Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans ten years ago this month and Brad Pitt is celebrating. He’s been working to rebuild destroyed houses in the hard-hit Lower Ninth Ward since the hurricane left its path of destruction. He told the New Orleans Times-Picayune;
“We went into it incredibly naïve, just thinking ‘we can build homes – how hard is that?'”
A LOT harder than he thought, it turns out. But that didn’t stop him, his foundation Make It Right, or the residents from plugging along. Now, 109 colorful, well-built, ecofriendly homes dot the area that a decade ago was reduced to rubble, mud and debris and wrecked lives. As a part-time NOLA resident and architecture buff, Pitt wanted his foundation to build homes that not only suited the residents’ needs, but were well-designed and not only cheap(er) to make, but to live in.
“I get this well of pride when I see this little oasis of color and the solar panels. I drive into the neighborhood and I see people on their porch, and I ask them how is their house treating them? And they say, ‘Good.’ And I say what’s your utility bill? And they’ll throw something out like, ’24 bucks’ or something, and I feel fantastic.”
Some of the world’s best architects, including Shigeru Ban, Thom Mayne, and even Frank Gehry, designed some of the futuristic homes at Pitt’s urging. The area has now become one of New Orleans’ tourist attractions but it wasn’t easy getting to this point. Pitt says that he had no concept of the bureaucratic snags he would have to hurdle. But he was determined to make the homes aesthetically pleasing too and allow the residents to give their input. THEY were the ones who would be living there.
“The inhabitants, the families are the ones who designed the neighborhood. They had choices in front of them. They picked the houses to suit their needs. They picked the colors.
You do not have to build low-income housing with the cheapest materials that keep families in a poverty trap. Whether that be running up high utility bills or with toxic materials that run up your doctor bills. It doesn’t have to be that way.”
It’s nice to hear the good news once in a while, isn’t it?
(via Daily Mail)
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