Studio Description

Project context

The studio project will be the design of a new City Hall for the City of New Orleans. After the disaster that followed hurricane Katrina in 2005, the New Orleans community has developed numerous initiatives to move the city beyond recovery to strategic plans for the future of the city in the 21st century. As part of these initiatives, it has been proposed that the city design and build a new city hall of global significance to replace the existing 1955 complex. The new city hall should embody the rich cultural history of the city, particularly that related to music, and serve as an appropriate iconic representation of the city and its people as it moves into the 21st century.

The new city hall will be on the site of the existing city hall, which is strategically located at the edge of the financial district and the Rampart Street corridor. The Rampart Street corridor will house a new jazz museum, presently being designed by architect Thom Mayne, and the New Orleans Music Hall of Fame. The new city hall should foster civic pride and be of the highest cultural significance.

The city has requested that the new building(s) embrace issues related to sustainability and that contribute in a positive way to the overall ecological environment. The city hall must incorporate advanced technologies to support and advance democratic government in the 21st century, and it is expected that the project should be exemplary of advanced 21st century materials and systems in it’s response to energy reduction and climatic control.


Design Issues

Cultural and political
The design of a city hall raises questions about the relationship of building to the democracy of the city government - and in turn, what is the appropriate form and vision of the city's house of governance and representation. New Orleans has a rich tradition of music but how does the city wish to be seen and portrayed as it rejuvenates itself after Katrina? Using Boston City Hall is an example, in the current debate about whether to rebuild or renovate, there are demands for the city's "hall" to be "inviting, accessible, inclusive, attractive and embody space for the people"…a people's building that is not only a home for the city administration but also represents the hope and potential of the city.

Place
The city hall is bounded by urban streets and fronts Duncan Plaza, together with other state office buildings and the public library. The city hall project has the capacity to redefine the nature and scale of this civic core, and reshape the urban form and public space in the vicinity of the site and, as such, establish stronger a far stronger sense of urban place.

Organization and program
The program for the new city hall will develop from studies that examine the scale and purpose of the project and will be informed by examining a series of precedents of recent and historically significant forms of public architecture - together with a proposal for the needs of the city that comes out of the site visit to New Orleans by the studio. A significant element of the design project will engage the studio in the configuration of organizational and spatial strategies where plan and section emerge as coordinators of the building’s concept and ‘culture’.

Sustainability
Like may cities and institutions, New Orleans has expressed a strong interest in embracing sustainability for all of its public architecture - and so the studio will also embrace this as a pre-requisite condition for the architectural design and an ongoing discourse. The studio will focus upon several areas of environmental development as it integrates progressive sustainable design with emerging urban and building concepts. It will also seek to quantify the impacts of design decisions at various points in the studio:
a. climatically responsive site strategies including spatial microclimates, the orientation of building elements and the possibilities for retaining parts of the existing building structure(s) for a reduced carbon footprint;
b. maximizing passive design of effective lighting and ventilation and conditioning for occupants;
c. the design and materiality of the enclosure and façade system for effective climate
control;
d. the innovative integration and application of renewable energy generating technologies to create energy self sufficiency.


Process

The studio will travel to New Orleans over the period of February 23-25.

The studio will be highly collaborative. Group exercises related to cultural, typological, technological, environmental precedent research will be integral to the design process, and students will be given the option of developing design proposals working in groups of two. The studio will also be an intensive, process driven exercise where proposals undergo rigorousinvestigations at multiple scales –and where simulation technologies will be used to test out environmental strategies.

The studio will be working with Ted Szostkowski, a principal with the office of Kallmann McKinnell and Wood, architects for the current Boston City Hall, as design critic and visiting architect. The studio will also interface with related design disciplines through the collaboration with engineering group ARUP as well as the faculty in the Building Technology group. Invited guest for reviews and talks will include architects, environmental engineers and urban designers.