Brad Pitt Makes it Right

NEW YORK — Brad Pitt expanded his commitment to
New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward yesterday 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 today’s 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 million 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 Ninth Ward.
The community Pitt announced today will address the dire need for
single-family housing in the Lower Ninth 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:

– Building 150 houses in the Lower Ninth Ward
– Ensuring a green, affordable, sustainable, and replicable community to
serve as a model for further rebuilding
– Including the Lower Ninth 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
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 Ninth 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 Ninth Ward and encourage it
to flourish.
Please see the attached overview of Make It Right and brief history of
the Lower Ninth Ward written by historian Doug Brinkley.
*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.

SOURCE Make It Right