PARADOXCITY: When did New Orleans turn Modern?
Exhibit during Woltz symposium on “adaptive infrastructure”.
The exhibit showcases the first four weeks of the New Orleans studio work, focusing on comprehensive and analytical models as a basis for a critical cultural reading of the place.
- What PARADOXES are implied?
- Which concepts of modernity can be addressed?
The Mississippi Delta is a dynamic shifting landscape. The geological formation the city is based on, is only a few thousand years old. Within this shifting deltaic fan New Orleans resembles a highly installed and maintained isle flotant; a drainage basin- essentially a crooked polder. Manifold high-tech, high-carbon and high-maintenance infrastructural systems are in place to sustain the cities threatened existence. The studio explores the immanent processes of both systems; the transforming urbanized landscape and the dynamic deltaic environment. The studio seeks for strategies of adaptation to a transforming environment. The paradigm of order and control over nature is questioned in favor of strategies that respect, modify and engage natural processes at work.
paradoXcity 