Social | Sound | Scape: Center for Music and Housing in New Orleans

Abstract

In a place characterized by a melting pot of cultures, musical innovation, and a unique urban character, New Orleans is threatened by a loss of community vitality, cultural authenticity, and a sense of place. Hurricane Katrina left the city not only physical devastated, but contributed to the sudden abandonment of community nodes and a decrease in the racial diversity of the population. Since then, an expanding tourism-based economy, increasing gentrification of neighborhoods, and a looming threat of storm susceptibility and coastal erosion further threaten the cultural, communal, and physical vitality of the city. Located along the Mississippi River in the neighborhood of Bywater, a Center for Music becomes the architectural field of exploration for the challenge of designing in such a context. The architectural proposal detailed in this capstone thesis explores the ability for architecture to become an interface for informal social interaction, improvisatory exchange, and public connection to an architectural environment. The architectural project amplifies existing social/typological conditions of New Orleans in the forms of the street, the porch, the gallery, the shutters to create opportunities for users to become participants, collaboratively interact, and improvise. These symbols function as ludic elements, interstitial spaces, and movable components that facilitate change overtime that create more meaningful environments for users and their communities.