Brad Pitt Builds Green Houses

We’ve all heard about New Orleans’ many famous denizens. Archie Manning’s and Anne Rice’s homes are staples of any New Orleans Garden District tour worth its red beans and rice. But newer to the New Orleanian fold are the most famous Hollywood stars that operate under a single unifying moniker. I am, of course, referring to Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. The two megastars purchased a high end property in the French Quarter to make their primary residence, and more important than the added tourist dollars that their collective star power will bring to our city (reports of Angelina sightings in French Quarter restaurants and playgrounds are a current mainstay of tabloids) is the pledge that the couple are making to rebuild the city.

Pitt, who is interested in architecture and has studied under Frank Gehry, has pledged 5 million of his own dollars to begin a homebuilding initiative, dubbed Make It Right (MIR), which will focus on building new homes for families who lost theirs in Hurricane Katrina. The homes will be built to LEED standards, which further demonstrates Pitt’s dedication to environmental causes. The homes built so far have an interesting visual style. While some designs allude to the New Orleans “shotgun” style of home design and have drawn praise for this, some others are more unusual and have drawn criticism for being similar in appearance to double-wide trailers. Ugh. I think, however, we should all remember that Brad has excellent aesthetic tastes (look at his wife) and that he should be lauded, rather than criticized for his humanitarian efforts.

I have included some photos of MIR’s housing designs at the top of this post. What do you think of them?