"Instead of working with the water, he (Hoeferlin) points out, Army engineers have tried to overpower it with levees. Keeping the water out is exacerbating subsidence, making things worse not better, he says. A better solution is to work with nature.
'Room for water, at multiple scales—from backyards to public rights-of-ways—must be laced into New Orleans' existing fabric and future construction techniques,' he writes."
above image courtesy of AIA Archiblog
excerpt from the story:
"One of the group’s members, St. Louis architect Derek Hoeferlin, just wrote a spot-on critique about the ridiculously short-sighted creation of numerous “urban renewal” plans that ignore the New Orleans’ fundamental “location” problem. Appropriately, Hoeferlin & Dutch Dialogues don’t call for the total abandonment of the city (even though there is substantial wisdom in such a realistically-impossible proposition); instead, the emphasis is on coexistence with the water beyond the levees."
Check out recent publication, edited by Han Meyer, Dale Morris and David Waggonner, about the ongoing work titled Dutch Dialogues. Derek, along with former Washington Univ. students John Kleinschmidt and Jessica Garz, in addition to his Spring 2009 Washington Univ. studio taught with Univ. of Toronto, have been active participants in the important effort.
June 2009
Caron and Derek visit Beijing, Shanghai, Anhui and Yunnan Provinces in China and South Thailand (photo taken in Xinjie, Yunnan Province)
http://caronderekdotheprc.blogspot.com/
Summer 2007
CITYbuild Consortium of Schools was formed in response to Hurricane Katrina. The group of schools intend to work collaboratively and be engaged directly with the community.
Derek is the member council representative for Washington University
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