Tulane architecture students apply skills to help New Orleans

New Orleans CityBusiness, May 22, 2006 by Deon Roberts

While thousands of New Orleanians wait for federal funds to rebuild their homes, Tulane University's School of Architecture is taking action.

Tulane, like scores of organizations and neighborhood groups in the city, is taking neighborhood redevelopment into its own hands.

Tulane students are working in Treme to build one of the homes they designed. The home will be part of a plan to build homes in four neighborhoods, develop 20 housing prototypes and play host to 16 design meetings during the next two years.

Tulane is using a $300,000 grant it received in March from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to cover the project, called URBANbuild.

But the bigger news is Tulane's plans to build more housing in New Orleans.

Reed Kroloff, School of Architecture dean, said Tulane wants to create a project called CITYbuild, a consortium of as many as 30 architecture schools across the country to build 60 homes and create plans for 60 neighborhoods. So far, Tulane has confirmed interest from 20 schools, Kroloff said. Tulane would not own CITYbuild, but be a member of it, he said.

Before CITYbuild can be formed, funding sources are needed to cover the expected $150,000 in annual administrative costs, he said.

We have strong interest from the kinds of funders for whom this kind of money is a modest amount, said Kroloff, although he declined to disclose the funding sources.

To Tulane, building homes and developing neighborhood plans is important in kick starting redevelopment of a city 80 percent submerged in water after Hurricane Katrina. The homes, contemporary twists on traditional architectural styles such as the shotgun, are meant to be models to encourage others to rebuild, said Ila Berman, associate dean of Tulane's School of Architecture.

I think it's awesome, said Arthur Sterbcow, president of Latter & Blum Cos. I think it's absolutely, positively a homerun. It would keep New Orleans in the forefront of rebuilding across the country by getting the involvement of those architectural departments around the country.

Tulane is not the only group to take on neighborhood planning and design. Individual neighborhoods and other groups have also taken the rebuilding of the city into their own hands.

The Bring New Orleans Back Commission was supposed to begin widespread neighborhood planning in February, but those efforts have gone nowhere due to lack of funds.

Jeanne Nathan, a communications consultant who worked with BNOBC and other planning groups, said she is confident the planning process will move forward after last Saturday's mayoral election.

Neighborhood groups have been planning on their own for months, she said, even though the BNOBC neighborhood planning has not begun.

Nathan said the BNOBC appreciates residents who have already begun to plan.

We are recognizing and excited about what's happening in the neighborhoods, she said.

Kroloff claims the Tulane City Center and Loyola and Xavier universities in late October organized the first gathering of neighborhood leadership in the city after the storm, even before the BNOBC came together. The event took place at Loyola with a grant from Fannie Mae, he said.

The main goal of it was to help the neighborhood associations gather their thoughts and start to have some concrete proposals so that when the planning process began they wouldn't come to it without ever having had the opportunity to think about it, he said. We had almost 200 people there. And we had people who were bused in from out of town who were living in exile.

While working to create CITYbuild, Tulane is focusing on URBANbuild and building four homes in Treme, the 7th Ward/St. Roch area and Central City.

Tulane students will produce five housing designs for each neighborhood. The designs are modern versions of historic New Orleans architecture, Berman said. For example, the 1,370-square- foot Treme home under construction at 1930 Dumaine St. is based on the shotgun style but with contemporary touches, such as wider windows, asymmetrical design and separate public and private spaces on the inside.

Berman is against a mirror replication of New Orleans homes and thinks a person should be able to tell when a home was built.

The Historic District Landmarks Commission has approved Tulane's work, she said.

Berman said the homes cost $116,000, or $88 a square foot. Tulane architecture students build the homes under the supervision of professionals, which cuts costs, she said.

For each home, Tulane partners with a neighborhood organization - in Treme it is working with Ujamma Community Development Corp. - and Neighborhood Housing Services, which helps moderate- to low-income people buy the homes. NHS sells the homes at no profit and at favorable interest rates, Kroloff said.