NOLA native Sarah Markel on the levee bike path along the Mississippi. Photo: Catherine Markel.

Earlier this month, I spent a week in Madison, Wisconsin, where I sat through lectures by some of the world’s leading authorities on ways to make cities more appealing, functional, and sustainable. But the most valuable takeaways came not from inside the Madison Convention Center, but from the city itself; more specifically, from the helmeted, benevolent army that pedaled its way quietly and efficiently through the streets.

I’d heard about Madison being a bike-friendly city, but wasn’t sure what that meant exactly, never having been to Portland or Minneapolis or Davis, California, or any of those other places that usually get the highest praise for their bike-oriented principles. Read more…

Photo: Matthew Hinton/The Times-Picayune.

Not even a month after we wrote about the impending demolition of the Phyllis Wheatley Elementary School, the battle over one of New Orleans’s last standing mid-century modernist schools has come to an abrupt but decisive conclusion. On Friday, bulldozers began their work on the dilapidated structure, two months before anyone had any reason to expect them. Read more…

The Mississippi floodplain after the floods, May 4, 2011. 

While the Mississippi River was flooding this spring and as the news coverage heated up, I tried to match the satellite before-and-after images to all the hyperbole I saw on TV.  It quickly became clear to me that there is a mismatch in what people are experiencing as individuals and what the river is experiencing.

The floodplain on April 29, 2011.

Take a look at the satellite images.  Observe the channels the river has carved back and forth on its natural floodplain.  And remember that the flooding today is well within the limits of the river’s historical bounds. To the river, this spring’s flood was not a remarkable event; it is simply part of the river’s natural lifecycle. Yes, this season’s high levels of runoff have been impacted by all our tinkering with the river’s basin through the years, but it has become clear, to everyone who cares to look, that in our diligence to change the contours of the river, we have cut it off from the floodplain that it needs to spread its copious waters.

Our historic approach for developing the river’s floodplain has been defined by short term goals.  We’ve built levees so we can farm its rich fertile soils; but these levees now prevent the river from replenishing that very fertility.  We moan about the farmers’ losses without considering the decades of gain the farmers have received from the fertile soil. We’ve built small communities and large cities in this same floodplain because the river provided an important transportation corridor, yet we aren’t willing to spend the money to relocate or harden critical infrastructure. Read more…

Image courtesy World Monuments Fund.

The Phyllis Wheatley Elementary School in New Orleans looks like no other school anywhere else. Designed and built in 1955 by the architect Charles Colbert specifically for the historic African-American neighborhood of Tremé/Lafitte, the now-decrepit modernist glass box appears to float above the ground. Colbert managed to set back the columns needed to hold the building above flooding levels, creating dramatically cantilevered class rooms and an empty common area for the kids underneath. Huge windows let in plenty of sunlight, and kept the building surprisingly cool in hot and humid New Orleans. The building was celebrated for these features at the time, but fifty years of neglect and a hurricane have taken their toll. In July last year, the Recovery School District (RSD)—which works to rehabilitate underperforming schools in Louisiana—finally decided to tear the dysfunctional building down, and build a new school in its place by 2013. Read more…

Last December, Katherine Grove of William McDonough + Partners and Richard Maimon, of Kieran Timberlake, shared the stage at Ecobuild in Washington, DC. They were invited to discuss their work at the Make It Right project in New Orleans, where Cradle to Cradle provides a framework for the design of the community and of individual homes by several firms.

Make It Right is a pro bono effort to rebuild a community of safe and healthy homes. The emphasis is on affordability, high-quality, design, and sustainable construction. To date, 80 LEED Platinum homes have been built making the neighborhood a living laboratory of construction and material processes. Grove’s and Maimon’s presentations focused on the collaborative approach of the Make It Right interdisciplinary team, which has achieved remarkable effectiveness and efficiencies. They lowered the cost of building eco-friendly homes by managing the economics of the home designs, the costs of materials and labor, the education of staff and labor on site, contractor profit margins, insurance, legal and governmental fees, staff education, and the speed of construction.

Grove gave an overview of the Make It Right project and talked about how Cradle to Cradle was applied here: specifically with respect to materials assessment, target diagrams, and key performance goals for homes. Maimon presented an in-depth analysis of the Kieran Timberlake prototype house, including a look at how the design has evolved over multiple construction iterations, continually improving its effectiveness with regard to affordability, materials, and other factors. Grove followed this with a look at some lessons learned and initiatives under way, which include multiple modes of construction, workforce training, cross-training of builders, and more. After their presentation, I talked with them about the goals, lessons, and promise of Make It Right. Read more…

Earlier this month I traveled to the great city of New Orleans to serve as a guest judge for the Billes Architecture Home Design Competition. The firm, which is working with Brad Pitt on the Make It Right initiative, gave architecture students a challenging brief, and they responded with youthful gusto. On April 11, principal and founder Gerald Billes presented $1,000 checks to the five winning teams at a ceremony at the Renaissance Arts Hotel in the Warehouse District. Later I learned that some jurors wrote lengthy assessments of the ten finalists, while I merely checked boxes. To correct that oversight I’m offering belated “judge’s comments” on each of the winners, along with a plug for one of my favorites that failed to take top honors.

First a little bit about the program. Students were asked to design a 1,500- to 2,000-square-foot home for one of four neighborhoods in the city: Uptown, Downtown, Gentilly/Lakeview, or New Orleans East. The home needed to be eligible for gold or platinum LEED certification; to be raised to what local officials call the Advisory Base Flood Elevation; and to come in between $150,000 and $225,000 (more on that later).

The contestants were either fourth-year undergraduates or first-year master’s students. Michael Jemtrude, director of McGill’s School of Architecture, incorporated the competition into his classes, which explains the preponderance of Canadians in the final five. Keep in mind, all of my comments are completely subjective (and quite possibly wrong) and done in the spirit of respect and constructive criticism. Congratulations all around!

Click here to view the slide show.

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Top: “The Breezeway House” by Hamaza Alhbian and Jessica Dan of McGill University