Illustrated Evolution of Airstream Design - Milda Miskinyte

1930's

1940's

1950's

1960's

1970's

1980's

1990's

2000's

New Orleans Maps - Milda Miskinyte

[1]

[2]

[3]

Media References:
1. Greater New Orleans Data Center. "Percent of people living below twice the poverty threshold." Greater New Orleans Data Center. February 3, 2004.

http://www.gnocdc.org/mapping/docs/Poverty.pdf (Accessed January 12, 2010)
2. Greater New Orleans Data Center. "New Orleans elevation by neighbourhood with major roads" Greater New Orleans Data Center. August 30, 2005.

http://gnocdc.s3.amazonaws.com/maps/PDFs/neworleans_elevation.pdf (Accessed January 12, 2010)

3. Jen Laloup. "New Orleans Flood Depth." PLOS One Community Blog. August 26, 2009.
http://everyone.plos.org/2009/08/26/worthathousandwords-6/ (Accessed January 12, 2010)

Airstream Morphology in the 90s - Felix Cheong

In the late 1980s and early 1990s Airstream trailers went through a design change where it shifted from the sleek bullet form to a boxier outer shell. The reason for this change in style is not known but most Airstream fanatics did not like the direction that this was headed. They liked the iconic look of the classic Airstream trailers and not this new square aluminum trailer that the designers decided to paint beige. One such trailer is called the Airstream Argosy. All the airstream parks did not even allow these types of trailers into the camps. Most of these "SQUARE-STREAM" trailers fell out of popularity fairly quickly. In 3 years time they were discontinued due to general design failure and rising prices. Airstream quickly went back to their classic bullet design soon after.

This kind of shows the mentality of Airstream enthusiasts and how people see Airstreams as an icon. It's a big difference from the way that FEMA trailers are perceived compared to Airstreams. The desirability of Airstream is not only based on the idea of freedom and choice, part of it is also because of its construction and the way that it looks, or the way that it's supposed to look in the minds of people.

Information Sources:

Reasons, Don. "Airstream History." Calldon. 2007

http://www.calldon.com/air.htm (Accessed  January 10, 2010)

Crisis Management; FEMA's Role - Giles Hall

I think that the most effective way to distinguish the process by which F.E.M.A. made its decisions regarding hurricane Katrina will be to separate it into three major stages: pre-crisis affairs, mid-crisis action, and post-crisis planning. Where pre-crisis focuses on the issues of location, mobility, and resources; mid-crisis deals with response, and impermanence; and post-crisis plans for objectives, and permanence.

Before Katrina hit New Orleans’ poor lived in the sectors most susceptible to flooding. All but two of the city’s public housing projects were in areas below sea level1. Incidentally these were also the citizens unable to afford personal transportation, relying instead on buses and eventually FEMA airlifts to emergency shelters faraway. Mobility is essential to the resilient response of evacuees1; car-ownership was higher in the least-flooded areas, and so many of them have also returned to rebuild. Poverty and the subsequent immobility has been a leading contributor to the continued need for temporary housing.

Hurricane Katrina created an unprecedented need for sheltering and temporary housing across a four-state area along the Gulf Coast2. This became the primary task of FEMA mid-crisis in order to save lives and prevent an escalation of the crisis. New Orleans infrastructure had been destabilized and in some cases annihilated3. If aid took more than a few days, “the survivors [would have] no choice but to loot,” and to “live on the sidewalk under a tarp.3" Temporary housing provided by FEMA consisted of thousands of “travel trailers ready for occupancy with utilities included.4” The trouble remained however with where to locate them. “One in four FEMA trailer parks initially proposed for previously undeveloped sites were rejected by the potential host communities. Temporary trailers and trailer parks impose focused costs on local communities but provide only diffuse benefits to cities and regions as a whole. Trailers provide necessary housing for workers and families who will improve the economic conditions of the city and region, but focus potential externalities, whether actual or expected, on local host communities. States and developers around the world regularly struggle to site controversial facilities, including nuclear power plants, incinerators, and airports. Temporary housing after a disaster seems to be no exception.” After examination it was found that the final placement of trailers had an inverse relationship to voter turnout in the previous political election (Fig.1). It is apparent then that FEMA used records of voter turn out to avoid communities with an active civil society.


FEMA coordinated resources to resolve six areas of needs: disaster and recovery policy, community services, home design and construction, housing finance and insurance, community planning, and infrastructure. Although originally focused on temporary housing, its major mission is to "facilitate the coordination of re-housing.2” Long-term community redevelopment, not just short-term sheltering and temporary housing was always their focus. Katrina evacuees living in shelters, hotels and motels were told of their option to “move on” with a free one-way airplane, train or bus tickets to any destination in the continental United States. "Our goal is to get people out of the shelters and commercial housing and into a normal lifestyle,” Federal Coordinating Officer Sandy Coachman said5. In short the role of FEMA in this disaster was to offer victims a means of evacuation, shelter while in exile, the means to return.

Information Sources
1. Colten, Craig E. 2009. Vulnerability and place: Flat land and uneven risk in new orleans. American Anthropologist 4. January 6, 2008 http://www3.interscience.wiley.com.proxy.lib.uwaterloo.ca/cgi-bin/fulltext/120127630/PDFSTART. (Accessed January 10, 2010)
2.Nigg, Joanne M., John Barnshaw, and Manuel R. Torres. 2006. Hurricane katrina and the flooding of new orleans: Emergent issues in sheltering and temporary housing. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 604, (, Shelter from the Storm: Repairing the National Emergency Management System after Hurricane Katrina) (Mar.): 113-28.
3.Ethridge, Robbie. 2006. Bearing witness: Assumptions, realities, and the otherizing of katrina. American Anthropologist 108, (4): 799-813.
4. 2005. Disaster housing - Alabama's no. 1 priority. Press Release,September 26. Federal Emergency Management Agency. 1605-038. http://www.fema.gov.proxy.lib.uwaterloo.ca/news/newsrelease.fema?id=19179 (accessed January 7, 2010).
5.2005. Katrina Evacuees Have Transportation Option. Press Release, October 19. Federal Emergency Management Agency. 1606-040. http://www.fema.gov.proxy.lib.uwaterloo.ca/news/newsrelease.fema?id=19179 (accessed January 10, 2010).

Timeline of the Airstream Company - Polly Auyeung

1920
Wally Byam builds his first trailer for his wife

1932
Byam first starts selling trailers to the public. They are called Airstreams because of their aerodynamic design.

1936
Airstream builds its first monocoque, all-aluminum trailer.

1955
The Wally Byam Caravan Club is formed. The first caravan of 100 Airstreams travels to Nova Scotia.

1958
Airstream introduces the "International", the first self-contained trailer in the industry.

1989
Airstream introduces the Land Yacht, a drastically different design constructed of laminated fiberglass.

2009

Architect and designer Christopher Deam is hired to redesign the Airstream. It reverts back to its classic form

Information Sources

Airstream Inc. "Timeline." Airstream Customer Service. 2009

http://service.airstream.com/customer-service/history/timeline.html (Accessed January 9, 2010)

Michael Brown - Polly Auyeung

It's difficult to track exactly who was the architect of the FEMA Katrina camps. There were many levels of bureaucracy: municipal, state, federal... all played a factor in the hurricane relief efforts. However one of the key decision makers was Michael Brown, the now former FEMA director. The following excerpts from a CNN article can provide insight into the leader's attitude:

Louisiana congressman says e-mails written by the government's emergency response chief as Hurricane Katrina raged show a lack of concern for the unfolding tragedy and a failure in leadership. [...]

Two days after Katrina hit, Marty Bahamonde, one of the only FEMA employees in New Orleans, wrote to Brown that "the situation is past critical" and listed problems including many people near death and food and water running out at the Superdome.

Brown's entire response was: "Thanks for the update. Anything specific I need to do or tweak?" [...]

Brown took over FEMA in 2003 with little experience in emergency management. He joined the agency in 2001 as legal counsel to his friend, then-FEMA director Joe Allbaugh, who was Bush's 2000 campaign manager. When Allbaugh left FEMA in 2003 Brown assumed the top job.

"In the midst of the overwhelming damage caused by the hurricane and enormous problems faced by FEMA, Mr. Brown found time to exchange e-mails about superfluous topics," including "problems finding a dog-sitter," Melancon said. [...]

Brown resigned amid accusations that FEMA acted too slowly after Katrina hammered Louisiana and Mississippi, killing more than 1,200 people. He defended the government's response and blamed leaders in Louisiana for failing to act quickly as the hurricane approached.

He acknowledged he made some mistakes as FEMA's director, but he stressed that the agency "is not a first responder," insisting that role belonged to state and local officials.

As a bonus the article attaches a link to many of the emails Brown sent

Infomation Sources

CNN. "'Can I quit now?' FEMA chief wrote as Katrina raged." CNN.com. November 4, 2005.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/11/03/brown.fema.emails/ (Accessed January 8, 2010)

Airstream Caravans - Polly Auyeung

An organized Airstream trailer gathering ("Rally or Rallies") are the core of what the Vintage Airstream Club and the Wally Byam Caravan Club Int'l are all about. The rally concept is an early one from the vintage era of the 1950s — a chance to use what Wally Byam intended his Airstream trailers to do, "hit the road, travel and explore our country, sharing discoveries and great places with other fellow Airstreamers."

The invention of the Airstream International in 1957 made these rallies possible. As the first "self-contained" trailer in the industry (with the first holding tank, the first ladder frame and the first pressurized water system), it did not have to rely on an external power and water source. The freedom from being "hooked-up" made it possible for people to travel anywhere with their airstreams.

Media References and Information Sources
1. WBCCI. "Rallies". The Vintage Airsteam Club. 2009
http://vintageairstreamclub.com/ (Accessed January 7, 2010)

Airstream Designers - Andreea Toca

Wally Byam (1896-1962)
After graduating from Standford University's Law School, he became a DIY magazine publisher. One article he published was on how to build a travel trailer. Readers wrote in complaining that the plans published were flawed, and once Byam tried it out himself, he too realised that they did not work.

Afterwards, Byam became inspired to build a working travel trailer. His first attempt had a great impact on the world of trailers and their evolution through history.

Road travelling became quite popular in the late 1920's, and Byam's now functional plans were a perfect fit with the social culture of the time. So, Byam started selling his plans, complete trailer kits or finished trailers he built himself in his backyard. Soon after, he became a full-time builder of masonite trailers and the Airstream Company was born in 1931.

1935; Bowlus Company was bought by Airstream.

William Hawley Bowlus (1896-1967):
Bowlus was a designer, engineer and builder of aircrafts (mainly gliders) before helping design the all aluminum trailers in 1936.

Information Sources
1. Banham, Russ. Wanderlust: Airstream at 75. Old Saybrook, Conneticut: Greenwich Publishing Group, 2005.