Glass Jar

There is a simplicity that the building arts have from which architects could borrow. Unlike architects, a tradesman’s craft is much like a chef’s where ones success is based less on praise but more on smiles and good conversation. In other word’s it inspires one to move beyond the initial experience and into new possibilities. The architecture that shapes this city, its identity, and sense of place was set forth by unknown craftsmen who practiced trades of anonymity and whose art transcends the bounds of geography, leaving in the memory of every person that visits. New Orleans is in the details. In a city in desperate need of rebuilding and immediate housing solutions I decided to begin my focus on the craft of preservation, more specifically with the question in mind: Who is preserving New Orleans and how?
I met this week with Dave Fields of the Preservation Resource Center, who works in a division dedicated to buying, renovating, and selling historic properties now focused on the Holy Cross neighborhood. At the onset of our talk I mentioned adaptive re-use a term and idea that goes completely unchecked, much like any sustainable project in which Dave replied,
“You want to talk about green building...the greenest house is the one that is already built. These houses were built for zero energy, with day lighting and high ceilings.” In fact it goes beyond any environmental decision by a trades person. Take a plasterer or lather for example, the work involved, the physical connection to a detail or a single wall retains with it a memory of the project with that person and community in which it exists. But I understood what Dave was saying, at one point in time it was as if people were building and making things which they foresaw to be permanent fixtures in the community. They were saying something, making a stand with permanence that today is lost perhaps due to economic insecurity in which transience is favored over sedentism. Having read, Raised to the Trade: Creole Building Arts of New Orleans that Dave had recommended I learned that especially in certain neighborhoods like the Seventh Ward that residents would actually help each other build their houses over weekends, paying the labor with gumbo and beer. Families, traditionally Creoles of color, used their trades to come together and solve an immediate problem with specialization.
Our discussion moved into what the city was doing in terms of it’s preservation efforts and if they were satisfactory for the current housing demands of post-FEMA New Orleans.
“Today, people want to build a new house, when one already exists. One exists with embodied energy.” This embodied energy then is one of the carpenter, plasterer, painter, and metal worker. It becomes less about physical object and more about the spiritual memory of the making of things. However, especially now time is of the essence. Quick and Easy rule the roost as is understandable today. Thus there is such an influx of building demands that the craft much like the product has turned from a specialized trade based profession into something new, something that has begun to defy New Orleans logic, denying site and the possibly the ability for a place to embody energy.
Our conversation and my readings have gone much further than this, I am working out now the specificities of my research. Dave brought up some key ideas however.
1. Renovation vs. Restoration
2. Embodied Energy
3. Preservation and Sustainablity
4. Culturally specific building responses. A.k.a. vernacular architecture.
In reading the above mentioned book I also learned that many New Orleans musicians have also historically been craftsman, especially plasterers or lathers. Aside from that however I still need to interview a trades person, as I want to become involved in understanding who preserves, how this happens, and what this means in terms of a rebuilding strategy. Or perhaps it could be as specific as the story of one craft, one neighborhood, and one person. How can history be interpreted and reinterpreted my multiple generations of a tradition of a trade?