In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, as a devastated city struggled
to recover, the American design community mobilized to help. Even
as the official planning process was paralyzed by conflicting
visions and interests, federal indifference, missing communities,
and the overwhelming magnitude of the crisis, thousands of civic
and philanthropic organizations, academic institutions, and individuals
– in New Orleans and around the country - rose to the challenge
of providing aid, ideas, and labor for re-building. During the
year since Katrina struck, remarkable and focused outpourings
of architectural and urban creativity has been devoted to the
project of examining and addressing the causes – both human
and natural – for its present despair, in hopes of revitalizing
the New Orleans metropolitan area.The work gathered in this repository represents a selection of
projects undertaken by both professionals and architecture students
in the United States. These designs examine the future of New
Orleans at all scales – from region to neighborhood to building
– and offer proposals that range from practical and immediate
to speculative and visionary. Taken together, they offer a remarkable
palette of possibilities for a city confronted tasks of restoring
its urban fabric while simultaneously imagining a future in which
the city finds sustainability, prosperity, justice, and beauty.
Project New Orleans seeks to be the definitive archive of this
material, with the goal of cataloging and presenting materials
to facilitate the on-going process of recovery.Project New Orleans is directed by Michael Sorkin, Carol McMichael Reese, and Anthony Fontenot