My nola

Creating a brighter future for New Orleans Youth

Hollygrove | Section 1

Hollygrove is a passionate neighborhood with exciting opportunities for growth and dedication for the youth. The goal of this video is to showcase certain overarching ideas that could be utilized throughout Hollygrove to create safer and resilient spaces for children. The video hits on the ideas of restoring nature within vacant lots, encouraging car owners to park at new pocket parking lots, in turn opening up the circulation system that is the streets, and opening up the green slice that runs through the heart of Hollygrove with the opportunities of creating a triangle of land connecting Larry Gilbert Stadium, Lafayette Academy, and the Green Strip and becoming a safe haven for the movement of all.

Improving the Lower Ninth Ward

This is a narrative on how the Lower Ninth could be improved. This is a story of a little boy named Lucas and his best friend Julian. They went to the Martin Luther King Jr. Charter school. Every evening they would go the baseball park in the area to play and hangout with friends. One day when Lucas was returning home from school (which is a longer walk compared to Julian). He was confronted by a group of people who stole his left over lunch money and beast him up. When Lucas’s mother found about this, she was furious and went to talk to the mayor. The mayor calmed her down by saying that there are a group Urban Design students from Iowa State University that are coming to help and make the Lower Ninth a safer place for children and anyone. The students from Iowa State University met with the youth and the community to understand what is needed and how they can make the place safer. They came up with ideas of having safe corridors which are soft policed by people and surveillance cameras, Vacant properties are converted into places like club houses where the youth can hangout, learn and socialize, Incorporating Play Nola sites for younger kids, painting roads of the corridor to make people aware that this place child friendly, Illuminating the streets so that even in the night it is safe for someone young to get home.

St.Roch | Section #8

This video showcases some struggles a kid can face as a resident of the community of St. Roch, especially if they mean to cross the train tracks. The community of St. Roch has a lot of character of its own, but like everything, there is always room for improvement, which is what many of these suggestions look to accomplish.

 

The first possible improvement showed in the video is a pedestrian bridge. This suggestion was made based on the idea that kids have very little options for transportation, therefore it would be extremely beneficial to provide them with a comfortable area for them to walk freely between communities. Not only this but adding a pedestrian bridge for this site also makes for the possibility of adding a rain garden in the area as well as a clear pathway lighter with pedestrian-scale lights.

 

Another option that has been proven to make pedestrians feel comfortable while walking to their destinations is properly lighter pathways. Therefore, this has been another proposal for the video addresses. Much like the pedestrian bridge, improving pathways with light also opens the possibility of improving plantings along with areas with the goal of managing stormwater on-site, being the third possible proposed improvement in this video.

 

While these are all solutions that have been proven effective in other cities, this does not mean that they are the only possible options for the city of New Orleans. The goal of this video is to show the room for improvement as well as the do-ability of the different projects. Enjoy

 

Glorifying Gert Town

This video analyzes the neighborhood of Gert Town, Louisiana and discusses the possibility of implementing an arts district into the community.  It follows a fictional character named Frank and his process through designing the masterplan.  The arts district utilizes neighboring schools such as Xavier University and St. Mary’s High School by encouraging clubs and disciplines to come teach about what they are studying.

From here, more analysis of Gert Town must be done in order to understand the culture of the community.  Taking a deeper dive into who the residents are and what they do for a living will produce solutions that are better catered to Gert Town.

Process work shown below relays the different story board iterations and thought processess that were exercised. 

Site Visit: New Orleans, LA

Our studio had the amazing opportunity to do a site visit to New Orleans this past week. It was informative, dynamic, and essential to the direction our studio is taking! We toured the city on Sunday to explore different areas of New Orleans. We had the chance to meet Jessica Watt with CDM Smith, Spackman Michaels and Mossop, and Dana Brown Landscape Architects for our understanding of the built environment on Monday. Tuesday we got to meet with Professors at Tulane University, grab lunch at Cafe Reconcile, and met with the owner of The Blue House. It was a rewarding trip, and we are all excited to keep sharing our findings from the trip and our designs as we move forward!