Flying above New Orleans, I’m only just beginning to understand how lucky I’ve been. Years ago, had you told me I’d be coming here to help produce a documentary series, I would have rolled my eyes and said “I wish.” In 2005, I would have imagined the city only through Katrina’s lens and its devastating images. Now I’m sitting on a plane, looking down at Lake Pontchartrain, with a whole new understanding of what New Orleans is all about.

It’s been an honor for our crew to work in this town, and a privilege for us to film with the URBANbuild faculty, students, and partners, all of whom welcomed us into their lives – and in many cases, their homes – in a collaborative effort to demystify what it means to be in Architecture School.

As for the new house, it’s an extraordinary piece of work. (And the color looks great.) We watched it from the ground up, and soon you can too. We hope you enjoy every step of the way.

Thanks for joining us. And get on down to the Big Easy when you can. Your beignet awaits.

Signing off.

“Everyone who loves New Orleans learns to love it with its flaws. It may be hard for people who have never been to the Crescent City to understand the passionate love people have for it, to understand why it’s worth fighting for – why it matters…”

- Tom Piazza from Why New Orleans Matters

“It’s not a reality show–it’s a documentary series,” I’ve heard myself say on countless occasions. Press, students, faculty, crew, have all at some point uttered the baggage-laden phrase “reality show,” and I am always compelled to clarify. “What’s the difference?” asked a journalist, who rolled her eyes when I made the distinction. “Style and purpose…” I went on to explain. With a reality show — whether it’s competition-based like The Apprentice, or shared-quarters like Real World, or make-over like Queer Eye — they are all manufactured for camera. And I don’t mean that in a bad way. The rules and circumstances of manipulation are acknowledged and embraced by the producers. No one claims that the events in these shows would actually happen in real life without the show’s existence. In the case of Architecture School, the students at Tulane University are designing and building a house whether I’ve got a film crew there or not. We are documenting events that are already taking place, in spite of the presence of cameras and the subsequent television series.

I’m not knocking reality shows. I have worked on my fair share. As a producer or director, the process between reality and documentary is very different. Rob Tate [our senior producer] and I have collaborated on docs prior to this experience. We are both drawn to a verite style where the story is told mostly through character interaction and scenes, rather than relying on the “lit” interview or the crutch of narration. We enjoy telling stories by weaving in and out of scenes (non-linear) and sprinkled with informal OTFs (on-the-fly thoughts of the character). We like to shoot in a narrative or cinematic style with extreme close ups, over-the-shoulders and lots of foreground. But even once you feel like you’ve honed in on a “style” you are faced with the bigger challenge: How to tell this story?

Production is a sequence of decision-making. As with architecture, time, money and logistics all factor into every choice; and the documentary genre must be considered as well. Documentary (shooting actual events) versus Reality (manufactured and controlled) greatly affects production with regards to time. With Architecture School, we are covering a story that spans 9 months (an entire academic school year). Since it would be virtually impossible to cover that on-camera 24/7, we are forced to make choices about what, when and where to shoot.

Even with this kind of prioritizing, we anticipated as much as 500 hours of raw footage. Rob and I decided early on, to shoot single camera to avoid making it 1,000. Shooting a scene that has 10 characters in it with one camera requires careful listening and a commitment on the cameraman’s part to stay with the action at hand as it plays out. Even with careful logging and organization, we certainly had our jobs cut out for us in the edit room, and like building a building; we were faced with one big challenge after another.

Michael Selditch
Executive Producer/Director

Architects in fictional movies and television are typically portrayed in unrealistic or overtly glamorous ways. The rare documentary will surface — Nathaniel Kahn’s My Architect or Ken Burns’ Frank Lloyd Wright — that accurately depicts not only the joy of architecture, but the architect’s personal process.

I want this documentary series to give the viewer a fly-on-the-wall glimpse into an architect’s psyche. What do architects think about? What do they talk about? What is important to them? And why do we, as a society, need them? When I was an architect myself, I never felt like the general public got what we do, or really understood why we are needed. “I don’t have to hire an architect,” I once heard a potential client say about his impending kitchen renovation. “I know exactly where I want the sink to be and I’m capable of picking out my own countertops. I just need a contractor to build it.”

Construction is tangible; while design, to some, is cerebral. Sadly, with cheap and fast construction so prevalent these days, many people are not always aware of bad design. But when it’s good; when the space functions like a dream; when it is beautiful and comfortable; when it is clever and resourceful; then good design is abundantly clear. How exciting for the viewer to be in on the design process, from start to finish.

For this series, the students at Tulane University’s School of Architecture are our main characters. And both the study of architecture and the design process must be prominent. However, equally important is the narrative of the construction of the house: a group of 21-year-olds building this house from the ground up with shovels, hammers, nails and sweat, having never done anything like it before.

One of the things that Rob Tate [our senior producer] and I had always been certain about is that we were not making a “how-to” series. The viewer is not going to come away with instructions on building a deck. Though, learning about a “cantilever” or a “stringer” is another story. The vocabulary of architecture is compelling. It has a rich language of its own. And this was always a challenge in shooting this series. How do we coherently tell these stories that speak that language, while remaining accessible, and not “dumbing it down” for the viewer?

There are additional stories to be told here beyond the students and construction of the house — Tulane’s collaboration with Neighborhood Housing Services, the non-profit agency that helps low-income families purchase a home; the frustration families face as they try to cut through the red tape of government subsidies and mortgage lenders; and the crime-ridden neighborhood these students are building in.

And then, there’s the “Big Easy.” When I think of New Orleans, the first word that comes to mind is, authentic. Everything and everyone feels original; unique to that city. Every establishment feels mom-and-pop. And while NOLA has its share of ubiquitous coffee-house-chains and corporate-big-box stores, they seem to be relegated to the outskirts of town. The city proper is rich with color, soot and sounds; and the camera loves it.

In the second episode, Reed Kroloff, the former dean of Tulane’s School of Architecture, alludes to this richness with eloquence as he describes the state of New Orleans’ architecture and the ill-fated conditions of its housing. “This city hides true decay under a thin veneer of charm,” Kroloff says. “…there is such outright degradation of the physical environment where many of these people live. We saw that mission right away. The storm simply accelerated the clock.”

Byron Mouton, the director of the URBANbuild program articulates a similar sentiment regarding “the storm” and “the accelerated clock.” Mouton states, “People come to town and we drive them through neighborhoods and they say, ‘Wow, look at that! That’s a mess! I can’t believe the storm did that.’” Mouton continues with a chuckle, “And often we say, ‘Well, that’s not due to the storm.’ This type of condition has existed in this city for decades. Katrina has given us the opportunity to repair and fix pre-Katrina problems.”

Who knew? Not me. Prior to researching this project, and before visiting New Orleans, I had no idea the extent to which this city’s housing needed attention and consideration …pre-K!

As construction progresses and a house emerges, the students are faced with unexpected criticism. New Orleanians (generally speaking) tend to be somewhat squeamish about Modern Architecture. In the fifth episode Emilie Taylor, the project manager and a recent Tulane graduate herself, sums it up beautifully: “The city is drowning in its own nostalgia.” The students find themselves the target of bitter blogging with regards to the design of the house and how it fits into the neighborhood. Once again, the arguments are worthy of inclusion in the documentary and we try to present all sides in an unbiased manner.

Whether it is about tension on the construction site, financial frustrations of potential buyers, crime in the neighborhood, safety issues during construction, or the modern architectural style of the house — there are many stories here to explore, and we have six episodes to do it in.

Michael Selditch
Co-Creator/Executive Producer