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“Designing the Future of New Orleans” was not a single redevelopment plan. It was James S. Russell’s report on two ideas competitions organized by Architectural Record and Tulane University’s School of Architecture after Hurricane Katrina. One invited professionals to design a dense, mixed-use project on high ground in Bywater; the other asked students for a repeatable, elevated three-bedroom house for infill sites.
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The competitions turned urgent post-storm questions into design briefs: Can houses and apartments rise gracefully above floodwaters while maintaining New Orleans’s famous neighborliness? Can higher ground accommodate more residents while remaining environmentally responsible and connected to existing neighborhoods? The proposals explored those questions, but the sources do not establish that they were built, tested in floods, or adopted as a housing program.
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What the 2005 feature actually covered
Russell’s feature, published in Architectural Record on November 1, 2005, describes two distinct competitions launched after Katrina. A contemporaneous Domus notice also presents them as a paired effort focused on post-Katrina housing. Treating the title as one master plan obscures the important difference in audience, site and scale.
| Competition | Entrants | Core assignment | Defining constraints |
|---|---|---|---|
| High Density on the High Ground | Professional architects and teams | A 160-unit housing project on an actual Bywater site near the Mississippi River levee | Higher density, flood-aware siting, neighborhood relationships, retail and civic space |
| New Orleans Prototype House | Students | A three-bedroom house adaptable to different conditions and easy to install on an infill site | Elevation above floodwaters, local climate and environmental response, repeatability |
The feature reports 544 entries in total. That is the combined number reported by Architectural Record in 2005, not a present-day housing statistic and not evidence that any scheme performed in practice.
High Density on the High Ground: the professional brief
A real Bywater site, not an abstract exercise
The professional competition asked for a project on an actual site in Bywater, close to the Mississippi River levee. That location made the brief unusually specific. Designers had to think about how a larger population could occupy safer, higher ground without severing ties to the surrounding street network, homes and daily routines.
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1Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute2Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems3Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesThe program called for 160 housing units. Individual homes could range from 700 to 2,100 square feet, allowing a mix rather than a single standardized apartment type. The project also had to include 15,000 square feet of retail and a 5,000-square-foot Tulane “city center” studio space. Housing, commerce and an educational or civic presence therefore belonged in one development.
Density was paired with social and environmental questions
The assignment was not simply “build higher.” It asked how high-ground land might accommodate more residents while sustaining environmental goals and neighborhood relationships. A successful response would need to make density legible and useful at street level: entrances, porches, shared spaces, paths and retail edges would influence whether residents encountered one another or remained isolated inside a large object.
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Juror Mario Gooden described the social test this way: “I was looking for moments that spoke to how people live next to each other, how they watch out for each other.” His comment, quoted by Russell, places neighborly observation and mutual support alongside the usual concerns about massing, circulation and flood elevation.
Why familiar local forms mattered
New Orleans already had recognizable housing traditions, including shotgun houses and Creole cottages. Their proportions, porches, narrow lots and relationship to the sidewalk formed a cultural benchmark for new work. Juror Patty Gay captured the difficulty of departing from those forms without losing their appeal: “It’s tough to compete with shotguns or Creole cottages.”
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That remark does not mean a new project had to imitate historic houses. It means a contemporary high-density scheme had to explain how it would preserve qualities residents might value—shade, visibility, front-door sociability, incremental privacy and a clear connection to the street—while accommodating many more units.
New Orleans Prototype House: the student brief
A repeatable three-bedroom home
The student competition focused on a three-bedroom house rather than a 160-unit development. The proposed house had to be adaptable to different conditions and easy to install on an infill site. In practice, that shifts the design problem from one prominent building to a system that could be adjusted and repeated across vacant or damaged parcels.
Elevation was a basic requirement
The prototype had to be raised above floodwaters. Elevation was therefore not an optional resilience feature added after the floor plan; it affected entry, stairs or ramps, structure, utilities, under-house space and the relationship between the home and the ground. A design could be visually elegant yet still require careful detailing of access and services before it would be usable.
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The brief also required a response to local climate and environment. That wording leaves room for different strategies—shading, ventilation, material selection, rain management or landscape—but the sources do not provide a standardized performance scorecard or measured results for the student schemes.
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1Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems2Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute3Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsAdaptability and infill placement
“Adaptable to different conditions” is central to the prototype idea. An infill lot may differ in width, orientation, neighboring buildings, utilities and access. The winning concept would need a structural and spatial logic that could accommodate those variations without becoming a one-off custom house each time. The competition materials, as summarized in the feature, do not establish construction costs, code approvals, financing or a built demonstration.
How the two competitions fit together
Read side by side, the briefs address two scales of rebuilding:
- Neighborhood scale: the professional project tested whether 160 homes, retail and a Tulane studio could share a high-ground Bywater site.
- Parcel scale: the student project tested whether an elevated three-bedroom house could be installed repeatedly on infill lots.
- Shared concern: both asked designers to treat flood adaptation and social life as inseparable from appearance.
- Different audiences: one competition sought professional proposals for a substantial development; the other used a student brief to explore a transferable housing prototype.
This pairing is why the title’s “future” is plural. It refers to alternative ways of rebuilding—denser collective housing and adaptable individual homes—not to a single approved blueprint.
A practical framework for reading the proposals
The original article reports jury commentary and selected projects, but it does not publish a common numerical rating system. If you are comparing the schemes, use criteria that the briefs actually support rather than inventing rankings for cost or safety.
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1. Flood elevation and adaptability
- How clearly does the design place living areas above anticipated flood levels?
- Can residents enter safely, including people who cannot use stairs?
- Are utilities, mechanical equipment and structural connections considered as part of elevation?
- Can the house or building adjust to differing lots and site conditions?
2. Infill and local climate
- Does the proposal fit an existing block without treating neighboring homes as leftover space?
- Does its orientation create shade, daylight and ventilation appropriate to New Orleans?
- Can construction occur on a constrained infill parcel with practical access?
3. Density and housing range
- For the professional brief, does the scheme credibly organize 160 units from 700 to 2,100 square feet?
- Are different household sizes and levels of privacy supported?
- Do shared spaces add value rather than merely consume circulation area?
4. Retail and civic integration
- Where are the 15,000 square feet of retail located, and do they address public streets?
- Does the 5,000-square-foot Tulane city-center studio function as a civic resource rather than a sealed institutional room?
- How do nonresidential uses affect noise, access and daily activity for residents?
5. Neighborliness
- Can residents see and reach one another without sacrificing private space?
- Do porches, galleries, stairs, courtyards or shared yards support informal contact?
- Does the project reinterpret local housing traditions instead of relying on superficial historical styling?
These questions help explain the jury’s emphasis on how people “watch out for each other.” They also prevent a common mistake: calling a drawing resilient simply because it is elevated, without asking whether it remains accessible, inhabitable and socially connected.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What is known about selection and exhibition
The feature says that winning, cited and additional jury-selected projects were exhibited at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in April and May. It also reports planned presentations at the AIA National Convention in Los Angeles and in the U.S. Pavilion at the 10th International Architectural Exhibition in Venice. Those statements describe the 2005 plans; the reviewed sources do not independently confirm that every planned presentation occurred.
Exhibition is significant here because the competitions were intended to circulate ideas beyond a single client. Displaying multiple approaches allowed architects, students and the public to debate density, elevation, local identity and rebuilding methods. It did not, by itself, convert a competition entry into a funded or constructed project.
What the competitions did—and did not—prove
They did make rebuilding constraints visible
The briefs placed floodwater, high-ground scarcity, infill construction and community life at the center of architectural decision-making. They also showed that resilience is not only an engineering calculation. A raised home still has to meet the street; a dense building still has to provide recognizable places for neighbors to encounter one another.
They did not establish performance
No source reviewed for this feature provides measured flood testing, post-occupancy data, verified construction costs, affordability results, code approvals or evidence that the proposals were built. The unit counts and areas are program specifications, not outcomes. The 544-entry figure records participation in 2005, not the number of homes delivered or the current scale of New Orleans housing need.
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They were not a present-day policy document
The competitions belong to the immediate post-Katrina design conversation. Applying their ideas today would require current flood maps, building codes, insurance conditions, financing, infrastructure capacity and resident input. None of those present-day facts can be inferred from the 2005 article.
Why the feature still matters to readers interested in painting and place
For anyone who paints New Orleans architecture, the competitions offer a useful way to look beyond picturesque façades. A shotgun house or Creole cottage is not only an image; it is a record of lot dimensions, climate, porch life and social visibility. The proposed elevated houses and dense Bywater project asked how those spatial qualities might survive under new environmental and demographic pressures.
That perspective can change what you document: the shadow under an elevated floor, the transition from sidewalk to porch, the rhythm of units along a shared gallery, or the way retail and housing meet at a corner. These are design relationships, not claims that any particular competition drawing became built reality.
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Designing the Future of New Orleans describes two post-Katrina ideas competitions, not one completed redevelopment scheme. The professional “High Density on the High Ground” brief proposed 160 Bywater homes with retail and a Tulane studio; the student “New Orleans Prototype House” brief sought an adaptable, elevated three-bedroom infill house. Together they treated flood adaptation, density, local climate and neighborliness as one architectural problem. Their lasting value is as a record of questions and possibilities—not as proof of construction, affordability or tested resilience.
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