Post-Katrina NOLA, Episode III: "Recipe": January 2009

Monday, January 5, 2009

Coop Update January 5, 2009

Coop is holding up well, almost exactly 8 months after its assembly on site. Hardware is tight, all materials weathering properly, structurally sounds as ever, adjustable ventilation system of louvers and lapped roof segments working perfectly.

Chickens pecking around the now-empty hot pepper plot, helping to turn the soil over. The plot is ready for tilling in preparation for the next planting. (Pretty flat right now after record-breaking rainfall on Jan. 3) No foreign fertilizer will be necessary for the upcoming planting season - it will all come from the free-range chickens, ducks, geese, and turkey.

Louvers closed for the winter.

Well-used nesting boxes.

"RECIPE" was the third episode of ongoing Post-Katrina New Orleans studios led by Architect Derek Hoeferlin at Washington University in St. Louis. The first challenge was to explore the possibilities of a chicken coop. This was a design/ build project that required the production of the coop in St. Louis and transportation to and assembled. Our client for the coop was God's Vineyard Community Garden in the Lower Garden District neighborhood. The chicken coop at present is fully functioning and resilient. The second project was an adaptive re-use design for the historic Franz Building on Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard in the Central City neighborhood. The client for the Franz Building was the Good Work Network, a small business development corporation that purchased the structure. For the latter project, Washington University students collaborated with Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Urban Studies students to develop a correlating business development plan for the adaptive re-use design. It placed first in the 2008 JP Morgan Chase Community Development Competition. The $25,000 award acted as seed money for the non-profit. The joint work completed by WUSTL/MIT has helped the Good Work Network raise over $500,000 to implement the project. Work on both of these projects would not have been possible without the assistance of the CITYbuild Consortium of Schools, hosted by Tulane School of Architecture.