Creole Carnival Center Masterplan
2022 - Concept
New Orleans, Louisiana
In collaboration with Alexander Htet Kyaw
The program of a Creole cultural center called for three auditoriums for music, dance, and theatre, as well as gallerys for Creole art, residences for artists, and other accessory functions. Creole culture represents the collision and confluence of many cultures to form something entirely its own. Similarly, the project site lies at a point of collision within the city of New Orleans: two urban grids clash as the river bends dramatically, creating strangely angled blocks as the urban fabric meets the water. The proposal seeks to find the confluence latent within the fragrmented site, reconciling the grids of the city in plan and spatializing the discontinuity as a tool to define interior and exterior form.
The land where the proposal sits is the starting point for the city’s annual Mardi Gras parade, imbuing the site with cultural importance. In response to this, the programs are organized around a newly constructed plaza along the existing parade route which culminates in the center of three plinths, each of which houses a seperate auditorium. During Mardi Gras, massive hangar doors allow these auditoriums to open towards one and other, providing the seating capacity and public space to preserve the site’s traditions.
These plinths are topped with gallery space which unites the complex as a single volume. The project’s final gesture is to bring the existing waterfront park up to the building with a hill, connecting it to the river, providing a public breezeway adjacent to the plaza, and scaling the mass of the cultural centre in relation to the the adjacent townhouses.
