Cheap Green Homes Make It Right In New Orleans

Brad Pitt wants to make New Orleans right. Since 2007, his Make It Right Foundation has been working to rebuild the hard-hit Lower Ninth Ward by building homes that are flood resistant, energy independent, and, most importantly, affordable.

After Hurricane Katrina struck the region in August of 2005, the breach of the Industrial Canal levee left the city’s poorest district in 25 feet of water. The particular geographic vulnerability of the area, combined with the inability of many residents to evacuate in time, meant that the Lower Ninth Ward was among the neighborhoods worst affected by the hurricane.

Brad Pitt founded Make It Right after witnessing firsthand the devastation wrought by the disaster. Long a proponent of good design, Pitt organized an international design competition that attracted submissions from hundreds of world-renowned architects. After a lengthy and often heated community design workshop, 21 architects were chosen to move forward with their designs.

To date, the foundation has raised over $31 million in donations and has completed 50 of the planned 150 new homes for the community. The goal is to limit the cost of construction of each home to around $150,000, with any overages paid by the foundation. Last month each of the completed homes generated more energy than it consumed.

The biggest challenge was to design low-cost, environmentally friendly homes that remained true to the area’s rich social and cultural traditions. Many of the new homes retain the long, narrow floor plan typical of New Orleans homes, but with added sustainability features like solar panels and rainwater collection systems. Steep canted roofs allow breezes to ventilate the inside spaces naturally, and deep overhangs provide protection from Louisiana’s scorching sun. Most are raised on 8-foot stilts to withstand any future floodwaters. Also necessary for any New Orleans home: a wide, shaded front porch for socializing and interacting with life on the street.

Make It Right is also committed to employing sustainable construction techniques identified in William McDonough’s influential book, Cradle to Cradle. The essence of McDonough’s green manifesto is that products should be manufactured using renewable materials and should be designed to be easily recycled or repurposed after its use is exhausted. For details on the materials and technologies used in the homes, see the list on the Make It Right website.

In addition to the green features employed in the homes themselves, the Make It Right neighborhood has incorporated a number of community-oriented design features, like an edible garden and a playground made entirely of recycled metals and plastics. The US Green Building Council has called the building site “the largest, greenest neighborhood of single family homes in America,” and has awarded it LEED Platinum status, its highest distinction for green construction.

“These houses here have exceeded my expectations,” Pitt recently told CNN. “The goal here was how do you build affordable housing that’s high-performance, and that is going to be strong enough to withstand the kind of weather that we’re seeing down here. Things that drive the price up, we’ve got to get down.” Pitt added that, though the first houses built were more expensive than anticipated, “we’re down to dollar-for-dollar what it costs to build anything else here… There is no reason to build any other way now.”

Pitt has his sights set high. Make It Right has garnered enormous attention from designers, policymakers, and popular media everywhere, and Pitt wants to leverage that recognition to expand the scope of the project to other parts of New Orleans and perhaps beyond. He hopes the initiative that the Make It Right foundation has taken in rebuilding one neighborhood in New Orleans will move others to adopt similar strategies elsewhere. “These people are pioneers here, and they have built the greenest neighborhood in the world,” he said. “And I see this as a template that will work in any climate, any condition.”

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