I just found a great blog focusing on New Orleans mid century modernism. Check it out! Regional Modernism :: The New Orleans Archives
Aug 172008
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.
Apr 112008
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.