Bywater Heights was a competition entry for the 2012 Architecture for Humanity [UN]Restricted Access competition, which encouraged entrants to re-envision decommissioned military space. The Naval Support Activity (NSA) "East Bank" site, built in 1919 and decommissioned in 2011, is located on the east bank of the Mississippi River in New Orleans adjacent to the colorful and beloved Bywater neighborhood. The site encompasses 23.55 acres and is dominated by three large primary buildings of 500,000 square feet each: massive, dense, and drab structures that are out of scale and out of touch with their bright and active context. Not only do these buildings disrupt the street grid of the neighborhood, their bulk far exceeds that of the primarily one- and two-story homes and businesses nearby. This condition presents the challenging yet unique opportunity of how to incorporate the site into the surrounding community.
Bywater Heights presents a solution that reclaims the site for public use and reinvigorates it with uniquely New Orleanian characteristics, with a twist. The texture of New Orleans - its sights, sounds, architecture, food, music, and people - are elevated, literally, to new heights. The existing street grid inspires pedestrian walkways forty feet in the air that surround shops modeled on those of the French Quarter. On the roof, a neighborhood of traditional shotgun houses replicates the site plan of surrounding blocks at ground level. Below, artists, farmers, NGOs, volunteers, and students find spaces to work, create, and learn. Importantly, an emergency shelter is provided that directly connects to both the Bywater and Holy Cross neighborhoods, two areas badly hit by Hurricane Katrina. The site itself is given over to a water park. Public enjoyment is the main priority, inviting the community into a previously forbidden site to live, work and play.