A year ago, actor Brad Pitt presented lot owners in the devastated Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans with a portfolio of designs by 13 well-regarded architects, saying, in essence, choose a design and your house will be built. The first six homes built by Pitt’s Make It Right Foundation are now finished. They represent not only fresh starts for homeowners, but also blueprints for affordable, storm-resistant, and sustainable housing designs. ArchRecord | Slideshow | prev. | related feature: The Pink Project
4 Comments
Of the completed houses, I like Graft's design best. it's traditional but not too much, definitely a bit funky, and looks livable. I especially like that front stair, nice and wide at the bottom, great place to sit.
not a fan of any of them really - too diagrammatic and not enough attention to resolving details within the available labor standards. plus, the party wall elevations on all of them are terribly disappointing.
hate to say it, but the katrina cottages beat any of these (different animal, yes, but still)...
they definitely sized like ante has been raised quite a bit for some former residents, and i don't know what that really means.
does that mean some people can't come back to their former neighborhood? this has been a question from the get go.
i also wonder if the property has changed hands post katrina would still make it eligible for a mir assistance?
nevertheless, it is a big accomplishment to built first six houses.
wow, that concordia one is really quite strange.
i agree it's great that these have been built. but as examples of forward-looking architecture i'm somewhat disappointed. maybe they're great on the inside. but none of them make me feel like it wouldn't have been better to have built some cleverly reinforced, stripped down NOLA shotgun houses on concrete piers with low-e windows and solar panels or something.
or even actually built some strange pink houses with no details. that would have been something.
Block this user
Are you sure you want to block this user and hide all related comments throughout the site?
Archinect
This is your first comment on Archinect. Your comment will be visible once approved.