Intelligent Design with Principles of Sustainability and Modernism in Mind

The Phillis Wheatley Elementary School is already elevated above the 100 year flood elevation - one of the most important factors for any building located in the city. Even though the classrooms did not flood after Hurricane Katrina, the school has remained shuttered for five years.

The open design of the building adds to the positive learning environment by creating an unrestricted open air feel. The original design utilized a beautiful glass wall exterior to allow large amounts of natural light into the classroom. Natural light has since been proven to aid in the learning process and combat depression.

The boarded window downgrade was likely to combat the heat element. However, since then glass and window construction tech has drastically improved so that double and triple pane Argon filled panels could be utilized to to reduce heat transfer yet retain the architectural beauty of the original design.

Due to the large flat roof and large glass windows, electricity needs could be subsidized through the use of solar panels. This is a vital point, since New Orleans is one of the largest solar cities in America and mid-century pieces were designed to be easily upgraded as technology advanced.

This unique school facility provides abundant sheltered play space, natural light and ventilation. Supports are in the middle of the building. The extensions are cantilevered about 35 feet from the supports - a very muscular kind of support, more often seen in bridge design. The elevated structure has a regional architectural sensibility. The earliest buildings of the French Quarter and around Louisiana were all elevated, not just for flood protection, but also to increase natural ventilation. The breeze is always a little bit stronger when you get above ground.

New facilities (performance spaces, band rooms, kindergarten) can be sympathetically constructed on the site adjacent to a renovated historic modern school.

The Mahalia Jackson Elementary School (also by architect Charles Colbert 1954) has been significantly renovated. The new Mahalia Jackson Early Childhood Family Learning Center is now serving the Central City community. If they can do it in Central City, why not Tremé?

New Orleans :: most Progressive Architecture awards :: 1955

Phillis Wheatley Elementary School, originally uploaded by regional.modernism.

In 1955 the Phillis Wheatley Elementary School was awarded a citation for its innovative design by Progressive Architecture.

All of the 22 classrooms for 770 pupils were raised off the ground, in order to provide an open play area, as the building occupies the major part of the site. Two rows of concrete piers support the cantilivered structure. A series of large steel trusses sandwiched between the classroom walls make this cantilever possible. Classrooms are accessible from open corridors, have bilateral lighting and cross ventilation. Administration and combination auditorium / cafeteria are housed in adjoining one-story structure.

In addition to Phillis Wheatley, five other designs by New Orleans architects received awards in Progressive Architecture's second annual Design Awards Program juried by Dr. Walter Gropius.

The Times-Picayune reports, "The designs, which gave New Orleans and Louisiana more awards than any other city or state were done by Curtis and Davis, Charles R. Colbert, John W. Lawrence, George A. Saunders, Buford L. Pickens and John Ekin Dinwiddie. The designs were of six proposed Louisiana buildings."

The envelope please.....

HEALTHCARE Madison Parish Hospital in Tullulah, Curtis and Davis

EDUCATION Phillis Wheatley Elementary School in New Orleans, Charles R. Colbert

RESIDENTIAL Dr. and Mrs. Lyman K. Richardson Residence in Harahan, Curtis and Davis

RESIDENTIAL Vacation House in Lacombe, Lawrence and Saunders

RESIDENTIAL General Electric demonstration house in New Orleans, John Lawrence and George A. Saunders with Buford L. Pickens

RELIGIOUS St. Bernard Methodist Church in Chalmette, John Lawrence and George A. Saunders with John Dinwiddie

The Futurist on Film

Union Tank Car Dome, photograph by Alfred Gebhardt, originally uploaded by anthonyb_chicago.

Yesterday MAKE magazine celebrated Buckminster Fuller's birthday. He would have been 115 years young.

I recently watched Evan Mather's A Necessary Ruin (Handcrafted Films 2009). When the Union Tank Car Dome outside Baton Rouge was completed in 1958 it was the largest clear span structure in the world. This futurist dome was no longer in use and had been abandoned. The Foundation for Historical Louisiana fought for its adaptive reuse, even suggesting that it could be moved to an alternate site. However, the dome was demolished in the secret of night in November 2007, just shy of its fiftieth birthday.

In September DOCOMOMO US/Louisiana will present A Necessary Ruin in a special screening. Date and location to be announced.

Modernizing Old Druids 1957

As published in The Times Picayune 28 April 1957, Section 5 "Auctions & Real Estate."

Monumental auditorium threatened with demolition

Curtis and Davis, architects. Progressive Architecture First Design Award 1959. photo: Francine Stock

The School Facilities Master Plan of Orleans Parish has ignored and consistently threatened to eradicate important mid-century modern public schools from New Orleans’s historic neighborhoods. From the outset, DOCOMOMO US/Louisiana identified the George Washington Carver Junior-Senior High School as one of the most architecturally significant buildings of its generation.

In the early 1950s, the nationally recognized New Orleans-based architectural firm of Curtis and Davis won a design competition, and responded by creating an elegant school complex. The most compelling structure is a dramatic cast in place concrete auditorium building.

The monumental structure utilized parabolic concrete hinged arches that extend beyond the building and rest on hinged concrete buttresses, creating a modern stoa that shelters one from rain and sun. The Federal Emergency Management Agency assessed the building's innovative auditorium as eligible for the National Register, thereby triggering the National Historic Preservation Act’s Section 106 Process.

DOCOMOMO US/Louisiana, in an effort to save the building, has agreed to participate as a Consulting Party in the Section 106 Process. DOCOMOMO US/Louisiana advocates for the adaptive reuse of George Washington Carver’s auditorium space: allow its inspiring vaulted space to continue its function as a gathering space for new generations of Ninth Ward students.

DOCOMOMO advocates for the adaptive reuse of the Wheatley School

The School Facilites Master Plan of Orleans Parish has consistently threatened to eradicate important mid-century modern public schools from New Orleans’ historic neighborhoods. From the outset, DOCOMOMO US/Louisiana identified Charles Colbert’s Phillis Wheatley Elementary as one of the most architecturally significant buildings of the twentieth century.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency assessed the building as eligible for the National Register, thereby triggering the National Historic Preservation Act’s Section 106 Process. DOCOMOMO US/Louisiana -- in an effort to save the building -- agreed to participate as a Consulting Party in the Section 106 Process. Since the NHPA review process began, the World Monuments Fund has cited the structure for its 2010 Watch List, referring to it as an “architectural gem unique to New Orleans.”

As public support for adaptive reuse has grown, the RSD has acknowledged that Wheatley is not a generic twentieth-century building and deserves to be considered carefully. The hiring of Holly and Smith Architects to assess the feasibility of adaptive reuse is an acknowledgment of the building’s importance. In fact, Wheatley is the only Orleans Parish School Facility which the RSD has considered for adaptive reuse.

The successful renovation of Charles Colbert's McDonogh 36 School by the Early Childhood Family Learning Foundation demonstrates the feasibility of adaptive reuse for mid-century modern school architecture and provides a model by which Wheatley may be rehabilitated as a twenty-first century school.

Preservation Meets Sustainability

Modernist Architecture Comes of Age

Image Credits:

University of Vermont

Join the University of Vermont Historic Preservation Program for a day-long symposium exploring the preservation of historic modernist buildings and how to rehabilitate them to be sustainable and functional in the 21st century. DOCOMOMO US President Theo Prudon will be a featured speaker at the event.

Registration Fee: $100

For more information click here for a PDF.

Register online: www.uvm.edu/~modern