Thesis Highlights
New Orleans Public Space Project
The New Orleans Public Space Project examines the city’s public space to address its long-term sustainability through the street network’s capacity to manage water, mobility changes, connectivity, urban ecology, heritage, and relation with context. The project is structured in four parts: streets, mobility and water management; barriers, disruptions and reconnections; heritage streetscapes; city/river stitching.
New Orleans is a low-density city, spread from the high grounds near the Mississippi river into the low swamps of its deltaic geography. Subsidence, lack of maintenance, extremely expensive construction requirements, aged and unkept urban infrastructures are some of the challenges of the street system of the city. In parallel, current water management infrastructure and practices, once the most advanced in the world, are obsolete and have provoked multiple unintended consequences. In the words of Professor Campanella: “the very water-manipulating devices needed to make this city prosper would render it precarious.”
With most of New Orleans’ bowl transformed to built and impervious surfaces, rainwater must be pumped out along with groundwater to keep lower areas dry. This results in unwanted water over the surface of the streets and loss of water in the terrain, leading to subsidence and saline intrusion. This reversal of the place where water is needed comes with substantial energy costs, fragility in the face of failure or misfunction, increased risk, and inequities in how these challenges impact the most vulnerable.
Still imbued with the 19th and 20th century mindset of specialization (architectural and infrastructural), water management, traffic, beautification, quality of life and heritage are addressed separately in New Orleans as in much of the world. The Project contributes to a better understanding of the relations between the urban systems which form public spaces and streetscapes, develops scenarios in which new approaches in mobility, water management, urban ecology, livability and heritage may end in potential city scale interventions, and ultimately sparks pilot projects to demonstrate the effectiveness of these interventions.
WORK
OUTFALL CANAL
By Nathaniel Rassamni, Alec Rosen, Akhil Singh
The Outfall Canal project studies the possibilities of renaturalizing concretized outfall canals along the Lake Pontchartrain coast. Drawing from the work of Waggonner & Ball Architecture and Environment on the lakefront closure gates and pumps, the proposal developed ideas of excavating the Orleans Canal below the Lakeview neighborhood. This reduces the risk for neighborhoods below an outfall canal, allows for drainage directly into the canal, reconnects the neighborhoods to City Park, provides space for recreation and allows for stormwater storage within both the Canal and Park lagoons. Bypassing the outfall pump and providing further space for stormwater storage reduces a bottleneck and demands on the drainage system.
These proposals provide a potential path to renaturalize further outfall and drainage canals, reconnect other neighborhoods, and return to a direct gravity drainage model as functions in Jefferson Parish.
CLAIBORNE CORRIDOR
By Griffin Kass, Walter Workman
The Claiborne Corridor proposal attempts to establish South Claiborne Avenue as New Orleans' 21st century main street, like St. Charles Avenue was during the 19th and 20th centuries. Projects at either end of the corridor (Tulane University and the Superdome to the west and east, respectively) redirect their campuses toward the new main street, using these key New Orleans institutions to catalyze and legitimize development along these streets.
Extending transit options from the Tulane Medical Campus and Biodistrict to the Uptown campus, connecting to the Superdome as well, provides alternative transportation options along a heavily-trafficked street, reducing the number of cars which allows for more intensive streetscape improvements. Sidewalk expansions, urban reforestation and stormwater gardens reduce impervious surfaces and urban heat islands while providing a more pedestrian-friendly streetscape to activate local, street-facing businesses.
Finally, the Superdome project studies taking down the Claiborne Avenue viaduct, allowing direct access between the entertainment district and the adjacent industrial properties and providing an opportunity to create a larger campus which can activate the distrct year-round (rather than just on game days).
The two ends of this proposal demonstrate how the center of the corridor could be further improved and developed, reestablishing Claiborne Avenue as a vital corridor for New Orleans' future.
HIGH GROUNDS
By Brandon Gicquel, Alex Rich
The High Grounds project proposes an alternative development path for abandoned wharfs along the Mississippi River which prioritizes the environmental, socio-cultural and economic sustainability of the neighborhood over creating an entertainment district for tourists.
The project addresses the adaptive reuse of existing buildings, mitigating urban heat through urban reforestation, capturing and infiltrating stormwater on the "high ground" (before it can run off into lower-lying neighborhoods), pedestrian mobility in an industrial area, lack of affordable housing, and access to the Mississippi River.
This proposal demonstrates the potential of thoughtful redevelopment of brown- and green-field sites along decommissioned wharfs to revitalize neighborhoods and address multiple challenges with the urban system.
