Today’s “hey, this looks like a great idea on the surface, buuuuuuuuuut….”
The Make It Right Foundation will unveil a house Tuesday in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward, which was largely wiped away by floodwaters after Hurricane Katrina. The house is different from others in the neighborhood that were rebuilt after the hurricane: It floats.
The house is the brainchild of Morphosis Architects and its founder, Thom Mayne, winner of the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize.
“We rethought the idea of a house in terms of the potential conditions of the flooding that took place in Katrina,” Mayne tells Melissa Block.
He says the designers gave the building a chassis, made it out of polystyrene foam and covered it with glass-reinforced concrete.
“What does that do? It produces a raft; it floats,” Mayne says. “And it’s thought about as a seat belt. I mean, hopefully it never gets used. But when it gets used, it’s important.”
The house is anchored to the ground by two vertical guideposts. At times of flooding, the house moves up the guideposts — up to 12 feet — to prevent it from drifting.
Hmmm, let’s see. A good chuck of people in the Lower Ninth Ward are wards of the Government, unable to take care of themselves, feed themselves, clothe themselves, or find work without Big Mommy Government doing it for them. With a monster hurricane bearing down on them, most of them did not leave because no one from the government told them what to do. But, hey, let’s give them another incentive to not leave the next time it happens. And then they will whine that no one actually took care of them and they were really scared as the water started to rise (did I mention that a good chunk of the area is below the water level?) and the wind began to howl. And, somehow, it will be Bush’s fault.
Don’t get me wrong, the overall concept is great. But, it will make people more likely to stay than leave.
