Brad Pitt, Steve Bing Plan New 150-Home Community in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward
Brad Pitt expanded his commitment to New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward by announcing plans for a new community of homes in the area hardest-hit by the worst natural disaster in American history. He is partnering with Steve Bing in creating the 150 affordable and sustainable homes, which are the first effort of Pitt's "Make it Right" project.
Pitt announced his plan at the meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative, where he challenged attendees to join him and Bing in rebuilding the Lower Ninth Ward. Pitt pledged to match $5 million in contributions to the project. Bing has pledged to match $5 million in contributions as well, for a total of $10,000,000 in matching funds.
The spirit of the community's culture is central to Make It Right. "The heart and soul of New Orleans, specifically the people of the Lower 9th Ward, are paramount to this project," said Pitt. "The words of one elderly man who is determined to return to New Orleans led to the name of our organization: he asked us, directly simply and profoundly, to help make it right. So that's what we're doing. We're going to help to make it right with 150 sustainable, affordable houses—houses that stand out for their design both aesthetically and structurally, so that these people can live in beautiful safe structures that respect their spirit and provide a good quality of life."
Pitt became a part-time resident of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. After seeing the devastation first hand and meeting with the hardest-hit residents, he began the Make It Right project to catalyze the rebuilding of the Lower 9th Ward. The community Pitt will address the dire need for single-family housing in the Lower 9th Ward and further spark rebuilding efforts in one of the richest cultural communities in America, an area that saw houses not just flooded by water, but swept off their foundations. Pitt and Bing said Make it Right is committed to: Core Make It Right team members also include Graft, an innovative architecture firm that Pitt has collaborated with on projects around the world; Cherokee Gives Back Foundation, the nonprofit arm of Cherokee, a firm that specializes in remediation and sustainable redevelopment of environmentally impaired properties; and Trevor Neilson and Nina Killeen, advisors to the Jolie-Pitt Foundation. Make It Right's mission is built upon catalyzing redevelopment of the Lower Ninth Ward by building a neighborhood of safe and healthy homes that incorporates modern, high-quality design and construction while preserving the spirit of the community's culture. Last year, Pitt worked with Global Green in developing sustainable green multi-family housing in the Lower 9th Ward. In addition to replacing housing destroyed by Katrina, the sustainable design incorporated into the homes will help ease the financial burden of high energy costs and reduce their environmental impact. The effort, which began with an architectural competition, sought to bring opportunity out of the devastation of Katrina by creating something better than was there before. Make It Right is taking this project a step further by committing to a community of safe, sustainable homes that incorporate the spirit and culture of the Lower 9th Ward and encourage it to flourish. ### Make It Right is collaborating with William McDonough + Partners to develop the environmental criteria guiding the project, using Cradle to Cradle thinking to influence design and materials selections for the new homes. This philosophy, developed by William McDonough and Michael Braungart in Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things (North Point Press, 2002), was inspired by natural systems. In the natural world, the sun continually generates new growth and feeds living systems. One organism's waste nourishes another—waste equals food. Ideally, all products could be reused as nutrients in either biological or technical systems, indefinitely recycled back into comparable products. This is the next-generation goal we are working towards using today's products and technologies. Click Here to Visit MakeItRightNola.org
