DISPLACE:CATASTROPHIC Resilience in an Unstable Landscape
Alexander Griffin Wentworth Institute of Technology M.Arch Graduate Thesis Perspectus
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It is not the strongest species that survives, nor the most intellegent spacies that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change. - Charles Darwin
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Contents /
Page
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Discourse
Content
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Thesis
Claim
Statement
Forward
Part I : Catastrophe
Part II : Displace
Part III : Resilience
Strategy
Claim /
Statement /
In 2005, hurricane Katrina stripped The Lower Ninth Ward of its identity and displaced thousands, rendering the conditions in its environment unsafe, unstable, and its identity - indefinable. With the imminent threat of future catastrophic events, development must be addressed with a critical design strategy of resilience, accompanied by the cultivation of the idea _
A resilient design strategy can engage a displaced community to respond while respecting the steady, yet unexpected rhythm of nature’s cycle.
_ we can live with nature, not against it.
Architecture needs to play a strategic role today in defining The Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans, Louisiana as a resilient community – adapting with the realities of climate change; displacement and reverse colonization. This thesis explores the possibility of redefining a place in the Lower Ninth Ward, and simultaneously, displacing associations of catastrophe - by way of a resilient design strategy. Circumstance and societal perception is the driver of this thesis, examining the conflicting global, cultural, memorial and environmental forces that shape the place that exists today as the Lower Ninth Ward. Linking these forces through visual narrative - the place of the nostalgic, the place of the resistant and the place of the resilient – illustrating the present conditions from these three distinct viewpoints. Drawing connections and conclusions on the role and response of the architect in this unstable landscape - this thesis questions culture’s perception of ‘disaster relief’, ‘sustainability’ and ‘resiliency’ in this post-disaster community, offering a strategy of redefinition. It questions the conventional perception and approach taken by cities regarding catastrophe – to ignore, retreat, defend and to resist the inevitable forces of nature. A resilient design strategy can engage this displaced community to respond while respecting the rhythm of nature’s cycle. In the architectural practice today, there is an anxiety that exists surrounding the fact that climate change is real and imminent. As designers we are born optimists but are currently living in a world of pessimisms in the field of architectural practice. The rational, intuitive and realistic architect today is an individual faced with a paradox of emotions involving the future of the practice and the body of work it depends upon – the need and want to dwell as a civilization.
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Forward /
Resiliency begins with the planting of a seed . Because the need/want to dwell is ever-present in the Lower Ninth Ward community, a ‘seed’, or idea, must be recognized now in order to cultivate and define a place of resiliency into the future. I believe this seed must exist in not only the physical ground and the constructed form above, but in the minds of the community. This will manifest itself from within the current use and will grow through active participation from the existing and projected community, for a long-term model and identity of resilience. The post-Katrina development in the Lower Ninth Ward has yet to realize a more progressive, interdisciplinary approach in regards to the impacts of the relief efforts, the long-term consequences that development has on society’s perception of the built environment, the rating of value of ‘community’ and ‘neighborhood’, and how committed we are as designers, to a long-term strategy of resiliency in this unique place. As a designer, I advocate for a resilient design approach to address the long-term effects of post-disaster and the faults exposed in the fleeting disaster relief progress thus far. Today, the notion of “resiliency” is among the ranks of such general or equivocal terms as “sustainable”, “green”, or “socially responsible”. These are equally loaded terms that carry social bias and defensibility from every angle. Developers, designers, planners, and community activists in the Lower Ninth share their own bias towards the relief effort and post-Katrina development. Research, personal experience, the voice of the community, and examination of idiosyncrasies and opposing conditions found in this environment today will serve as a basis to define the place that exists and to develop a resilient design solution to be put in motion.
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Lower Ninth Ward, New Orleans. 2014.
New Orleans is a Disaster waiting to happen. - Mark Fischeretti, Scientific American, 2001.
PART I : CATASTROPHE
Ca·tas·tro·phe /
[ kuh·tas·truh·fee ] _noun 1. an event causing sudden widespread damage and suffering; a disaster. 10
Nature has the capacity to overcome civilization.
Events like hurricane Katrina only make this concept more of a reality. The historic reoccurring patterns of exposed vulnerability in the Lower Ninth Ward begs to question the community if this is a place that they truly want to call home. And predominantly, the answer is, yes. There is a need to dwell in this place, but it is conflicted with the threat of disaster on an extreme level far too often.
“New Orleans is a Disaster waiting to happen. The city lies below sea level, in a bowl bordered by levees that fend off Lake Pontchartrain to the north and the Mississippi River to the south and west. And because of a damning confluence of factors, the city is sinking further, putting it at increasing flood risk after even minor storms.”[1] Plan of New Orleans circa 1828 USGW Archives
1. Fischetti, Mark. “Drowning New Orleans.” Scientific American, 2001, 76-85. Accessed November 18, 2014. 2. Clark, William C. Research of New Orleans After Hurricane Katrina: A Research Perspective. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2006. Web. 2014. 3. Inglesia, Margarita. Lecture: Resilient Design. Wentworth Institute of Technology. Dec. 1, 2014. 12
New Orleans began development three centuries ago, and since, the city and its surrounding development has unceasingly combated against flooding from the Mississippi River through the construction of levee walls. [2] The construction of these walls began during the expansion from the French Quarter and the encroachment of the population onto surrounding marshlands as early as the 18th century. What was not understood at the time of rapid expansion is that this specific environment requires periodic flooding of silt deposit from the upper Mississippi River in order to replenish the soil and maintain balance. [3] The addition of levee walls over time has disrupted the balance, channeling silt rapidly through constructed channels, and directly into the depth of the Gulf of Mexico. This has ultimately laid the groundwork for catastrophic failure – a man-made natural disaster on the rise.
Levee construction, development, and Katrina flood area in New Orleans, 1995 - 2005. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2006.
The sequence and timing of disaster recovery - refer to part III on resilience for detail. U.S. National Science Foundation, 1975.
4. Eskew Dumez Ripple. A Framework For Resilient Design. Print. 2014. 5. Clark, William C. Research of New Orleans After Hurricane Katrina. 6. Landphair, Juliette. ”The Forgotten People of New Orleans: Community, Vulnerability, and the Lower Ninth Ward”. Journal of American History, 2007, 837-45. 7. Rich, Nathaniel. Jungleland: The Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans Gives New Meaning to ‘Urban Growth. The New York Times. 2012. 8. Independent Levee Investigation Team. New Orleans Levee Systems: Hurricane Katrina. Chapter Three: Geology of the New Orleans Region 3.1 (2006). 9. Seed, R. B. “Investigation of the Performance of the New Orleans Flood Protection Systems in Hurricane Katrina on August 29 2005.” Final Report 1 (2006). 10. Bates, Lisa. “State of the Ninth Ward: An Analysis of the Ninth Ward Since Hurricane Katrin.” 2007. 14
In nearly three hundred years, New Orleans has faced twentyseven major disasters induced by hurricanes, windstorms, water surges, land subsidence, sea level rise, and the fluctuating Mississippi River. [4] With almost every disaster event in New Orleans, there is a response pattern and timeline that runs through history. With each event, the city has responded through expansion of land – by making small changes in elevation. The 20th century brought on the expansion of suburbs outside the city center, increasing levee construction that was incomplete at the start of the 21st century. [5] A warning shot was fired forty years before hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005. Hurricane Betsy, a category 3 storm, barreled through the Gulf of Mexico and made landfall on New Orleans in 1965 – driving storm surge through the Intracoastal Waterway, along the industrial canal, breaking through the levee wall and into the low-lying eastern areas of New Orleans, specifically the Lower Ninth Ward and St. Bernard Parish. “Images from Hurricane Betsy are virtually identical to ones from its 2005 successor: an ocean of rooftops; bloated, floating bodies.”[6] The levees failed for a final time on August 29, 2005, the day hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans directly. On that day, the Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood sat below sea level [7] – disconnected from the city by the carved out industrial canal, built in the early 20th century. [8] The hurricane pushed a sixteen to nineteen foot high storm surge westward through the Intracoastal Waterway and into the Industrial Canal bordering the Lower Ninth Ward to the west. The levee cracked under pressure, destroying nine hundred feet of concrete wall as the water poured through, devouring the Lower Ninth Ward in its path. As an engineering report later described it, “the inrushing waters entered the adjacent community with great force. Homes for several blocks were ripped from their foundations and scattered, usually in splinters, eastward across the inboard neighborhood.” [9] The news broadcasted to the world – the devastation, fear, and panic that New Orleans residents had to face the horrifying days and years after the levees failed. This event marks the end of an unconscious period in history, and the beginning of an era of environmental consciousness. The years that followed in the wake of Katrina tested the strength of the government, the country, and the community, exposing their priorities and ability to work together to problem solve. With many severely damaged homes sitting in over 11 feet of water [10], over 1,400 deaths, and thousands of displaced families and individuals, this predictable yet unexpected event has charged a revolution of thinkers and doers, testing the power of creativity and will in this displaced environment. National Geographic, 2005.
PART II : DISPLACE
Dis路place /
[ dis路pleys ] _verb 1. to move or put out of the usual or proper place.
Lizardi Street, New Orleans, 2014. 16
2. force (someone) to leave their home, typically because of war, persecution, or natural disaster.
Google Earth
Displace /
Approaching a decade from catastrophic destruction, the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans is now a microcosm of society tested with adapting to our changing climate. Occupying the outlying eastern territory on the edge of the city – it is an anomaly, estranged and contradictive. A place of the nostalgic, of the resistant, and of the resilient; it’s now incoherently mixed landscape is scattered with pockets of community enclaves, dwelling in an uncertain period of optimism. The years that followed in the shadow of hurricane Katrina were a new kind of struggle for not only New Orleans, but for the world – watching, helping and learning from a community tested with unprecedented levels of disaster relief and redevelopment contained within a fragmented and disorienting environment.
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2005
2005
2006
2008
Google Earth
2009
2010
2012
2013
2014
Google Earth
Map of Diaspora per area code after hurricane Katrina. Globalclimatechange.gov
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2005
2005
2006
2008
Google Earth
To understand and critique the displacement of this community since the event of hurricane Katrina, it is helpful to visualize these changes in development over time. The following is an aerial timeline, depicting the changing patterns of development, growth, decay, stagnation, and rebirth in the Lower Ninth Ward.
2009
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2010
2012
2013
2014
The Changing Landscape / 2006
2007
2009
2010
2014
2006
Diagram of footage documented along Forstall Street 2007
2009
2010
2014
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The changing patterns along Forstall Street in the Lower Ninth Ward expose the contrasting development, growth, decay, stagnation, and rebirth over the 9 years post-Katrina. Partially a video produced by the New York Times in 2010, and partially matched with images from a uniform location in 2014, this timeline uncovers ‘place’ narratives of the nostalgic, the resistant, and the resilient, calling out elements that appear, reappear, and disappear, with time. w
Place Narratives/ 2006
2007
2009
The place of nostalgia is a reaction to the aspirations, the hopes, and the dreams that the community (and outside individuals 2010 involved in redevelopment) have in regards to the place that they remember, or believe they remember existing before hurricane 2014 Katrina. The place of the nostalgic is subjective, it does not always give up, but it returns to the source of its desires and repeats. Its physical form exists in the front porch, and the stories from inside the levee walls where it lives. It remembers, forgives, forgets and memorizes. 2006
2007
2009
2010
2014
As a result of displacement, three fundamental notions of place have emerged from alternating conditions in the Lower Ninth Ward as it exists today – The place of nostalgia, the place of resistance, and the place of resilience. These distinct notions of place provide three perspectives from three arguments on the past and future course of the Lower Ninth Ward. They are separate arguments on the place that exists, contrasting one another, but do not exist in isolation.
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The place of resistance is a reaction to the neglect, the powerless, the forgotten, and the passive; the forces of nature imposing themselves upon the community. It is found in the overgrowth, the resurgence of animal species, and the adaptation of nature reclaiming the land that it once possessed entirely. It is a place of awareness, overt action and continual challenge – of assertion and question of the will and power of the people.
The place of resilience is a then response to the place of nostalgia and the place of resistance. It is the place of action and active effort towards stability and progressive identity. This place joins, communicates, and shapes with and within its environment. It is a place of strength, rigidity, and grounding; bold action, foundation, determination and most importantly – consistency.
Place of the nostalgic
The day came when my travels took me to New Orleans. As soon as I sat foot there, everything I had imagined was forgotten.
Before the neighborhood became what it is, the sea was known to be invisible from the city hiding behind the great wall, shelter from the tide. the shallow marsh, unseen. the porch, shelter from the rain.
There is reassurance of protection from the outer world the street wall and the marsh fixed for generations repeat
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Place of the resistant
Sidewalks emerge like scabs out of the soil, spread over them with the passing time. Here, boundaries are not limited, but break from the containment of the low-lying, permeable terrain. An unsympathetic draft cuts through the gap-toothed landscape, patches of overgrowth and accumulation of discarded objects. In this exposed landscape, the penetration of hundreds of lost concrete forms emerge from the earth; scattered remains of abandoned assembly appear. The air settles in the ruins of a deteriorating framework embedded within the tall grass. A path leads to a threshold. Sign reads “no trespassing” Markings on the exterior wall reads “1/8 NE 9/13”. A door is ajar; its porous barrier struggles to disconnect the interior from the exterior, inviting humidity and moisture to settle inside the space. Mold and rust drip down the crumbling remains of a lath skeleton.
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Place of the resilient
Pockets of gardens appear along a fragmented grid. New life is cultivated within the remnants of decay. Seeds spread themselves across the landscape, germinate under the surface; roots bury themselves deep in the earth below, binding themselves to shards of glass and stone for support.
Above, bees are summoned in all directions to retrieve pollen where they stock in reformed hives. In the distance, a car passes in the direction of the Claiborne Bridge. Clouds above break apart they move westward in its direction, towards the French Quarter.
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PART III : RESILIENCE
Re·sil·ient /
[ ri·zil·ee·uh nt ] _adjective 1. to recoil or spring back into shape after being bent, stretched, or compressed.
New Orleans, 2014. 30
2. the ability to withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions.
The realities of climate change, resulting in increasing levels and repeated patterns of disaster plays manifold effects of scale on society – it is a global issue that reached the individual. A holistic design approach in this post-disaster environment will not successfully realize a strategy of value by rationalizing concepts from assumptions and past examples. It must take part and learn directly from the needs of that community, taking in the present conditions, predictable emergency, and organic growth that occurs with time. 11. Creppell, Collette. Nov. 22, 2014. Telephone Conversation.
12. Eskew Dumez Ripple. A Framework For Resilient Design. Print. 2014.
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“Resiliency is seen either through a deteriorating situation, like climate change over time, or traumatic circumstances like a hurricane, tornado, earthquake; something that changes the system. You have a total change in circumstances, and how do you plan for that? There’s a total milestone-tipping point in climate change. So, the focus is very different.” [11] Design proposals that take into account long-term transformation and adaptation in a community detach their identity and cultural perceptions from ‘sustainable’ to ‘resilient’. Eskew Dumez Ripple defines resilience as the preservation, of communities through ongoing planning for the capacity to learn, adapt, and change in the face of present-day and future threats, both predictable and unknown. [12] Resilience and sustainability share similar overlapping goals, although sustainability operates along a steady state, resilience breaks from an understanding of a steady state, operating in extreme situations (i.e. hurricanes, tornadoes, hail storms, etc.) While successful sustainable design methods challenge themselves to reach the least negative impact on the environment (i.e. LEED), resilient design accounts for varying conditions in the environment, known and unknown, over time.
Jourdan Avenue, Lower Ninth Ward, New Orleans: 2005, 2014. National Geographic.
Lakeview, New Orleans, 2005, 2014. National Geographic.
Perceptive Sustainability/
13. Wang, Wilfried. Sustainability Is a Cultural Problem. Harvard Design Magazine. 2003.
The disconnect and misinterpretation of what ‘sustainable’ means to us as a culture is linked it to our perception; of sustainability and of the environment. In an article published by Wilfried Wang in the Harvard Design Magazine in 2003, he states bluntly, “sustainability is a cultural problem.“[13] Arguing that as a post-industrialist, capitalist, consumed society, we now face the realities of imminent climate change. He outlines what he calls environmental prophets: The hysterics, who warn of the apocalypse, the assuagers, who adhere to hope, the disclaimers, who see no dire threat, and the fatalists, who see the future as steady, unavoidable, irreversible decline - Somewhere within these four dimensions lie members of the Lower Ninth Ward community, the designers of these homes, and a “green” culture now enthralled in a market of sustainable design. While sustainable guidelines have grown to be a successful standard method in today’s society, responding to efficiency (i.e. LEED), resilience in design takes a sustainable response and questions it in either an emergency situation in the long-term.
On Second Thought/ The operable window is a simple design solution that functions as both sustainable and resilient, simultaneously. Incorporating the operable window into a passive design strategy of a building for cooling can also be used in a post Katrina circumstance with no power – you can open the window, then you can occupy the building without the need of mechanical ventilation. In this case, there is an overlap of similar goals with a similar solution. Redundancies in resilient design are discovered when using more energy to create a resilient structure. Because all is calculated risk in any area of design, especially sustainable or resilient design, going to extremes (i.e. building a bunker to live in) is not effective.
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LOCALLY GROWN
ORGANIC WIND POWERED NET ZERO
LEED PLATINUM
GRASS FED SUSTAINABLE
GREEN ALL NATURAL
Make It Light/
14. “How We Build.” Make It Right. Accessed December 7, 2014. http:// makeitright.org/how-we-build/.
15. Creppell, Collette. Nov. 22, 2014. Telephone Conversation.
Brad Pitt’s Make It Right Foundation started in 2007 as an overly ambitious, and not fully realized example of focused sustainable disaster relief development in the Lower Ninth Ward. The goal of MIR is to provide 150 affordable homes to those in need in the LNW community. Described as a ‘laboratory’ for green building, these pastel test subjects are intended to provide information on sustainability, for use in other communities in need [14], The majority of the 90 homes that stand to day are disconnected from the community and spread across the landscape. Collette Creppell, a principal architect at Eskew Dumez Ripple and long time resident of New Orleans, comments on the goals of Make It Right in conversation, “It (MIR) was probably collapsing two really important ideas into one – The idea of recovering a neighborhood, community, and piece of the urban fabric; The right to return, to rebuild houses at the same scale, in that place, and repopulate that community to bring it back – is one part or MIR. The other is the idea of having a showcase of versions of sustainable design.” [15] Though a valiantly motivated effort from the start, what is realized today is a conflict between the nostalgic, but important attempt to repopulate the remote residential neighborhood that existed before Katrina, and the reality today that is an exhibition or “showcase” of sustainable disaster relief homes. It is now a permanent exhibit, displaying the insertion of foreign elements into a contrasting and conflicted environment.
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Make it Right Housing, New Orleans, 2014.
Disconnected/
16. Morphosis. “FLOAT House.” Morphopedia. Accessed December 7, 2014. http://morphopedia.com/projects/ float-house.
17. Young, David. Nov. 20, 2014. Email.
The FLOAT house, designed by Thom Mayne from Morphosis architects, is an example of affordable and sustainable design with good intentions, not thought out to its fullest potential. Described by the architect as “optimizing the efficiency of massproduction, while respecting New Orleans’s unique culture and context”[16] , it answers to only half of that statement successfully, not taking into account the demands and identity of a community in need. The house is said to rise with surging floodwaters, built on pylons that anchor it to the foundation. Although this ambitious idea is not visible from the exterior, some questionable features are noticable – an uninviting porch, oriented to the side of the house does not address a porch culture (that arguably existed) in this community to its full potential. An undulating roof is designed with the intention to collect rainwater for reuse. In conversation with the residence of the FLOAT house, David Young, a long time resident of the Lower Ninth Ward explains – “The couple in the floating house may not say the same. In talking with them I found out that due to the roof design their house leaked every time it rained, for four years. Yet Make it Right still continued to show it off as a ‘Model’ home.” [17] Set in a different context, this proposal may have addressed a community more effectively. The FLOAT house represents the application of a flashy, individual, state-of-the-art sustainable design innovation used in a community that needs practical and effective solutions instead. It is one example of numerous that has attracted tourists and modern architecture enthusiasts since its completion in 2009, turning the recovery of a remote residential neighborhood, into a short-term solution, showcasing sustainable design solutions.
New Orleans, 2014. 38
Flexible/
18. Aravena, Alejandro. “Alejandro Aravena : Make It Right New Orleans.” Accessed December 7, 2014. http:// alejandroaravena.com/obras/viviendahousing/make-it-right-new-orleans/. Web.
Out of these ‘test’ houses, resilient design solutions have been realized. A proposal by Alejandro Arevena + Elemental for MIR takes goals of affordability and sustainability and brings them up to a level of long-term resilience. Arguing that pride is what defines and becomes the biggest asset to communities over time, “We designed a house capable of being a departing point with a broader horizon within which families can develop and express themselves.” The house is designed as a mass-producible open system of construction, available for transformation and customization with time and individual investment. Addressing social interaction along the street with an open front porch, the issues of flooding and protection is addressed in its design by increasing the density, while offering the families an option of personal investment and flexibility, within the confines of a 1,800 square foot design. [18]
Elemental Architects, 2014. 40
Red Location/
The community designed and driven Red location museum in New Britain, South Africa commemorates the end of racial differences in an oppressed nation through resilience. Apartheid, or separation of race, came to an end in this nation and community in 1994, marking an end of a struggle, and a new beginning of social and cultural justice.
19. “Red and Gold: A Tale of Two Apartheid Museums.” Places Journal. Accessed December 7, 2014. https:// placesjournal.org/article/red-and-gold-atale-of-two-apartheid-museums/.
“To many South Africans, the end of apartheid, in 1994, was almost unbelievable. After decades of racial oppression, white-only rule, begun officially in 1948, was gone. As the new political and spatial freedoms sank in, the nation began the important process of formulating how to commemorate and curate an era that will define all that came before and after.” [19]
Noero Wolff Architects designed the museum to directly respond to the surrounding community and environment, addressing consequences of cultural separation through architecture. Built by the hands and skill of the local community, it is a communitybased initiative framed by a radical rethinking of the effort of memorializing a time in history while incorporating a long-term strategy of resilience. It incorporates formal and informal mixeduse spaces and high-density housing. Three key factors shape this project of resilience: 1. A site sensitivity: respecting the surrounding shantytown fabric, it is built from recycled materials found in that physical fabric, while connecting to the cultural fabric; providing open and covered exterior spaces for gathering and shade. Covered benches protect from the heat and can transform into informal trading centers during the day. 2. The architectural language: deploys a simple, industrial aesthetic relating to the familiar local material – corrugated tin and cement board are used in beautiful ways, becoming materials of choice.
20. Places Journal
3. The museum engages: the locals to curate their own artifacts and pieces of history inside – to participate in building a memory for the community, by the community. The museum honors, through space, the accomplishment of the end of racial separation, and avoids a formal narrative hierarchy that traditionally tells communities how to remember. [20] Places Journal. 2014.
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The Honeybee/
21. Winston, Mark. “Our Bees, Ourselves” http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/15/ opinion/bees-and-colony-collapse.html?_ r=0 New York Times. 2014. 22. Stumpo, Francesco. Nov. 28, 2014. Conversation.
The honeybee, now an endangered species, has proven itself resilient for 40 million years. [21] In recent times, as a result of our increasing use of pollutants, pesticides, and commercial beekeeping methods, honeybee colonies [22] are dying in large numbers. Fortunately, nature has the capacity to overcome civilization. Simon Fraser University conducted a study on farms that produce canola oil, illustrating the profound value of wild bees. In this study, they discovered that uncultivated and “wild” unpolluted crops yield a quantity and quality in honeybee cycle and production. When you remove the control bubble and micromanagement from the situation_ _this species thrives and survives.
23. Winston, Mark.
“This insight goes beyond mere agricultural economics. There is a lesson in the decline of bees about how to respond to the most fundamental challenges facing contemporary human societies. We can best meet our own needs if we maintain balance with nature – a balance that is as important to our health and prosperity as it is to the bees.” [23]
Capstone Bee Hive. New Orleans, 2014.
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STRATEGY
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Looking Ahead/
“The raw and vibrantly multi-colored city of New Orleans is like no other. I have been here for two weeks and already have a sense of how powerful the forces of nature have on a culture. Nine years since the destruction of Hurricane Katrina, communities continue to rebuild in this city surrounded and threatened by water. Urban gardens have taken on a language of their own, and the French Quarter and surrounding neighborhoods vibrate with outlook and confidence among the scattered remains of decay. It is an extremely exciting time here, especially with the recent celebration of Mardi Gras, a festival with no beginning or end. The locals here know their neighbors, and make it a conscious effort to know who they live by. Just like they made a conscious decision that New Orleans is a place they want to live even after catastrophe. This city has that conscious feeling in the air. It is a place that radiates with a vibrant, flashy culture and the passion for an authentic human spirit.” Cresent Park “Rusted Rainbow” Bridge. New Orleans, 2014.
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Motivation/
24. “PitchNOLA: Living Well Issues $11,500: Winners Announced.” Propeller. Accessed December 7, 2014. http:// gopropeller.org/news/666/.
I visited the city of New Orleans unexpectedly during my travels across country in the spring of 2014. It was there that I volunteered through the month of March with Capstone – a growing non-profit founded by David Young, a resident of the Lower Ninth Ward. Located in what is known as a ‘food desert’, Capstone has taken 26 previously blighted lots, vacant after hurricane Katrina, and is in the process of developing them into productive gardens, orchards, and bee hives – offering food at no cost to the community in need. On April 24th, Capstone won 2nd place in the community involvement grant project, PitchNOLA 2014 (organized by Propeller and Tulane University in New Orleans), with their campaign Just Bee Cause. A fund was given to Capstone to increase honey production and sales in the Lower Ninth Ward, used to offset the cost of the farm’s operation. “Non profit fund raising continues to be increasingly harder each year. At Capstone we decided if we were going to continue to expand the service to our community we needed to have a source of long-term sustainable revenue. Winning Pitch NOLA ‘12 Lots of Progress and 2nd place in Pitch NOLA ‘14 Living Well has allowed us to establish a fruit and citrus orchard, and expand our honey bee operations, which will provide the much needed revenue stream.” [24]
25. Young, David. Nov. 20, 2014. Email.
In speaking with David on his early involvement and motivations in the Lower Ninth Ward community, he says “In my mind, it’s what God intends for me to do. There are so many opportunities presented at the right time and place I can’t even start to list them. However, you have to listen and be aware of them or they pass by.” [25]
Working with Capstone. New Orleans, 2014. 50
Formation/
This is where resiliency begins – in the community. Working closely with Eskew Dumez Ripple’s understanding of resilient design in a post disaster scenario, and David Young’s knowledge, motivation, and insight in the Lower Ninth Ward as a devoted member of the community, my strategy or framework for introducing resiliency will begin with a careful observation and dissection of the process to build community through permaculture in a post disaster environment, from the ground up. While visiting New Orleans in January, I will observe and record trends forming in this landscape – taking serious consideration and attention into the recent introduction and promising growth of urban gardening and bee keeping as a growing economic and social driver in this new community.
The sequence and timing of disaster recovery - actual experience (solid lines) and sample indicators for the first year along a timeline of weeks after the event. The long-term projections (dashed) are based on an emergency period of 6 weeks, a restored period of 45 weeks, and a 10-fold historical experience for reconstruction. U.S. National Science Foundation, 1975.
PERIODS:
EMERGENCY
CAPITAL STOCKS:
Damaged or destroyed
Patched
Rebuilt (Replacement)
Major Construction (Commemoration, Betterment, Development)
Ceased or Changed
Return and Function
Return at Predisaster Levels or Greater
Improved and Developed
NORMAL ACTIVITIES:
RESTORATION
RECONSTRUCTION 1
RECONSTRUCTION 2
EVENT
EVENT
COPING ACTIVITY
MAXIMAL
EVENT
MINIMAL
Because we live in a world with changing conditions, the events of the future do not have to be drastically different to have dramatic and disasterous effects. The changing baseline conditions (i.e. sea-level) mean that the same intensity of a storm 50 years ago, will effect us differenty. Resilience planning addresses how to plan for these changing conditions. Eskew Dumez Ripple, 2014.
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DISASTER EVENT
TIME
EVENT
.5
SAMPLE INDICATORS:
1
2
4
5
10
20
Completion of search and rescue
Restoration of major urban services
End of emergency shelter or feeding
Return of Refugees
Clearing rubble from main arteries
EVENT
3
30
40 50
100
200
Attain predisaster level of capital stock and activities
300 400 500
Completion of major construction projects
Rubble cleared
EVENT
In response tothethe U.S. National Science chart on the sequence andin timing of This chart modeling cycle of disaster recovery activity is a product ofFoundation’s a research project sponsored by the U.S. National S cience Foundation the mid1970s. While the researchers concluded that recovery is “ordered and predictable” it does not include the nuances of recovery: who is involved, what is disaster recovery rebuilt, who is left out. - While the researchers concluded that recovery is “ordered and predictable” it does not include nuances of recovery: who is involved, what is rebuilt, who is left out. TIME
Because we live in a world with changing conditions, the events of the future do not have be drastically different to have dramatic and disastrous effects. The changing baseline conditions (i.e. sea-level) mean that the same intensity of a storm 50 years ago, will affect us differently. Resilience planning addresses how to plan for these changing conditions, both known and unpredictable.
Eskew Dumez Ripple, 2014.
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Application/
I will research these process’ (bee keeping, agriculture, community building) along with the study of biomimicry and permaculture to develop a deeper understanding of these symbiotic and biological process’, found in nature. 26. “The Biomimicry Institute – Inspiring Sustainable Innovation.” Biomimicry Institute ICal. Accessed December 1, 2014. http://biomimicry.org/.
Biomimicry is an approach to innovation that seeks sustainable and resilient solutions to human challenges by emulating nature’s time-tested patterns and strategies. [26]
27. “Permaculture Design Course Costa Rica.” Permaculture Institute. Accessed December 1, 2014. http://www. permaculture.org/.
Permaculture is the development of agricultural ecosystems intended to be self-sustainable and self sufficient. [27] My proposal will manifest itself physically in a number of forms and respond to a number of scales related to these process’ found in nature.
Understanding that an identity of place does not appear over night, or necessarily over the course of 9 years, I will examine three scales on site, using permaculture and bee keeping as a catalyst for a social and economical growth in the Lower Ninth Ward. 1. The community: the scale of the collective boundary as it relates to its larger context. 2. The block: the scale of the micro-community neighborhood within the larger boundary. 3. The intersection: the scale that connects micro communities within the block. Orquideorama built for Medellin, Colombia Botanical Garden Plan:b Arquitectos, 2006.
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Result/
To develop an [object, structure, or civic space] of resiliency and innovation To function as a [tool to connect and engage] the community Through the process of [biomimicry and permaculture] To respect and respond to [the natural and built environments] With the goal to re- [identify the Lower Ninth Ward community]
56
Bibliography/
58
1
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16.
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2.
Clark, William C. Research of New Orleans After Hurricane Katrina: A Research Perspective. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2006. Web. 2014.
17.
Young, David. Email Conversation. November 20, 2014.
18.
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19.
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3.
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4.
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6.
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21.
Winston, Mark. Our Bees, Ourselves. The New York Times. July 14, 2014. Accessed December 7, 2014. http://www.nytimes. com/2014/07/15/opinion/bees-and-colony-collapse.html.
7.
Rich, Nathaniel. Jungleland: The Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans Gives New Meaning to ‘Urban Growth.’ The New York Times. 2012.
24.
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8.
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26.
“The Biomimicry Institute – Inspiring Sustainable Innovation.” Biomimicry Institute ICal. Accessed December 7, 2014. http:// biomimicry.org/.
9.
Seed, R. B. Investigation of the Performance of the New Orleans Flood Protection Systems in Hurricane Katrina on August 29 2005. Final Report 1 (2006).
27.
“Permaculture Design Course Costa Rica.” Permaculture Institute. Accessed December 7, 2014. http://www.permaculture.org/.
10.
Bates, Lisa. State of the Ninth Ward: An Analysis of the Ninth Ward Since Hurricane Katrina. 2007.
11.
Creppell, Collette. Conversation. November 22, 2014.
13.
Wang, Wilfried. Sustainability Is a Cultural Problem. Harvard Design Magazine. 2003.
14.
“How We Build.” Make It Right. Accessed December 7, 2014. http://makeitright.org/how-we-build/.