“Make It Right” designs unveiled in New Orleans; some miss memo, make it wrong
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The good news: yesterday, Make It Right (MIR), Brad Pitt’s high-profile New Orleans non-profit dedicated to repopulating that city’s Katrina-ravaged Lower Ninth Ward with 150 livable, modern homes, released yet another batch of home designs.
The not so good news: belying the admirable, somewhat experimental, progressive character of the organization, a couple of the selected designs are really just unfortunate and make me wonder if New Orleans-based architecture firms would’ve done better (they’d have to live w/ the results, after all).
Perhaps MIR is seeking a level of symmetry or something, because for every thoughtful design (such as the one above) that fully melds landscape design with built design or the designs by Pugh + Scarpa, Kappe Architects, and William McDonough + Partners, among others, there is a half-thought-out clunker. And not the sort of clunker whose experimentality allows it to mysteriously acquire a lovable (or tolerable) aura after many years of human habitation.
No, the (unnamed) ones to which I refer are the sort that angry residents write about in letters to the editor - not to proclaim the genius of the designer, but to deride their reckless audacity in using their struggling neighborhood as a test lab for architecture.
Unlike Bild Design’s elegant, cohesive design of straight lines and human-scaled approachability or Pugh + Scarpa’s dynamically asymmetrical entry that draws passersby up to and under welcoming overhangs, these stragglers take roost in odd proportions mated with elements that one can imagine being added only after a brain-storming session involving little else but the word “experiment” and a coffee-table book.
Instead of being a sincere inquiry into the way folks in the Ward live and interact with each other, certain designs have the feel of a shallow, vanity project; others seem like the repository of tricks for which the architect couldn’t fool any previous client into paying full price. At least the thought counts, right?
Image courtesy of flygraphix
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[...] and not public appropriation. Projects run the gamut from clean-up assistance to legal aid to affordable/livable housing to pro-bono/student-led design to small-business development and [...]
[...] storm, focusing on new/renovated home construction and pro-bono design work. And although many (myself included) have expressed misgivings about the some of the results of Brad Pitt’s Make It [...]