"I visited five of the new houses. I sat on their porches—New Orleans’s original green technology, offering shade in summer and shelter during deluges, connecting the home with the street—and I considered a city in flux."

Wayne Curis, writing in The Atlantic Monthly, examines the future of New Orleans architecture. People sometimes forget that houses built before the advent of air conditioning needed by necessity to save energy. Big windows, high ceilings, multiple interior doors that can be opened or closed to increase air circulation or hold heat in — many of these techniques (including a nice front porch) need to rediscovered.