Business & Labor
Rebuilding the Mississippi Gulf: Architects Respond
(archrecord.construction.com - 10/05/2005)
By Andrea
Oppenheimer Dean
The Mississippi Governor's Commission
on Recovery, Rebuilding, and Renewal aims for no less than
an "economic renaissance for coastal Mississippi,"
said its chairman Jim Barksdale, a former president and CEO
of Netscape. To help create a physical plan, state officials
invited New Urbanist Andres Duany, FAIA, to lead a charrette
last month in Biloxi, one of Hurricane Rita's hard-hit targets.
Joining him were 100 members of the Congress for the New Urbanism
(CNU), including transportation planners, environmentalists,
code writers, sociologists, and representatives of such large
AE firms as SOM, HOK, HDR, and UDA. General teams will deal
with regional issues, and 11 specialized teams will fan out
to the three-county area's 11 municipalities, Duany said in
an interview prior to the charrette.
The immediate goal will be to "get
our codes and land-use planning online," said Leland
Speed, executive director of the Mississippi Development Authority.
Speed voiced the hope that local residents would leave the
charrettes "informed, optimistic, and clear about their
rebuilding possibilities and directions." He said he
also wanted to "offer tools for creating the kind of
coast we want 20 years from now."
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The CNU will proffer a kit of architectural
parts, Duany said, including designs for temporary cottages
and permanent mobile homes (with contractors offering to build
models), a selection of locally compatible house plans from
catalogs of working drawings, models of pedestrian-oriented
strip developments, and sketches for new casinos that would
allow "participation in street life." Design, he
added, won't be imposed but "given the incentive of pre-permitting."
Duany hopes landowners who choose not to rebuild will be allowed
to merge their properties and sell to highrise condominium
developers. He envisions "great waterfront avenues."
Urban Design Associates, meanwhile is helping Mississippi
Habitat for Humanity design sturdier houses in keeping with
the coast's climate and culture.
A report to be published three weeks
after the charrette will comprise a major portion of the commission's
report to the governor, which is due by the end of the year.
While local groups pondered reconstruction
strategies, here's what several designers had to say:
Belinda Stewart,
AIA, Belinda Stewart Architects, Eupora, Mississippi: What
concerns me is the word "new" in New Urbanism. I
think it needs to be more of a vernacular urbanism. The charette
leaders really have to know our vernacular, define it for
themselves, and know how we should use it to inform what we
put back. The magic happens when you bring the vernacular
and the zeitgeist together. We don't need Seasides all over
the coast. We need towns that look like the towns that were
there.
Terrance Brown,
FAIA, ASCG Incorporated, Albuquerque, New Mexico; chair, AIA
Disaster Assistance program: There's going to be a
lot of push for communities to rebuild exactly as was, which
would be a mistake. With two hurricanes coming back-to-back,
we're in a whole new weather realm, and the first question
that should be asked is, should rebuilding occur along coastal
areas. Federal money will have to go into breakwaters, but
there's a limit to what we can protect. To build and rebuild
in low-lying areas puts people in danger and affects us all
through insurance rates. I hope communities that do rebuild
do it smarter, make egress plans, and implement standard building
codes.
Robert Tannen,
New Orleans artist, consultant in urban and regional planning
to DMJM-Harris: After Hurricane Camille nearly leveled
this area in `69, Metasystems Corporation of Cambridge, Massachusetts,
for whom I was the point man on the ground, recommended not
allowing low-lying areas to be rebuilt. We favored placing
new development north of the beaches along Interstate 10 and
that low-lying areas be reserved for public parks and the
like. Owners of beachfront properties weren't interested in
selling at discounted prices to public entities. We also recommended
a unified building code for a narrow inundation area, using
Camille as a benchmark--150-mile-per-hour wind speeds and
25-foot tidal surges. What was implemented was a more modest
code used in Florida. The thought was that the cost of our
code would be too onerous.
Overall, our recommendations were implemented
only where dictated by cost or federal requirements.
Ray Manning,
AIA, Manning Architects, New Orleans (temporarily in Baton
Rouge): In the Gulf people tend to not want to adhere
to codes. Most of the residential construction wasn't built
to current building codes. Developers and builders are going
to have to be mandated to build quite differently than for
suburban or tract developments.
Hindsight being 20/20, coastal erosion
is what needs to be focused on. That's the thread common to
Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. The barrier islands that
were shock absorbers for tidal surges have been totally eroded.
How do you create buffers against tidal surges?
I think rebuilding will be largely driven
by multi-national AE corporations that already have contractual
relationships with FEMA, such as Flour Daniels, Halliburton,
the Shaw Group, and DMJM-Harris.
Frances Halsband,
FAIA, whose firm Kliment/Halsband, New York, designed the
Dan M. Russell, Jr. United States Courthouse in Gulfport,
(2003): After a disaster, the sense of loss encourages
conservatism, wanting to just get back what is lost. People
who've lived in a place generation after generation won't
want a visionary 21st century town, and governments are least
able to move in visionary ways.
I don't think that we build communities
in America. We build pieces of communities in a messy way.
I have yet to see New Urbanist charettes lead to anything.
Our democratic processes are so slow and inefficient, there'll
be five years of discussions
Michael Barranco,
AIA, Barranco Architecture, Jackson, Mississippi, who convinced
state officials to invite Duany to organize the planning charette:
The Mississippi Gulf Coast is no longer; it's like
Pick-up Sticks. You drive down Coastal Highway 90 and you
see beautiful wooden steps leading to nothing. When I toured
the area with a church group, people were about their business.
They weren't complaining. They're really resilient. I believe
the majority will be back. It's exciting.
The charette process won't be outsiders
coming in and telling the locals what to do. It will introduce
principles that can make our places better.
To bring some structures up to stricter
codes won't be affordable. Maybe we build less expensively
but design schools to be hurricane shelters. There are issues
like that and how we capture the very unique aspects that
were the Gulf Coast.
Richard McNeel,
AIA, Johnson Bailey Henderson McNeel Architects, Jackson,
Mississippi: We don't want a rushed process, and we
don't want to rebuild the coast exactly as it was. A lot of
people agree.
You have to understand the dynamics
of the Gulf Coast. It used to be a vacation and resort area
for Louisiana and then changed with casinos building on barges.
The casinos own land and will want to start building immediately.
You also have to understand that each community has its own
identity and each lost so many older homes that helped shape
identity. Charette organizers will have to send many teams
to work with each community.
To plan the entire Gulf, about 120 miles
of coastline, is overwhelming.
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