poplar, sandbags, text
96 x 156 x 36 inches

Built for Prospect 1, New Orleans.

This 8ft x 13 ft wall size is common in the wall facing you in a Gentilly/St Roche house – taller in the older houses. After the flooding the first thing people did was to throw out the funriture; the second was to tear off the wall board. In 2008 many houses still stand open with exposed studs.

This wall size is also that of the back wall of many exhibition rooms in the Festival of Britain of 1951, an exhibition whose purpose of boosting the morale and the economy of the nation after a disaster parallels that of Prospect 1 for New Orleans

My research into that festival lead to the Utility Furniture Scheme, which, by comparison, makes a pointed commentary on the actions of government today as particularly exemplified in New Orleans (see text on table, shown in image far right). The Utility Furniture Scheme is also, I believe, the last historical example of the link between design and social idealism that started with William Morris and ran through the Bauhaus, de Stijl and Scandinavian design.