New Orlean’s art and architecture scene is hardly thought of as stunning or contemporary. But a city full of culture, energy, and an irrepressible sense of natural order offers artists and builders the room and fodder to create new beauty and explore entropy.

Take Jericko Houses for example. One of a few making art from the mass produced, their pre-fab modular housing offers well designed and flexible architecture. A ‘kit-of-parts’ system lets you piece together a dream layout without wasting a single screw and renovate without ever breaking down a wall, creating less waste. Tack on recycled aluminum, and other optional recycled building materials and bamboo and you’ve got a bank of eco-karma points.

There are firms like Eskew+Dumez+Ripple breaking new ground in NOLA as well as students like the ones featured in the newly launched show Architecture School. Created by Michael Selditch (of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy fame) and  Stan Bertheaud, this is Reality TV we can get on board with.  A six-part series from Sundance, it follows a group of students at Tulane University’s URBANbuild program, which offers fourth-year architecture students the opportunity to design and build a low-cost single-family home over the course of the school year. Heartwarming and enlightening, the series goes from design competition to building, construction and meeting the homeowners.

Then there’s Prospect.1 [P.1] which will make New Orleans home to the largest biennial of international contemporary art ever organized in the United States. And it’s not just for its size. Opening Oct. 1, the biennial, is directed by Dan Cameron, a former Senior Curator at the New Museum and an internationally renowned contemporary curator who’s previously biennial belt includes Dirty Yoga in Thaipei, NY Interrupted in Beijing and Poetic Justice in Istanbul. Featuring artists like Cai Guo Qiang, Candice Breitz and many others, it’s no small town affair.

That’s not to mention galleries like Jonathan Ferrara and BECA that play host to the New Orleans art scene year round. Or KK Projects which exhibits large scale, site-specific installation art in previously abandoned structures. Works focus on conceptual works based on natural order and phenomenon like light and algorithmic patterns. But housed in nature ravaged chaotic structures, “formal preference is abandoned for devotion to what is.”

Check out more at http://alldaybuffet.org/neworleans100/