Another building constructed through Brad Pitt's Make It Right affordable housing initiative in New Orleans is in trouble: after complaints and lawsuits over "shoddy construction" of a number of houses were brought forward in recent years, leading to the demolition of one rain-damaged and rotting 7-year-old house in 2018, now the house designed by acclaimed architect David Adjaye, who just won this year's Royal Gold Medal, has been ordered to be torn down as well.
"The house at 1826 N. Reynes St. [...] was completed and sold by Make It Right in 2011 for $130,000," reports Dough MacCash for Nola. "Two years later, the buyer sold it back to the non-profit for a similar amount. When new, it was an audacious-looking home. The upper story of the house was an open-air patio protected from rain by a roof supported by vertical wooden posts. Those posts are now so deteriorated that the roof has partially slumped into the floor below. The doors are boarded and portions of the exterior paneling have peeled away."
Make It Right blames its lumber supplier for the premature rotting and its principal architect for the design flaws and has filed lawsuits against both.
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I love humans.
it's interesting how hard it is for vernacular and high architecture to coexist. only a very few architects seem to get it to work. VSB used to be great. Gehry seems to do it well here. The rest are uniformly appalling.
personally i'm more bothered by the address numbering and security light dead centered on the base fascia.
Everyone should know that the design architects of the initial Make It Right houses were completely shut out of the process of drawing the construction documents and construction observation. While many of the starchitects are at fault for failing to correctly estimate the cost and constructability for their designs, the architect of record's execution of the homes was aesthetically brutal and technically sloppy.
If this is the cause, then ArchiNect, as part of responsible reporting, you should be associating the AOR's name with these failures. What was that firm?
"While many of the starchitects are at fault for failing to correctly estimate the cost and constructability for their designs"... well that pretty much says it, doesn't it??? don't bother hiring starchitects if you want to build low-income, well built housing. common sense, no?
I believe the architect of record they sued was John C. Williams. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/brad-pitt-s-make-it-right-foundation-sues-architect-over-n911601
...but judging by the article... quotes to me like "a dozen homes that needed repairs like pitching flat roofs and sealing leaks... like... it's f'ing Louisiana and supposed world-renowned architects are designing flat roofs... not like it rains there or anything bro you should be fine.
There are so many examples I can think of with respect to design architects coming up with completely infeasible scenarios then passing it off to executive architects that need to figure it all out—causing the actual cost to spiral out of control or to completely VE out all of the fancy design elements.
In this case the AOR was clearly ill-equipped to deal with the task, but I blame it on bad matchmaking and complete mismanagement by Make It Right to begin with.
Again, despite all of it's own shortcomings, the Katrina Cottage wins in my book.
well archinect is a media outlet, they're liable for nothing, just like fox and msbnc...opinions without consequence. ;)
anyway, I like Donna's comment, its architectural and begs the question - "you picked that light in a Knighted designed house?!"
"high architecture" obviously refers to designing while totally baked
not usually, but i'm floating on Sudafed today and loving it. maybe my buildings will be less stuffy too...
it's Sir David for you, please.
"Make It Right blames its lumber supplier for the premature rotting and its principal architect for the design flaws and has filed lawsuits against both."
How about blaming it on Adjaye's design flaw...
you don't give-up do you?
Give up on what...shedding water?
why do pitched roofs exist? ;)
Seems like the native vernacular in New Orleans is attractive enough. Maybe a junior edition of this or a full size version for several families. The first floor of these French colonial houses were designed to accept being periodically flooded. The best furniture and living areas and often the main entrance were on the second floor.
yes, 100% this.... but unfortunately to *some* this typology is synonymous with colonialism and slavery—pragmatism and logic of vernacular styles be damned!!!
Yeah, damn those *some*. You do know how to dog whistle.
To many blacks this style is aspirational and already achieved. They certainly don't aspire to the Brad Pitt modernism. Not to mention the style is adaptable to being flooded, orients the breezes through all the rooms, provides shade through the deep porches, and on and on. Many of these style homes have lasted well over 200 years through many floods, certainly the 1927 flood, and are still standing, wheras the Brad Pitt houses are already goners in the blink of an eye even without any floods.
SP: ummmmm don't get your panties in a wad bro you completely misunderstood the intention of my comment... It's not even remotely controversial to say that some people attempt to invalidate colonial vernacular styles because of their association with slavery. .... which to me is silly because the building features that Volunteer outlined are completely pragmatic and relate to the climate/terrain and they are already widely culturally accepted across racial and socioeconomic lines. it's really only a portion of the general public and elitists that don't think the style is redeemable because of it's past associations that I'm poking fun at... ideology is bad mmkay...
Volunteer's post was fine, and the person who brought up *some* people was... you.
SP: smfh you're being dense or hallucinating or something... If you hear a dog whistle you need your hearing checked because I have no beef with anyone other than common sense.
I 100% agree with Volunteer that colonial vernacular styles like this are perfectly good and attractive solution for the problem at hand, to use their words.
The *some* people in this case are the starchitects, Make It Right, and fellow colleagues that completely avoid using anything remotely colonial/classical because they don't want their designs associated with slavery or colonialism.
Yes, it is way past time that we take a deep look at where we inherited our cultural traditions from and the typology should probably be carefully deployed in order to be sensitive to these issues.
There are other regions around the world (the Caribbean, Southeast Asia, Central + South America) with similar vernacular elements like a raised piano nobile for periodic flooding, deep porches to collect breezes, steep pitched roofs to shed away rain, but of perhaps without all of the cultural baggage that comes with colonial styles in the South.
peace
"...because they don't want their designs associated with slavery or colonialism." *CITATION NEEDED*
countless personal anecdotes and conversations on this subject aside:
https://www.platformspace.net/home/architecture-and-slavery
What differentiates buildings from statues? Why not, as human rights advocate Professor Sir Geoff Palmer recently suggested, sardonically, “Take down… all those buildings in London that are related to slavery”?
take down the statues. not the buildings.
_
"...As we collectively recognize the physical environment’s role in discrimination, it is incumbent on architectural history to look past symbolic representations and toward materials, labor, and documentation to find traces of subjects whom we have otherwise erased from history. As a corollary to the necessary, historic work of dismantling, we also have the potential to restore."
Yeah, that Adjaye house is pretty terribly designed... stucco walls with a non-overhanging roof, but then terribly detailed to really make it a full shit sandwich. Agree the AOR is to blame primarily, but more consideration could have been paid to the environment. Other Make-It-Right houses are much more successful.
Tulane's Urban Build Program is very successful, and most of those roofs are even flat!
Yes, Tulane Urban Build appears to accomplish many of Make It Right's stated goals without having to hire starchitects.
Was that roof designed in that concave profile? Or did it... acquire that shape over time?
Reading material for the Bradster and his Starchitects.
https://www.nola.com/entertain...
R.I.P.
https://www.nola.com/news/arti...
just once in my life, I want to be the guy spraying water on a famous architect's building as it is demolished.
Not so great PR for architecture.
Too bad we will never hear or learn which houses were successful. Did this Shigeru Ban house work? or the KierenTimberlake below? We never see these more functional houses in these articles. Did the Michael C. Williams AOR mistake/poor work hurt their houses too? Who knows. Can the successful projects be duplicated? Will anyone want to touch this after the bad PR? It seems the lack of substantive dialogue and blame first mentality will scare everyone away. But architecture has always been a process of fail and fix--though there should have been more refinement and collaboration between architects at the beginning rather than this bad process (led by a well-intentioned, non-architect client).
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