Architects Study New Orleans Rebuild
Last updated Saturday, December 10, 2005 11:07 PM CST in News
By Richard Dean Prudenti
The Morning News
FAYETTEVILLE -- A self-proclaimed "fat guy" who dislikes New Orleans returns there time and again. Even Hurricane Katrina couldn't keep him from going back to his hometown.
"I'm a big, fat guy. I hate the hot weather. I hate every moment here," the man noted in an unfinished documentary film presented to a group of building professionals at the University of Arkansas on Saturday.
"I've always wanted to leave. This (hurricane devastation) is my excuse ... Yet, I keep coming back," he said.
A small group of architects and those representing related disciplines from many parts of the United States gave a round of applause after watching the 20-minute documentary by Neil Alexander. Students also attended the weekend conference to put their heads together and figure out how best to rebuild New Orleans.
Some never lived in New Orleans, but wanted to create a game plan to restructure New Orleans and help others who had live there to return.
Dan Etheridge from the Center for Bioenvironmental Research at Tulane and Xavier universities in New Orleans presented the documentary.
"The landscape, history, economy and cultures should not be isolated from one another when moving forward," Etheridge said.
The process of rebuilding New Orleans intrigued conference attendees, who in the morning considered the economics that caused New Orleans to be built partially below sea level with levees to hold back the Gulf Coast water.
In the afternoon, they were scheduled to discuss a number of pertinent issues, including establishing potential development sites, creating a framework for sharing expertise and resources, forming a rebuilding strategy, developing a funding outline, and figuring out a mechanism for inclusion of poor and disadvantaged.
Takuna Tarhakah, 76, who rented an apartment on the edge of the Ninth Ward of New Orleans and now lives in Little Rock, said he came to the conference "to emphasize the 'little people' of New Orleans in terms of how they would be able to participate in rebuilding."
Members of the lower- and middle-class should have a voice in reshaping the city, noted Jerry Peel, 62. He is also a New Orleans evacuee now living in Little Rock, and hopes the experts consider the social consequences of their work.
"We wanted to instill in them that there are people involved, not just structures," he said, approving of their approach thus far.
Lora Kim, an assistant professor at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston, brought to the conference her knowledge of emergency structures -- a class she teaches in the institute's architecture department.
"I'm here to understand the scope of the problem," Kim said. "It's not about building quickly. But when we do build, can we find techniques to ... build more efficiently and economically."
Kim created the emergency structures course before Hurricane Katrina devastated parts of the Gulf Coast.
When Kim returns to the northeast, she intends to share the information and ideas from the conference to the Architecture for Humanity organization in Boston.
"I'm hoping to go back and be a messenger and organizer," she said.
The conference is scheduled to continue today in Vol Walker Hall, Room 103. It will also focus on how the Gulf Coast crisis can be used as a prototype for addressing future humanitarian efforts.
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