“You have to see this town to understand this building,” Martha Murphy explains, sitting on the oversized front porch of the 39571 Project, the new SHoP architects–designed community building that bears the zip code of Pass Christian (despite its technically being in De Lisle), Mississippi. The design is intended to serve the entire “four corners” community. “We didn’t have anything after Katrina—everything was just washed away,” Murphy says. “We wanted this building to be a gathering place, a place that would bring everyone together. A place where we could see each other, say hello, and just simply check in with each other.”
Even in late July of 2006—nearly a year after Hurricane Katrina hit—the wanton damage to Pass Christian and the surrounding area, commonly referred to as “four corners,” is shocking. What was once a small, thriving Mississippi coastal community now resembles something closer to a tree fort that’s been pummeled by the neighborhood bully: Broken branches lie scattered across the landscape and bits of once-majestic mansions sit rotting along the Gulf Coast. With nearly every architectural trace of humanity wiped clean or rendered useless, all that residents of this town and its surrounding area were left with was each other—one big extended family that has rallied together to bring “the Pass”—as the town is often called—back from the brink. Murphy, who was born and raised in Arkansas but spent a lot of time in the Pass growing up, is the driving force behind the recently opened SHoP Architects–designed community building, and she exudes a sort of filial love for the town and its populace.
As one of the first pieces of new construction in the area since Katrina, SHoP’s 11,500-square-foot low-lying wood, concrete, and steel complex may be the harbinger of a new architectural vernacular poised to command the region—now that insurance monies have finally begun to trickle in. But it can do more than act as an architectural centerpiece; it can serve as a role model for how a structure might strengthen its host community.
As construction forges on, Murphy expounds on that idea in the muggy Mississippi air: “We realize that buildings don’t necessarily define us. They are not what make up our community,” she says, looking out on the large, wild “front yard” that makes the building feel more like a prairie-style home than the sterile, civic architecture one expects of community centers. “What buildings do is help to contain our emotions, bring them in, and bring them together. After what happened here, there was so much chaos, so much filth. We needed a building that would give us some order—some cleanliness.”
Scaling the roof directly above Murphy in the soon-to-be pouring rain is wiry 29-year-old Reese Campbell from SHoP. Dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, Campbell has flown in for a few days with Bill Sharples, one of the firm’s founding partners, to monitor the construction progress. The team initially aimed for an August 29, 2006 opening, precisely one year after Katrina hit. As Sharples calmly walks visitors through the structure, explaining the project’s objectives, Campbell is frantically investigating the seams and sutures. Swinging down from the roof, he plops down next to Murphy and interjects: “Architecture is all about breaking a building down to its simplest components. Once you can do that, you can do the most complicated piece of architecture.”
As it turns out, this is an apt description of the complex. From a distance the structure suggests the simplicity of a garden shed, but in close proximity it astounds in variety and details. Sharples, strolling down the long porch corridor with various contractors, adds, “This type of thinking really sums up our whole philosophy”—a philosophy that has manifested itself in the firm’s involvement with the project from start to finish. For the community building, this meant arriving in the battered Gulf Region just days after the hurricane hit. Murphy—who Sharples and partner, Gregg Pasquarelli, know through their affiliation with Tulane University in New Orleans—contacted SHoP immediately.
“I came back two days after the storm,” says Murphy, who lost her house in nearby Henderson Point as well. “Some friends and I were thinking about what we could do to help and someone reminded me of 55 acres I had purchased at the ‘four corners’ some ten years ago but had never done anything with. So that’s what we decided to do—put up some temporary structures that could house folks and act as a meeting place.”
The team arrived on September 10th to survey the site and meet with Murphy. Along with engineer Craig Schwitter of Buro Happold (a consulting engineering firm with which SHoP frequently collaborates) Sharples and Pasquarelli sketched out some general plans for the temporary structures and returned to New York on September 12. Back in Manhattan the team pulled Campbell and Federico Negro off of other projects and sent the two young designers down to Mississippi to make the project happen.
“Martha and I lived on the site in side-by-side trailers on and off for six months,” Campbell says, though “trailer” is a generous term for the windowless steel and aluminum boxes they inhabited. The first order of business was clearing the ravaged land—a task they were able to do only with the help of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and their heavy-lifting equipment. But as the weeks passed and the land cleared, Murphy and Campbell’s ideas for the project began to quickly morph.
“I had been working on some different ideas in my trailer,” says Campbell. “Our trailers were right out there on what is now the front lawn and about two months into the project, Martha came over and said: ‘Reese, we need to give something more, we need to give the people something permanent, something clean.’” And with that, Campbell says, “we decided that by doing ‘more’—you can always do more—that we could make something really special for this community.”
Campbell and his team embarked on an intense redesign; however, as Sharples is quick to point out, “The front porch was always essential to the design.” Building off the 5,000-square-foot front porch, the team mirrored two “simple boxes” at a slight, easterly angle. The roof covering the front porch was paramount to the design: SHoP devised a system of billowing rafters—constructed from simple pressure-treated Southern yellow pine two-by-tens and custom plates manufactured by Maloya Laser in Long Island, New York—that allow for simple assembly and removal. The spectacular undulating roof does more than provide shelter from the late-afternoon Mississippi rain: It gives a visual cue to the people of the four corners area that their home is still valued.
People outside the area have taken notice of this investment. A team of 14 students from Parsons The New School for Design pitched in over the summer, helping to design and construct two structures directly behind the building—one which serves as a place for residents to come for advice on how to collect funds from the federal and local governments, the other, simply a place to do laundry.
While the building overshot its year-anniversary opening, instead opening in stages and reaching full operation this past October, it now houses Cafe Annie (Murphy’s favorite Mississippi haunt, which had been washed away during the storm), Pass Christian Books, a gift shop, a computer center, and an art gallery. It was also completed in time to remind the world that when you have a supportive community, all is not lost.
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