Rebuilding in the wake of any natural disaster can be a long and difficult process for everyone involved, but when the disaster is as devastating as Hurricane Katrina’s impact on New Orleans, even a year later the process can still be slow-going.
In November of 2006, Sarah Lawrence College hosted a conference called Rebuilding a Democratic New Orleans, during which activists, architects, experts and other concerned people convened on the SLC campus to “discuss and develop meaningful proposals addressing innovative affordable housing and neighborhood design from policy, design, planning, construction and activist perspectives.”
Later, the faculty sponsors of the conference asked Sarah Lawrence’s Academic Computing Department to create a site recapping the events of the conference. I was asked to design the site and implement several web functions and applications to serve the sponsors’ needs.