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I just found a great blog focusing on New Orleans mid century modernism. Check it out!

Regional Modernism :: The New Orleans Archives

[Dong Phuong Bakery Originally uploaded to Flickr by Ray in New Orleans]

In my fourth year of Tulane I discovered one of the little known great secrets of New Orleans, the vietnamese market in New Orleans East and Dong Phuong Bakery on Chef Menteur Blvd. That first trip, we left the Willow Street Leadership village at 6am; when we got to the market it was just barely light. In that gray dusk, I felt transported unto another place, this was not the New Orleans I knew, nor was it even a part of the US as far as I knew. The sounds and smells were all so different, so alien.

It was a courtyard of a strip mall but it could have been a rural village anywhere, the market is such a universal thing. I bought bunches of fresh cilantro from old withered women who i couldn’t communicate with and stood in line for a fresh Vietnamese po-boy (Bahn Mi), which is by far the best type. By 8 the sun was up and the market was clearing out; we headed over to the bakery where I had my first cha siu bau or siopao and other pastries filled with glutineous meat patties.

I spent the rest of my next two years in the city trying to make it to the market once a month. Usually I got there just as the market was closing. Once I arrived very late, around noon: the strip mall had a small grocer who remained open after the market. The woman there told me in broken english:

You too late, you need get here much early. Some people, they get here for four!

After that, the market became known colloquially as the “for four” market.

After Katrina, I learned of the devastation in New Orleans East and grieved for the loss of the vietnamese community and the market. I feared that this vibrant special part of the city and its culture was lost forever. Now, I have hope that it will return and be brighter than ever, thanks to this article by Pruned, though I fear its authenticity as an organic market will be lost. It will be cleaner and more structured, more “american.” I worry that it will become like the French Market, a simulacra of a market, sanitized and regularized, populated more for the good of tourists and the restaurant industry than to the community that started it. I have to wonder, is it better that something be lost while maintaing authenticity or recreated as a sculpted and crafted creation meant to convey the idea but not the experience?

Life Without Buildings has an interesting post showing the top four winners of this year’s AIA New Orleans design awards. As is no surprise to any one who has lived in New Orleans and been involved in architecture, Eskew+Dumez+Ripple had a good showing with one landscape project and an urban housing schema designed for Brad Pitt’s “Make It Right” housing program. The residential project seems to me to be very much in the vein of the rest of their work. The renderings available on the website are signature EDR – hyper distorted perspective, large swaths of color, gauzey scale figures, and an almost too crisp structure. Their landscape project is more of an interest to me. It encompases the site I used for my architecture thesis and shares some of the same concepts – reintroduction of the city to the river and revitalization of a much neglected part of the city. From the one image I have seen, the similarities appear to only be in design concept, and not execution, but I am more than interested to see how this project develops.

The other two projects – a rebuilding center by Wayne Troyer and a house by Bild Design are also interesting case studies. The rebuilding center makes good use of readily available materials is a “semi-home made” kind of architecture. The Lowerline residence by Bild design seems to be a variation on theme previously explored by principal Byron Mouton in his own home on Zimple Street.