Mirabeau Water Garden

‍

The Mirabeau Water Garden will become a campus for water research, demonstrating best practices for urban water management in the city’s lowest-lying and most vulnerable neighborhoods. The site is a 25-acre parcel in Gentilly in New Orleans, between Bayou St. John and the London Avenue Canal. Formerly a convent for the Sisters of St. Joseph, the project builds upon design work from WB’s Greater New Orleans Urban Water Plan to stabilize value in the neighborhood by alleviating flooding and subsidence. A combination of conventional engineering and nature-based features will divert stormwater from the city’s drainage system, along with runoff from neighboring streets, and store and clean the water as it flows through the landscape, allowing it to infiltrate in to a unique, ancient sand strata present at the site.

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

As a demonstration project, Mirabeau Water Garden will be a model for other open spaces and institutional sites throughout the city and region. As a living laboratory, the site will act as a recreational amenity, educational outpost and test bed for water best practices. As a building, it’s all about the roof: an oversized, wide-brim hat that emphasizes how water moves from sky to gutter to ground (or cistern) and provides just the right volume for pump equipment clearances inside.

‍

‍