Joseph P. Donaher
YEAR:2025
‘Mardi Gras House’ was conceived during the concpetual phase of the ‘Mardi Gras Cultural District’ project, where the aesthetic language was operating indepedently of architectural construction considerations. This work inform the aesthetic language of the architecural style of that project, while retaining artistic value in its own right. The work began with hand drawings documenting the visual culture of New Orleans. Architectural fragments, Mardi Gras iconography, Black Masking Indian suits, ornamental figures, processional objects, and street life were drawn, scanned, and digitally collaged into increasingly dense compositions. Rather than representing the city literally, these drawings extracted recurring formal motifs from living cultural traditions and recomposed them into a new visual language. The work established a catalog of figures, profiles, silhouettes, and ornamental relationships that would become the project's architectural vocabulary.
The concept model translated these two-dimensional drawings into three dimensions. The collaged motifs were thickened, layered, carved, and assembled into an architectural artifact where ornament, structure, figure, and enclosure became inseparable. The model established the formal grammar that organized the remainder of the project. Columns, arches, façade elements, stairways, and ornamental figures all emerged from this initial language and were later refined into a tectonic system of CNC-laminated timber construction. Every subsequent building, detail, and urban condition was developed from the spatial and formal relationships first established in this research phase.