NEW ORLEANS DRAINAGE PUMPING STATION No1 - THESIS 1997

Last crawled date: 2 years, 11 months ago

This is an architectural thesis project from 1997 (years before the paradigm shift of Katrina). It is an exploration of the New Orleans drainage pumping station, how it relates to the whole drainage system of the city, and the ground plane it manages. The analysis found that the building that houses the pumping equipment is somewhat arbitrary in shape in that it appears detached from the drainage system. This approach resulted in a station that is embedded in the earth; where the machinery-pumps exists in a rupture of the ground-plane. The machine remains subterranean, but the whole ground plane is forced up to reveal the hidden system below. The station is housed by the surface it drains. The control room 'house' is foreign to the machine and subterranean condition, and remains within-above the ground plane. It is hoped the viewer will be struck with the fact that there are canals under every major median strip in the city. That New Orleans is almost “suspended” within this drainage system, and in fact that it is not ‘earth’ that this city is based on, but water. The Model: Was originally done in (now relatively primitive) CAD, and hence is at best a crude diagramatic massing model. In the future the intent is to embellish the design with more of the intended detailing while also reducing the polygon count; adding more notes and tabs to further explain the design, and repost. See link for the history of the New Orleans Pumping Stations. #architect #architecture #berm #canal #crehan #drain #earth #fantasy #grass #ground #gulf #hurricane #katrina #louisiana #massing #michael #mississippi #New #notes #orleans #plane #proposed #pump #pumping #roof #school #site #sod #station #structure #studio #tag #tags #thesis #tulane