan needs to be something that I could look anyone who lived in New Orleans eye to eye and not be ashamed to present it to that person.

while there is some merit to having parts of the city retract to green space, lexi, you're right ... how do you look someone in the face and say might as well stop, your house is becoming a park restroom?

what might mitigate this is the fact that 260,000 of the people who you would have once had to face are living elsewhere and most of them aren't likely to return. diaspora is the only word to describe it.

and frankly, if only 1 household in what was once a block of 20 is around, it doesn't make sense to maintain the sewer and electric and water and gas lines to their house. it doesn't make sense to keep their street paved. it just doesn't make sense.

but forget planning and high-handedness -- people are going to vote with their feet, so to speak. if nobody returns then the debate is a moot point.

one very useful thing on the website for the AIA competition is a book of new orleans house types etc. there is a map of the city ca 1878. this might be where new orleans settles out. maybe not, maybe in the next five years everyone will come back.

The tax base will not support sporadic rebuilding currently. The new plan has to make sense economically. It is also huge social problem that needs to be addressed.
I think it is Key in replanning New Orleans to have a system involving the community and each neighborhood. If the community...doesn't feel directly involved it will not accept any plan at all and new orleans will be stuck in limbo.
Many people have relocated...but it also seems like a large number of people are in nearby cities like baton rouge, houston, and other cities just waiting to go home and rebuild.

being in houston, and having helped and met many NO diplaced residents i was excited to hear about the competition...
but after reading the sparse brief...i could not decipher what was the puropse of the people who had started the comp, or what and how the information would be dispersed to those outside the parent company of architectural record.

does anyone have more info about this??

I do agree with ochona that so there is unnecessary bias in the competition, and like Lexi pointed out, the economic principle, and the participation element will in the end over-ride the formal design. i am therefore approaching the competition from a strategic planning perspective, however, I am finding it hard to find specific information on the economic working of new orleans...any one know a good web site ?

as a rule i don't pay $100 to enter a competition without knowing a little bit more about what i'll be designing than the title "high density on the high ground". being MAILED (!) info two weeks after i submit my entry fee...? this is 2006, people.

I would say they should mail and send an email with a link to materials. It is actually nice to have a physical package of materials - especially or us printer-less.

Reed Kroloff used to be the editor of Architectural Record. He is now the dean of Tulane School of Architecture. He is the Chair of the Urban Design Subcommittee of the Bring New Orleans Back Commission. I think that the entries will be very effective in bringing ideas directly to the mayor's BNOBC

hi nonarchitect, i sent you a message. i am interested in this competition.