We are looking for a curious and dedicated individual to join our team. Applicants with B.Arch and/or M.Arch degree and 0-6 years of experience preferred. Contact jobs@kronbergwall.com for more information.
Jazz Market
JAZZ MARKET ON THE COVER OF RETROFIT MAG
The Peoples Health New Orleans Jazz Market was featured on the cover of the March-April issue of Retrofit Magazine! The issue features a great article by Retrofit staff writer Christina Koch that describes many of the challenges faced and overcome over the course of the project. As a firm with strong New Orleans roots, we at KWA are very proud of our role in making the Jazz Market a reality. Read more
PLACEMAKING v. PARKING (PART 2)
NEW ORLEANS AND ATLANTA
As an office based in Atlanta, we’ve often daydreamed about what we could build, if only we weren’t so preoccupied with parking requirements. Recently, work in New Orleans gave us the opportunity, to reflect on the nature of parking in Atlanta. The New Orleans Jazz Market is the conversion of an historic 11,000 SF urban market into a purpose-built Jazz performance hall. Originally built in 1849 as a market, the building went through a major renovation at the turn of the last century. It was eventually sold to private owners after World War II, who proceeded to overhaul the facades in a gauche 1960s style. In 2013, when we were brought on to convert the building. It stood as an empty, beaten down, blighted building, most recently serving as a retail store. The newly renovated building now serves as a cultural anchor for the neighborhood.
PLACEMAKING v. PARKING (PART 1)
PERCEPTIONS AND EXPECTATIONS
There are significant differences in the built environment of our neighborhoods planned before World War II, and those developed after. Before the war, and the Great Depression, neighborhoods were designed to focus on walkability — sidewalks, smaller streets, and on-street parking were the norm. After the war, planners were confronted with the twin challenges of the increasingly prevalent automobile, and new zoning ordinances which eschewed earlier priorities and had a significant negative impact on the quality of walkable communities. Today, there has been a shift in desires and priorities towards redeveloping more historic neighborhoods. Still, zoning requirements have a tremendous impact on the viability and adaptability of these neighborhoods.
Current zoning takes the approach of requiring each landowner to provide enough parking within their parcel to satisfy the parking needs of any buildings on that land. Every parcel must be self-sufficient. Zoning mandated parking requirements, often poorly conceived, are like a cancer in otherwise healthy neighborhoods. Parking occupies a significant amount of space, increases development costs, and kills walkability by forcing buildings, separated by parking lots, to be spread across greater areas. The more distance between important neighborhood destinations, the less walkable the neighborhood becomes. This trend forces more people to drive, setting in motion the self-sustaining cycle of off street parking.
JAZZ MARKET – TIME LAPSE
We are proud to present the Peoples Health New Orleans Jazz Market.
An amazingly special thanks to:
- Irvin Mayfield and the great folks at the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra
- Redmellon Restoration & Development
- Landis Construction
- Studio ARB ARCH
- Kirkegaard Associates
- Stability Engineering
- Leppard Johnson & Associates
- Spiker Baldwin Associates
- Grenald Waldron Associates
- All the team members from KWA who worked so hard on this project.
IRVIN MAYFIELD’S EXPANDING WORLD
photo by Elsa Hahne
story by Jennifer Odell – offBEAT magazine
Past a two-story wall of windows, up a wide set of wooden stairs, and set back from the concert stage at Irvin Mayfield’s newly christened New Orleans Jazz Market sits a room the trumpet player identifies as his office. There’s no desk in this office. No computer, no phone and no trumpet—just two places to sit and a chessboard. This is fitting enough, given the amount of strategizing that went into transforming an old Gator’s discount store into what Mayfield hopes will become a shining new beacon for jazz…
[Read the full post at offBEAT.com]
Read more
PRESERVATION MATTERS #MyNojoIs
You know that an architecture trend is starting when Rem Koolhaas is talking about it. He is turning away from cities now and focusing on preservation and the countryside, even though our focus is not the countryside just yet, we couldn’t agree more with Mr. Koolhaas about Preservation and it seems like Architectural Record is on the same boat, their February 2015 issue was all about renovation, restoration and adaptation.
Our New Orleans Jazz Market, home of the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra (NOJO) has been honored with a 2015 Award for Excellence in Historic Preservation by the Louisiana Landmarks Society that recognizes projects completed in Orleans Parish (outside of the French Quarter) that represent outstanding examples of restoration or rehabilitation of historic buildings.
Happy Jazzy Holidays from Kronberg Wall
images by brandt photography
We have had a wonderful year at Kronberg Wall and we would like to share the joy. The New Orleans Jazz Market, home of New Orleans Jazz Orchestra (NOJO) is opening in January. We are proud to be part of this project because it embodies the core principles of our firm, an adaptive reuse project in an urban infill site that is empowering people and translating New Orleans culture into design, but we did not do it alone and we would like give a shout out to our team of consultants.