*foreverNOLA | VENICE BIENNALE 2025

GOAT has made the long-term viability of our infamously endangered home city of New Orleans the studio’s raison d’être. To this end, GOAT has taken the radically optimistic position that the continued existence of New Orleans is non-negotiable. The following project is the start of a multi-generational undertaking that will continue to drive and inform GOAT’s work as long it exists: to help envision a thriving near and distant future for the communities that compose the greater New Orleans area, encompassing and responding to the challenges* (*opportunities) that will inevitably arise, positively re-framing the local and regional conversation, and to ultimately create the roadmap to achieving that optimistic vision. The exhibition begins to establish the parameters for the ongoing final project by engaging the project’s stakeholders to better understand their hopes, fears, and reasons for optimism. The immersive installation will include commentary about resilience, optimism, and the city’s long-term future collected from residents in the form of interactive chalkboard panels and a video collage of candid thoughts on optimism from residents of the city and its surrounding community.

EXHIBITION TEXT

We have taken the radically optimistic position that the continued existence of our home, New Orleans, is non-negotiable.

With that opening salvo, we undertake the multi-generational, multi-disciplinary project of envisioning and executing a thriving near and distant future for the communities that compose the greater New Orleans area.  This installation is the documentation of the first step in this grand, practice defining project: pre-design research. Here, we share the results of our engagement with the project’s stakeholders and our historic site documentation. The people of New Orleans have provided the parameters of the project by sharing with us a sampling of their respective hopes, fears, and reasons for optimism. These parameters encompass and respond to the challenges* (*opportunities) inherent to life in our threatened coastal city.

The above statement may seem like naivete or hubris, especially to those unfamiliar with New Orleans and the resilience of its people; however, we believe that optimism is what this moment in history requires of our profession and what the people of our community are demanding of us.  Pessimism is certainly understandable given the sheer magnitude of the challenges so many communities are faced with today. The threats posed by manmade climate change are truly existential for many; the inequality of access to necessities, opportunities, and justice across communities continues to fester unacceptably, nearly everywhere; the political and social divisions between communities frequently feel unbridgeable; unpredictable and seemingly unchecked ‘advances’ in technology have not delivered on their promises and have made the immediate future more obscure than ever; the list goes on and on. These challenges certainly require a sober, stoic reckoning and it is understandable that, if sweeping societal changes are not made, the futures we imagine have tipped toward the dystopian

We believe, however, that pessimism is corrosive and to succumb to it is a subversion of the social responsibility placed on the architectural profession. While we should certainly advocate for measures and interventions that may avert the worst outcomes, the truth remains that these outcomes are largely beyond our control and may well become the parameters for our future work. Our role as the visionary designers of civilization and its manifestations is to use the parameters as they are presented to us and to craft a positive vision of the best possible future for life within them, drafting the roadmap to achieve it.  We believe there is generative power in the creation of this vision.

The regional map to the right assumes a future where sea levels rise unabated, but New Orleans harnesses the advantages of its geographic position to fortify its existence, evolves within and without its boundaries to adapt to its new reality, and endures as the cultural beacon it has been nearly since its founding in 1718. Many of the ideas presented here are not new; many of them have existed in the imaginations of New Orleanians for generations and were more or less proposed by the stakeholders that weighed in on the city’s future. Others have already been proposed in some form or other by the many other visionary architects, artists, and creatives working in the city.  Some are even already in motion. We begin to collect them here with the intent to positively re-frame the local, regional, and national conversations about our collective future and to create a framework for further investigation.

The stakeholders of our project have made it clear that they do not intend to be uprooted: not in 2005 after Katrina, not now, and certainly not three generations from now when so many outsiders predict New Orleans will be ceded to the sea. Our job as designers is to rise to their challenge and to ultimately create the blueprint to make such an buoyant vision possible.  This is *foreverNOLA, a radically optimistic vision for our continued existence.