Faculty and students at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston, working in collaboration with the Ujamaa CDC (a New Orleans-based community development corporation), have been studying a block in the Tremé neighborhood known as Ujamaa Square. During a community design charrette led by Wentworth Architecture and Ujamaa in March 2006, residents requested neighborhood-based facilities for environmental health and childcare. Back at Wentworth, nearly 170 second-year architecture students developed site concepts for the square, considered strategies to remediate the landscape and prepared schemes for environmental and childcare centers. Several of these were selected in consultation with Ujamaa and the newly created People’s Environmental Center, and have since been developed further in a fourth-year architectural studio. The schemes will be presented in the fall to various constituents in New Orleans. Parallel to these design efforts, Wentworth students have cleaned the site and gutted a building on the block. Plans are underway to have teams return to New Orleans in early 2007 to begin construction of a demonstration garden, which will teach residents how to remediate their homes and yards in the aftermath of the flooding brought by hurricane Katrina.
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Project summary (pdf)
Student Work (pdf)

Tulane City Center / CityBuild Consortium
Project New Orleans
Ujamaa CDC
People's Environmental Center
Replant New Orleans


For more information, please contact kiml1@wit.edu.