Interesting article in the NY Times this morning about an architect who studies the shantytowns of Tijuana, Mexico for ideas on how the architecture and infrastructure could be applied to American development in order to make our landscape a little less soulless. The article even goes so far as to say that “Ultimately, his ideas could be applied to … the flood-ruined neighborhoods of New Orleans.”

Of course, what it fails to point out, as it’s not an article about New Orleans, is that some of those flood-ruined neighborhoods were probably the closest thing to a shantytown that existed in the lower 48 states. At least they were in the way that this article positively characterizes shantytowns; interesting architecture cobbled together from cheap and readily available building materials. This is my favorite aspect of New Orleans architecture, and can be epitomised by the fact that many of our older buildings are constructed from pieces of barges that floated down the Mississippi and were dismantled after their arrival into our port. Recently I was inside an old creole cottage in the Treme area that appeared to be held together by nothing more than about 30 layers of wallpaper. When the owner purchased it (for $10,000) not 10 years ago, the center hallway had a dirt floor. He remedied this by anchoring some boards into the dirt. Such is the foundation of the building code in New Orleans: slap it up. Put some nails in it. Drafty is fine so long as the rain doesn’t blow in.

I often discussed creating a coffee table book called “The Shacks of New Orleans” before the storm. There was such a wealth of structures here that were so ramshackle and primitive, it was amazing that they were even allowed to exist. Unfortunately, many of those shacks are now piles.

Witnessing the pandemonium that is Lowe’s or Home Depot, I often fear that some of these old shanty homes are going to become generic pieces of trashy, suburban homogeny. So I would just like to encourage people to be thrifty and creative in their reconstruction efforts. I’ve been doing my part by picking through debris piles for construction materials whenever possible. Lath boards are plentiful and quite versatile, and hardwood floorboards, though harder to come by, are very good to have. New sheetrock can be overrated - if you collect enough discarded plywood, that is a wall. Long lengths of 4 or 6″ PVC pipe can be sliced in half lengthwise to create gutters. Hell, if we weren’t so quick to tow away those hundreds of thousands of flooded cars, something cool could have been done with those too. A ceiling made of pounded out hubcaps? I don’t know. The point is, think outside the (big) box, that’s what made our architecture so interesting to begin with.