On The Avenue

摘要

One of the new features from this May's AIA 2011 National Convention held in New Orleans was the Avenue, an 1,110-foot-long showroom-floor promenade connecting the General Session area to the Town Square area. El Dorado brought 1,000 2X4S, 70 gallons of paint, and numerous other materials to bear in order to create a public space inside the expo for the three-day conference. But the Avenue doesn't end there. A joint project with Tulane University's URBANbuild program—for which the students design and produce one house in New Orleans each year—the Avenue will have a higher calling beyond being a design element at the show. El Dorado team lead Dan Maginn, AIA, worked with Tulane professor and URBANbuild director Byron Mouton, AIA, to design a convention feature that could be fully repurposed as URBANbuild's 2012 home.