Jazzland!

A speculative project merging architecture, oceanography, climate, mythology, and placemaking

Damage Control as Critical Architecture

This studio wrestled with the media of damage and damage control as sites for critical architecture; “damage control” was not viewed as a “spin,” but an attempt through architecture to understand, articulate, expose,
and critically intervene in the myriad spaces and multiple sites of damage. Damage control was instead conceived as multivalent strategy of uncovering and intervening in systems of damage, with strategic interventions of designed damage control that lead to architected transformation.

I investigated the intersecting narratives of climate change, refugees, indigenous land loss, and fossil fuels at the contested site of Isle de Jean Charles, a rapidly-shrinking barrier island in Southern Louisiana.

Locating Damage: Drawing Damage Systems

I first set out to localize the sites of damage, overlaying critical thematic junctures in the rapidly-deteriorating coastal landscape of Southern Louisiana to understand the entangled systems of the fossil fuel industry, climate events, and Native American ancestral territories and how they operate amongst and in spite of each other.

This link between something and somewhere— the localization, spatialization, and materialization of damage—prompted a series of analytical, descriptive, and speculative collages that employed a strategy of retroactive futurism to investigate magical realism as an architectural placemaking concept in the territory.

Tracing Lines of Force: Damage Duration

As I grappled with the intertwining systems of damage present in South Louisiana and particularly at the site of Isle de Jean-Charles, I engaged with the intersecting temporalities of these damage systems and what they revealed about land loss and the fracturing of cultural geographies, geologies, socioeconomic systems, and histories. By building a model that sequentializes iterations of catastrophic damage, either through major isolated weather events (such as hurricanes) or daily systemic transgressions (such as daily tides that gradually erode coastal shorelines), intersecting dynamic lines of force are revealed through form.

The model relies on the entropy of its own destruction to slow damaging events and systems into built form. Architecture, then, is the physical outcome, the site at which damage is registered and its manifestation into the built environment.

The model explores the increasing overlap and eventual collision of trans-species ecologies. Simulating human movement due to land loss, I trace the gradual entanglement of these ecologies and the cultural mythology of place integrating itself into the everyday, a sort of casual magical realism ensuing as a strategy of managing trauma.

While exploring the varied losses as a result of the damage systems and the cultural-ecological responses, I additionally used GIS to map predictive outcomes of impending sea level rise over the next roughly 75 years and the resulting land loss. As the maps reflect, the land surrounding the greater New Orleans area would not be lost due to a nearly 100-mile floodgate infrastructure project, which notably leaves most indigenous and Cajun communities left to bear the brunt of climate events and land loss. This informed the next iteration phase of the project, wherein I picked a site that could retain the cultural-ecological memory of the intersecting damage systems in Isle de Jean-Charles while offering a physical refuge.

Damage Registration: Interrupting the Systems

Conceptualizing the death of the original site, but with the contingencies of the intersecting damage systems still present, I designed both to interrupt and re-insert the afflicted indigenous and Cajun population back into those damage systems, registering the damage and making it legible and perceivable to outsiders. Even though the design would now be at a distance from the original site, it was mandatory to design with the ecological-cultural systems that developed in response to damage and the magical realism of Isle de Jean-Charles at the fore of any structure or architectural form. Indeed, the two were to be the conceptual and organizational arguments of any proceeding design. The damage systems had real outcomes without a site, a dazzling phantasmagoria that now had to be situated.

I then discovered Jazzland, a derelict theme park in New Orleans East that had been defunct ever since a 9-month inundation after Hurricane Katrina. Although city surveyors and engineers had deemed the structures on site to be structurally sound, no one had bought and renovated the park for reopening. This would be the site of my interruption: a culturally and ecologically-appropriate response to the nation’s first climate refugees.

Mapping the significant structures of intervention on the Jazzland tract in the same aesthetic as its original theme park map. Although the City of New Orleans does not have official flood projections due to the Morganza floodgate project, I used historical flood maps to gauge where future inundation would occur at Jazzland.
By studying the map, photos, and original plans for Jazzland, I uncovered another system of damage—the commodification of native and Cajun culture into a singularity for consumption, which became an interplay with the culture itself.

Design Proposition: A Responsive Architecture for Climate Refugees

Drawing on the discourse for user freedom in design and precedents such as Constant Nieuwenhuys’s New Babylon, Yona Friedman’s Space-Chain Structures, Peter Cook/Archigram’s Plug-In City, and Cedric Price’s Fun Palace, I designed a system of computerized nodes that “print” architecture out of plant matter that naturally grows on the site.

The system is outfitted on the megastructure scaffolds already existing on the Jazzland tract, such as the rollercoasters “Mega Zeph” and “Zydeco Screamer,” and then reads human inhabitation and use of space to provide an organic aggregation of architecture that responds to evolving programmatic spatial needs, especially as the structures are inundated over time. I used a combination of Python and GIS predictive mapping to design the system, considering human inhabitation and environmental factors (like rain, flooding, and plant growth) to be a systemic “input” that was responded to with an architectural “output.”

What is visualized in the drawings are an outcome of taro farms for a self-sustaining food source; aggregations of housing and civic space on buoyant foundations that incorporate culturally-relevant religious imagery and local biomatter as material; and piers, boats, and various commercial structures to respond to economic needs. The architectural outcomes shifted based on changing variables, such as how many people occupied the site over time, in what ways, and parallel environmental factors.

*Renovation Plan for the Isle de Jean Charles Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Tribe Resettlement, and Other Climate-Affected Refugees:* axonometric drawing of a Mega Zeph inhabitation prediction after 30 years and a planned 8-13 feet of inundation.
*Click image to enlarge and/or download.*

The above drawing calls out (clockwise from left to right):

The taro farm, an outgrowth of regionally-relevant elephant ears that can grow epiphytically along the top of the structure.
The demountable housing unit, constructed of biomaterial such as sawgrass and red clay sourced from the site, that can be quickly disassembled if water rises too fast in a flood event
The permeable wall, which allows wind to pass through while providing shade. The thermal windscreen is printed from site-sourced red clay and printed into specifically-patterned tiles that relay spatial significance based on the religious and cultural customs of the people of Isle de Jean-Charles.
The buoyant foundation, which allows the housing units to slowly float up the structure to avoid inundation.
Eaves, hurricane shutters, and pop-up roofs that can radically accommodate the simplistic demountable unit to weather conditions and alter its connection to other units for different programmatic uses.

Voyage to Jazzland

In response to the computer programming of the architecturally-manifested design, I reincorporated what I had identified as an ecological-cultural response to damage and magical realism as a method of trauma mitigation back into the project through essay and poetry. The result is the following lyric essay, an excerpt of which is available here, envisioning the society that grew out of the initial resettlement at Jazzland in an unspecified future point in time.

The story starts on the first day of hurricane season 53 years after we first marked the slow erosion of our island, slivers of sand sloughing off the shore slowly til all that remained was a spit of sand that glowed silver in the sunlight as the tide washed over after the afternoon rains.

We took to the boats as the periwinkles dug into a sandy bank that our ancestors landed on almost 200 years ago, once a long barrier island of grapefruit trees tucked among reeds and oak trees for galleons that the storms had whittled away to this, this slender sandbar that now laid barely beneath the frothy green gulf that bathed it in foam.

Over the years we’d watched the land wash away from us, steadily pilfered away by the greedy fingers of the Gulf, the ExxonMobil oil canals sluicing through the bayous, the sinking oyster beds and estuaries that corroded with the influx of salty tides. Our people had begun migrating years before, never coming back after a storm claimed a new address or simply driving down the asphalt spit that split the bayou on the way to the mainland in a pickup truck with the plywood remnants of a home in the bed. And so on the first day of hurricane season in 2025 we took to the pirogues our fathers and grandfathers before us had carved out of the small salt oaks, the ones that were meant to be muscular shade trees that would be galleons traversing the Atlantic on the might of the wind, and where we went was a collage-like chart more like a quilt than a map of destinations. Some of us scattered West like wildflower seeds in the Texas highlands, so far away from the bayou that the heartbreak of migration would never threaten us again. Yet many more of us rowed north to New Orleans East, paddling toward the Morganza floodgate where the Gulf lapped incessantly at the levee. Just over the grassy knoll of the levee rose the faded pink and blue scaffold and the neon sign of stars–Jazzland.

That was almost seventy-five years ago now, back when the soft kinds of plants still grew down in New Orleans, wisteria vines and camellias and azaleas, the delicate type that can weather the heat but still need a special type of loving from the soil. Now the mangroves gather round the pilings of the Zeph and air potatoes rake up the inner trellises of the coaster. Dense clusters of water hyacinth ripple like quilts on waves as the gators stir beneath the water, and elephant ears choke out the rotten parts of the coaster. Horace and I have been down on the levee snapper fishing all day, and the catch is low today on account of us not being allowed to take Marie Jolie, Big Daddy’s offshore boat, down to the rigs that sit just offshore where all the snappers like to get together because of the rig reefs. We should’ve brought the cast net–at least then we’d get a proper catch of mullet–but you can’t have two people casting off a pirogue without chancing a proper topple into the water. And Jazzland water ain’t really right for swimming.

Lisette and Vivienne aren’t any help at all, of course. They’d risen before the sun to harvest the taro for gumbo so they could be excused from chores on their leave day. They unwind their hair for the first time in weeks and lay backwards on the levee on the Gulf side, letting the beating waves against the grass massage the mats out. They’re pale, legs just about as white as Carolina anemones that crowd out the taro, so they crowd together under one of the quilts that tells the story of the Old Island and poke an umbrella into the mud to shade their face.

“Y’all oughtta go on and take a swim,” Horace calls out over the wind, casting the line off his cane pole further down the beach so he wouldn’t hook the girls. “Who knows when Big Daddy’ll let us come back down to the levee. You’re right on the precipice of real water.” Vivi stirs under the blanket in discontentment. The pictogram-like stitchings of our ancestors rowing in sync in the old Jean-Charles pirogues from the Old Island wrinkled as she flexed her toes; I can tell she’s stretching out thick, ropy muscles that tighten over her bones on account of the girls didn’t often get rest from running up and down the Zeph harvesting the taro. In fact, the leave day–their first this rainy season–would probably do their bodies more harm than good.

Horace knows this. He elbows me, though I ain’t reeling at the moment and am tending the cooler for a second, matter a fact I’m rolling a roseau cane cigarette cut with a bit of precious hoarded tobacco that no longer grows down this side of the Rigolets in Louisiana. Even still I snag my cane rod and cast at the girls, the line cracking those ropy purple legs that crackled like breaking joints. The usual howls follow, of course, and sure, it can’t have felt good. But Big Daddy isn’t letting the girls back on leave for the rest of the rainy season, least not til the jellyfish come and infest the Gulf til it’s almost gelatinous, wavering and shivering in the still late-season heat. Lisette crawls out from under the umbrella straight into the water, a crab-like gait on all fours that shields her from the sun, and Vivi follows. Their hair will untangle, maybe not as perfect, but more importantly they’ll still be able to climb the taro scaffolds in the Zeph tomorrow with enough speed to escape a whipping.

Back in the days of the Old Island, before the migration and the levee and the last big storm before the old country was all washed away, there were stories about the Gulf shining so bright and blue it was a pool of liquefied crystal in the shimmering sun and sea breeze. These days, what with all the dredging and the storms in the Gulf raging like they have a bone to pick with God, the water is a brownish red, a beige that stains your whites khaki and makes the girls disappear beneath the surface.

Horace has his jeans hiked up over his knees, and the threadbare t-shirt he caught at a Mardi Gras parade in the city when he was a boy has a few visible tears as it blows in the breeze but it should still be enough to keep the sun off his shoulders. I pass the man a lighted cigarette. He wades into the water, almost to his knees, and I wish we’d brought a pair of waders–even hanging the pants on the line all night wouldn’t dry ‘em out for tomorrow, as the dew on the Zeph is worse than just dipping ‘em in the bayou. But it’s worth it for a chance at fish–not taro, not air potato, not chewy gator meat or nasty catfish, but real tasty Gulf fish that we haven’t had in weeks.

Not like fish are hard to come by, but the fishers, shrimpers, and oystermen that sell on the Zeph are real assholes that love to price gouge since they know most everyone on the Zeph just has pirogues and limited access to the Marie Jolie. When Vivi and Lisette start out onto the Zeph every day, me and Horace start dropping the net off the pod, one of us usually taking the pirogue into the bayou to hunt out some largemouth bass or a crawfish nest and the other one pulling up catfish and bluegill. While Horace and I keep out a few for all of us to eat, we sell our catch up on the rig each afternoon when we start smelling the gumbo heating up after the lunch hour. The girls, on the other hand, work for Big Daddy on the plantation like most of the women.

Their assignment on the taro crop usually means we get a surplus portion–good for spreading gumbo thin across our crowd, but sometimes I wish they worked on the precious cane crop up on the north shore. We’d get less in the gumbo, and sure, I’d miss the women when they left during the week. But I haven’t had a taste of sweet since Mama died and me and Horace and the girls all moved in together. Mama always saved time to make pralines, even if she couldn’t get her hands on milk or butter, even if it was just for us. Horace still uses her pot for the gumbo.

Me and Horace each paddled out with one of the girls just before dawn, hoping we could miss the breeze down on the levee. We beat out in the dark just as the night breeze began dying, the dewy haze over the blankets of water hyacinth slowly burning off into a deep red sunrise and the gators knocking the bottom of the pirogue softly every now and then. I’d been against the girls bringing along the ancestral quilt–mine and Horace’s mamas had both sewed their accounts of the migration into the lining–but Lisette insisted that the dew was making her shiver, and at any sort of quarrel Horace opted for complacency so we wouldn’t wake the neighbors.

“These girls is skinny enough now, Rex,” he’d chided me, using that tone and shaking his head in the way that said it ain’t worth the fight now man. “They ain’t got the same meat on they bones you do.” I lent Vivi one of Mama’s old sweatshirts that I used to stuff my pillow, and Lisette wrapped herself in the quilt like a shroud as we paddled toward the sun.

Even in the sea breeze that’d kicked up after lunch, and even on the cane poles, it wasn’t a completely shot day of fishing. Horace reeled in an amberjack and even redfish, though most of the day was just a handful of pompano. We would’ve much preferred snapper, cobia, or trigger–something fun to reel in that could also be tasty–but this would tide us over for a bit, long as we could score some ice off the shrimpers. We’d have to trade a share of taro, but most of us were fed up with taro at the moment and could take the hit if it meant more fish. And anyways, I knew Vivi would risk a whipping and steal a little bit of it away into a pocket. She had a knack for pilfering.

We land on the dock just after sunset after a challenging paddle back through the bayou. The wind, normally dying now with the sun, has kicked up and whistles through the Zeph, and on the dusty carmine horizon the oil rig flares flicker in the hot summer wind. The jellyfish will come earlier this year, and the storms will delay the new oil project they’re sending through B-Deck on the Zeph. It means they won’t displace the neighborhood for at least another summer, but after ripping up the interior scaffolding there isn’t much chance the neighborhood will hang on to the rig in much more than a Cat 3.

To learn more about Jazzland!, order a work sample booklet about the project.

Camille McGriff