Congrats to landscape architect Tim Duggan, one of this year's Metropolis Game Changers!
By Martin C. Pedersen
OCCUPATION: Landscape architect
AFFILIATION: Make It Right
LOCATION: New OrleansTim Duggan stands in the middle of North Prieur Street, in New Orleans’s Lower Ninth Ward. Although it certainly doesn’t look like it to the untrained eye, Duggan is here to demonstrate a Make It Right initiative every bit as radical as the Brad Pitt–sponsored starchitect houses dotting the landscape. This experimental street—built in collaboration with the city’s Department of Public Works and the University of New Orleans—dead-ends at the foot of the Industrial Canal levee, site of the infamous breach that inundated the neighborhood during Hurricane Katrina. Duggan, a bearded landscape architect built like the high school baseball catcher he once was, uncaps a water bottle, extends an arm, and pours. “The city spends almost fifty million dollars a year on electricity to pump excess storm water over the levees,” he says. “But the pervious concrete you see here is still forbidden in the city of New Orleans.” He lets that sink in, literally, as the water quickly becomes a moist blotch on the pavement. “Everything we’ve done, we’ve had to get a variance for.”
His official title at Make It Right is “landscape architect,” but the unique nature of the project, the complicated planning issues, and the emphatic personality of the man made a larger, more expansive role almost preordained. “Tim is tenacious,” says Duggan’s mentor and former boss, Bob Berkebile, one of the fathers of the green building movement and a founding partner of BNIM. “He sees the links and acts on them. I would clone him if I knew how.” READ MORE >>