We shared PRAXIS’ ninth issue with you a few days ago, and we are excited to feature their tenth issue today. Entitled Urban Matters, this issue focuses on the challenges hyper-metropolises present – specifically, as editors Amanda Reeser Lawrence and Ashley Schafer comment in their introduction, how “to mediate between expansion and liveability” to define and shape the ever changing, and ever growing, urban condition. Architecture and the urban are encouraged to be in constant dialogue; an interconnected network which balances the macro “environmental, topographic, social/political, and technological” to form, and potentially, uplift the micro urban quality of our metropolises.
An article on New Orleans explains Thom Mayne’s initiative to build upon the Make It Right Foundation’s single dwelling unit to re-think a larger scale urban transformation. The article shares a brief chronology of how the city was formed and settled – first people occupied high elevations and then moved to the lower regions after the government added the necessary levee infrastructure. Mayne’s new vision sees residents transitioning back to the higher elevations, allowing the lower terrain to return to its natural state. Andrew Colopy terms this move the “reverse-engineering” of the area, and the article is a smooth transition from Jane Amidon’s Ecologue for the Metropolis which introduces several projects exploring “entrepreneurial environments” as a way for natural environments to complement the built developments of urban areas.
