The proposal, which calls for transforming the 1940s Iberville complex in downtown New Orleans into a denser mixed-income neighborhood, with town houses and new low-rise buildings interspersed among the existing three-story apartment blocks, would result in a total of more than 2,400 units of housing on and around the site.
It is one of several finalists vying for a share of $61 million in grants from the Choice Neighborhoods Initiative of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which House Republicans are trying to cut. The federal money would be only a small portion of the roughly $500 million needed to complete the project, but it is the crucial first step in the city’s public-private financing plan to remake Iberville.
If the money doesn’t come through, it will not only be a significant backward step in the rebuilding of New Orleans, it will also short-circuit a promising new model for housing the poor in cities across the country.
A follow up to that story: David Simon speaks out here.
A fascinating and provocative group in New Orleans called the Hypothetical Development Organization. … has a gallery show of their artifacts, titled “Implausible Futures for Unpopular Places,” opening April 7 at NOLA’s Gallery Du Mois.
Hypothetical Development Organization
“Implausible Futures For Unpopular Places” at Gallery Du Mois” (Facebook)
Hypothetical Development Organization’s real estate fictions - Boing Boing
This is long. I plan to read it … uh, soon.
This year, smart phone owners will be able to sleep in. Even though they could be miles away from the parade, thanks to a new app with a built-in parade tracker, they’ll be in the know.
Absurd.
To the chagrin of many forward-thinking architects, the new developments are costumed in a nostalgic style meant to blend them with neighborhoods that took decades to develop.
“The kind of difference that’s being produced now is quite false,” said Scott Bernhard, a professor at Tulane School of Architecture, of Harmony Oaks. “Everyone can see that the buildings are being done all at once by one entity and given rather silly superficial differences to seem as if they’re not.”
The combination of 9-foot ceilings — low by Crescent City standards — with rails, balconies and other features meant for traditional New Orleans buildings produces a squat, disconcerting “Disney-scale” miniaturization, in Bernhard’s view.
The impulse to architecturally revisit the past is a popular precept of 21st century American design, New Orleans architect Steven Bingler said. The trouble is, it may not advance architecture. And it can seem contrived.
They want a slice of the profits when photographers snap photos that end up in books, posters and other commercial ventures.
Ashlye Keaton, adjunct law professor at Tulane University, is working with the Indians to help preserve intellectual rights to their costumes. Although costumes are not copyrightable, Keaton apparently has sidestepped that issue by defining them as art.
