Over the course of the last twenty years, fundamental changes in the maritime industry have resulted in major restructuring and consolidation of New Orleans’ port operations. Today, we have for the first time in 150 years the lifetime opportunity to reconnect the city to its riverfront and embrace it in new and exciting ways. New Orleans, the nation’s most soulful city—so often at the vanguard of American creative culture—stands poised to realize a new 21st century urban landscape that will become a model of design excellence. The New Orleans Building Corporation (NOBC), in collaboration with the City of New Orleans, New Orleans City Council, and the Port of New Orleans, hired a team of design professionals that created a development strategy for the Riverfront spanning from Jackson Avenue to Poland Avenue.

This is no small task. New Orleans is asked this team of talented architects and planners to prepare a bold and specific development plan capable of redefining the riverfront and transforming the city’s edge into an internationally prominent waterfront. Their design is a contemporary symbol of a reinvigorated city with individual elements animated by voice, light, view and human footsteps, as well as an ensemble, a consonant whole which redefines this waterfront. We want the greatest riverfront in North America. We want to Reinvent the Crescent.

inspiration | design team | goals | public participation | major documents