Tabloid celebrity coverboy Brad Pitt is planning to build at least 150 eco-friendly homes in New Orleans’ Lower 9th Ward by the end of the summer of 2008, as part of the Make It Right initiative designed to help the area recover from Hurricane Katrina. “I’m hoping we can expand here and expand over into the rest of New Orleans,” the 43-year-old actor said Monday morning in an interview on NBC’s “Today” show as he walked through the devastated neighborhood.
Pitt, who has also worked with the environmental organization Global Green USA to build five single-family homes and an 18-unit apartment complex and community center, has pledged $5 million of his own money toward the project and - calling himself “not much of a salesman” - was campaigning for more donations for the cause.”I mean, this is really an adopt-a-house campaign,” he said. “I’m asking for foundations, for high net-worth individuals, for church groups, for corporations to come in and adopt a house — basically, $150,000 will get a family back in their home.”
The Make It Right website says Pitt and partner Steve Bing are committed to:
- Building 150 houses in the Lower 9th Ward
- Ensuring a green, affordable, sustainable, and replicable community to serve as a model for further rebuilding
- Including the Lower 9th Ward community as an integral part of the process
- Forming a core team of local, national and international architects
- Utilizing sustainable construction practices; William McDonough + Partners, an internationally recognized practitioner of Cradle to Cradle design, will lead this effort.
- A finance plan that ensures that residents who wish to return to the Lower Ninth Ward can do so without further financial hardship
The organization’s commitment to sustainability isn’t just a surface thing - the Cradle to Grave design 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. Here’s how: 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.
I’m not a huge Brad Pitt fan - never have been. I’m not the right demographic, I guess. But in a world filled with celebrities making shallow PR gestures, it’s hard not to like one who is putting $5 million of his own money into this kind of venture, along with, clearly, a lot of thought.
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