Green ArchiTEXT

Urban Resilience: Breaking New Ground on Understanding – and Preserving – Natural Ecosystems

By Maywa Montenegro

...to some scientists, what happened in New Orleans, while devastating, wasn’t very surprising or unexpected. They see a system that was insufficiently robust to handle the blow it was dealt. They see a highly ordered, complex state – commercial districts and neighborhoods, social networks and infrastructure networks, cycles of water, energy, and food consumption – reduced to a state of chaos and disorder. From this perspective, the problem wasn’t merely an incompetent leadership and not enough FEMA trailers. It was a fundamental question of resilience.

Resilience theory, first introduced by Canadian ecologist C.S. “Buzz” Holling in 1973, begins with two radical premises. The first is that humans and nature are strongly coupled and co-evolving, and should therefore be conceived of as one “social-ecological” system. The second is that the long-held assumption that systems respond to change in a linear, predictable fashion is simply wrong. According to resilience thinking, systems are in constant flux; they are highly unpredictable and self-organizing, with feedbacks across time and space. In the jargon of theorists, they are complex adaptive systems, exhibiting the hallmarks of complexity.

via seedmagazine.com

Preserving Green: Making History with a LEED Platinum Landmark in NOLA

Preserving Green, a project led by New Orleans' Preservation Resource Center (PRCNO), will transform an architecturally significant house in the Holy Cross historic district of New Orleans into a LEED Platinum community center that will be free and open to the public throughout the year. Preserving Green is the first project that has support of both the U.S. Green Building Council and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Along with the USGBC and the National Trust, other sponsors include Historic Green New Orleans and The Kresge Foundation. The community center located at 5200 Dauphine Street will serve as a critical "home" and meeting place for the local neighborhood association.

via www.prcno.org

IMAGE: Historic Green

Deconstruction of 5200 Dauphine, a historic shotgun/camelback, during Historic Green, March 2009. Reconstruction and reframing of the house will begin during this year's Historic Green, March 9 to 19, 2010.

New Orleans a test case for global warming

By Tom Darden, Executive Director of the Make It Right Foundation

New Orleans, Louisiana (CNN) -- Copenhagen, Denmark, is 5,000 miles away from New Orleans, Louisiana. But representatives of the 192 nations gathering this week at the climate change conference need to keep the memory of a flooded New Orleans in mind.

Two years ago this month, the Make It Right Foundation was launched to help the families of New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward rebuild their lives and community. That was already two years after Katrina, and the once-vibrant neighborhood was still in ruins, failed by government and frustrated by a lack of progress.

via www.cnn.com

Prototype Duplex Design for Brad Pitt's Make It Right Foundation

IMAGE: William McDonough + Partners

"The Flow House: Adaptive Modularity"

William McDonough + Partners, a core team member of the Make It Right revitalization project, has designed a duplex home created for families impacted by Hurricane Katrina who are now rebuilding in New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward.  The design is one of a series of new green affordable homes for the Make It Right Foundation, founded by Brad Pitt to help rebuild the Lower 9th Ward.

via www.modular.org

The Curious Designs of Make It Right

WebUrbanist offers a quick look at some of the designs created by 21 local and internationally-known architects assembled for New Orleans' Make It Right Project - an 'eco village' emerging within the Lower 9th Ward of 150 green, affordable, storm-resistant homes.

"Make it Right in New Orleans: 5 Slick New Home Designs" highlights renderings based on the traditional "shotgun" style vernacular, including those from Adjaye Architects, Kieran Timberlake, Pugh & Scarpa's single family homes and duplexes inspired by American patchwork quilting traditions, and the MVRDV 'bent house'.

See the full article and renderings here.

Thom Mayne’s Floating House for New Orleans

Okay, so maybe it isn’t such a crazy idea: a house that could literally float in the event of floodwaters. Created by Thom Mayne, this buoyant design was his answer to the challenge of sustainability and passive survivability for the Make It Right Project. After all, the house was built for a part of New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward that was as much as 20 feet under water after Katrina following the breach of nearby floodwalls. Despite its unusual properties, the house’s architecture also fits right in with the rest of the neighborhood.

Doug MacCash, The Times-Picayune’s art critic, comments on the house and took this video tour:

Visit architect Thom Mayne's Floating House at the Make It Right Development

MacCash writes:

“The architects who designed houses for Brad Pitt’s Make It Right development in the Lower Ninth Ward had to juggle two challenges. The first was how to build the houses high enough so that they would escape floodwaters -- even if they might not withstand the inundation that occurred following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The other was how to preserve the intimate New Orleans-style streetscape where people could sit on their porches and visit with passersby.

Architect Thom Mayne, whose firm Morphosis is based in Santa Monica, Calif., has come up with the most radical reconciliation of the need for height and the need for neighborliness so far.”

Read the rest of “Brad Pitt's architect Thom Mayne designs floating house in New Orleans”.

Yes, Virginia, There is a Brad Pitt

Really nice coverage by TreeHugger of Brad Pitt’s appearance at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) this week. The piece includes a few example renderings of the green, affordable homes being designed and built for residents of New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward as part of Pitt’s Make It Right Project (MIR) there. But the most compelling images perhaps are those of Brad with Bill Clinton and some of the MIR recipients on stage during the event. The photos say it all.

For his article, “How Brad Pitt Could Spark a Green Building Revolution”, Brian Merchant also sat down with Tom Darden of MIR and USGBC’s Rick Fedrizzi to discuss the broader significance of Make It Right and what it could mean for the green built environment. He writes:

“Everyone wins – New Orleans residents who tragically lost their homes get help moving back to their hometown. They'll live in great green homes (and save hundreds of dollars on their electric bills). The world gets an example of how green building is indisputable future of development. And that's how Brad Pitt (and Fedrizzi and Darden, of course) may help ignite a green building revolution.”

The CGI also offers this video of the 2009 Infrastructure Special Session and a short video of the MIR initiative, featuring interviews with Robert Green and other Lower Ninth Ward residents. It's a long session - the good stuff starts at the 4:07 mark.

Architecture Of Change 2: Sustainability And Humanity In The Built Environment

Fast Company’s new slideshow features several amazing green projects from around the world. All are captured in the new book, Architecture Of Change 2: Sustainability And Humanity In The Built Environment by editors Kristen and Lukas Feireiss, due out in October 2009.

Among these transformative projects are: the Garden Building for Host and Nectar Plants for Cali's Butterflies (GBHNPCB), a prototype garden building in Cali, Columbia [top]; Kieran Timberlake’s Make It Right home in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward [middle]; and the Meydan Retail Complex, in Istanbul, Turkey, a 70,000-square-meter shopping center that incorporates local geothermal heating [bottom].

See the full slideshow, “Architecture of Change: 8 Real-World Examples”.


ALL PHOTOS: Fast Company

Touring the Trahan Design at Make It Right

Trey Trahan of Trahan Architects describes strengthening the traditional shotgun, using the memory of the site and other sustainable design choices for the Dupar House constructed as part of the Make It Right project in the recovering Lower Ninth Ward.

Trahan architects' Make It Right house design

PHOTOS: Kathy Muse

Make It Right: The Houses That Pitt Built

It was move-in day earlier this month for six Lower Ninth Ward families - thanks to Brad Pitt's Make It Right Foundation, and an unprecedented drive to built back green.

ALL PHOTOS: Make It Right Foundation

It’s a big, big moment for Pitt. For New Orleans. And for sustainable design. Thanks to designs by Billes Architecture, Concordia, Graft and KieranTimberlake Associates – and the support of millions around the world – It even landed Brad and his MIR Project on the cover of Architectural Digest – and rightly so. Renee Peck of New Orleans’ Times-Picayune noted the significance of it all in her blog:

“Brad Pitt's Make It Right houses in the Lower 9th Ward have stirred a lot of talk -- not only because of their megastar backer, but also for their futuristic designs and cutting-edge green components, such as rain gardens and solar cells.

Most people either love 'em or hate 'em.

…

Against this backdrop of 21st-century thinking, Pitt seems to understand the sense of place and tradition that defines New Orleans and its neighborhoods. It is a place, he realizes, where people want front porches. ‘New Orleans has its own mind, its own thing," he is quoted as saying. 'It has a real spirit. It's the most authentic of all American cities.’”

Read the rest of “Make It Right creator Brad Pitt promotes a new movie and an old city – New Orleans” here.