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Post-Flood Architecture

Building New Orleans 2.0

By Susan Stone

Hurricane Katrina left a devastated New Orleans in its wake. But a new architectural exhibit has come up with some ideas for the Big Easy's new look. Who's behind the project? The Dutch of course.

All it took was a finger plugged into a leaking dike and the city of Haarlem was saved. That, at least, is the story created by American author Mary Elizabeth Mapes Dodge. But where was the little Dutch boy last autumn when New Orleans was inundated by Lake Pontchartrain?

As if trying to make up for not being there to hold back the waters which flooded the Big Easy following Hurricane Katrina, the Dutch are now making amends. A new exhibit called "Newer Orleans, a Shared Space" is once again combining Dutch and American forces with inspired suggestions for how to rebuild the soggy Crescent City. After all, with much of their country lying below sea level and kept alive by an ingenious system of dikes and canals, the Dutch know what they're talking about.

The exhibit shows off designs sparked by a challenge from the Netherlands Architectural Institute and New Orleans's Tulane University issued late last year. Some 80 percent of New Orleans was covered by floodwaters triggered by mega-storm Katrina -- and exhibit curator Emiliano Gandolfi says first sympathy, then concern for the flooded city's future moved his organization to act. Before long, he had established contact with a number of people in New Orleans, including Reed Kroloff, dean of Tulane's School of Architecture.

"They were saying the best way to have reconstruction is to let the market decide," reports Gandolfi.

Ziggurats, waterways and a school on a hill

But for the market to decide, it first needs an array of choices. And the architectural challenge delivered. A jaunty school on a hill, a city park with newly-designed waterways recalling the Mississippi River delta, even a modern-day Mesopotamian ziggurat all were presented as possible answers to the needs of New Orleans.

One project, from Dutch firm MVRDV, looks at first glance like a mini-golf course crossed with an IKEA catalog. A closer examination, though, reveals a futuristic elementary school. Designed to lie well above sea level, the structure consists of a large grassy hill built from broken bits of pre-Katrina Big Easy. The hill is then inlaid with brightly-colored angular structures. Winy Maas and his team from MVRDV say a child's drawing provided the inspiration for the structure -- a touching sketch of people standing safely on their red roofs, which are barely peeking out from above the rising waters.

"She drew this hill with people walking up to the top in the rain. It had something religious as well as sentimental to it, but its simplicity was highly appealing. Perhaps we should build and realize her dream," the MVRDR group writes in its project statement.

The accordion-pleated, multi-level Mediatheque from Dutch UN Studio -- called "The Ziggurat" -- zigzags its way into the sky like an M.C. Escher vision. Rooftop gardens adorn the structure, which would house city offices, a media library and an auditorium. The goal was to design an urban icon -- a future architectural destination like Frank Gehry's museum in Bilbao -- that would represent a commitment to progress and public space.

Californian architectural firm Morphosis -- led by Thom Mayne, who received the 2005 Pritzker Prize, widely called "the Nobel Prize for architecture" -- weighs in with a project for rebuilding the city center. Densely concentrated and pedestrian friendly, the design assumes a much smaller metropolis and foresees allowing much of the current city return to nature.

"Given the prediction that the city, even three years out, will have lost 50 percent of its population, and the general assumption of uncertainty," the Morphosis proposal statement says, "the city realistically can neither re-build infrastructure nor resume services at pre-Katrina levels." Given its frank assessment of the city's future, curator Gandolfi notes that this proposal is perhaps the most realistic.

Dutch designs inspired by experience

But it was the park re-design by the Dutch West 8 group which most impressed New Orleans officials who viewed the exhibition. The massive and once majestic City Park was demolished by Katrina -- trees were torn from their roots, and salt water has seeped deep into the soil, making landscaping difficult.  West 8's park would create a mini-Delta water system to help cleanse the earth and would integrate a small group of temporary dwellings into the natural space where volunteers cultivating the plants and trees could live.  A Katrina memorial would crown the public green space.

That the design competition was inspired by the Dutch is hardly surprising. Half of Holland lies below sea level and is constantly threatened by catastrophic flooding. And memories from the great flood of 1953 are still present. A violent storm in the North Sea sent floodwaters pouring over the dikes and into the country side -- it plowed through fields and homes, and sent farm animals floating through towns. Almost 2,000 people were killed along with 200,000 cows, pigs, and horses. More than 70,000 residents had to be evacuated immediately.  In the end, thousands of buildings were destroyed, and farms were contaminated with salt water for years afterwards.

The Dutch learned their lesson, though, and the country built one of the world's most high-tech water-retention systems ever seen. In January, a delegation from Louisiana visited Dutch province Zeeland to view the region's state-of-the-art storm-surge barriers. Ironically, Dutch representatives visited New Orleans after the 1953 North Sea Flood, and marvelled at the re-enforced levees along the Mississippi River. Inspired, they returned home to build their now-renowned system.

"Both New Orleans and the Netherlands are really quickly sinking," warns Gandolfi.  "We are pumping the water out of the soil and this water coming out is also compacting the soil under our cities.  We're talking about 2.5 to 3 meters every hundred years. It means that every century the cities go down and down. The risk is becoming larger and larger."

The exhibit "Newer Orleans, a Shared Space" will be on view at the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI) in Rotterdam until March 12. Plans are in the works for it to travel to New York, Washington, Los Angeles and New Orleans in the near future.