The American City is layered in differences. Over time the
city has been shaped and reshaped by different cultures
and identities in the urban landscape. However, difference
is still consistently otherized, and ethnicity becomes excluded
by society as this other. In 2010, the Latino population
increased from 13 percent in 2000 to 16 percent of the
total population, or 51 million people.
And yet, Latinos are still particularly otherized in cities like New Orleans, where the demographics have been shifting since Katrina and the
Latino population has more than doubled in size.
Despite the city’s rich history of Latin American culture, the
populations identity is still ambiguous and mainly invisible
to society at large.On a national level, Latinos use the everyday in urban life as an arena of resistance and cultural meaning. Neighborhoods evolve over time based on hybridity, juxtaposition and improvisation; this temporal condition is visible within a 24-hour cycle in Hispanic everyday life,
where place is altered across different hours of the day,
and along different paths. Utilizing this transitional element
of Latino Urbanism and the emphasis on provisional
social space existing along lines of difference, the project
redefines building typologies to anticipate and support the
growing ethnic identity. In New Orleans, the Latino community
has specific economic, social and cultural needs, which
the city is currently lacking, thus the project seeks to address
these absences through the placemaking strategy of
layered exchanges and interwoven paths, in which the tectonics
of space respond to these paths, and a visual, as well
as a physical, exchange occurs between, city and others.