Brad Pitt (and low-income housing)!
Brad Pitt's marital choices will continue to inspire debate, but the man has good taste in architecture. A year ago his Make It Right Foundation unveiled 13 designs by leading architects for new low-income housing in New Orleans. The first half-dozen single-family houses have been finished, Architectural Record reports, and they're adding much-needed splashes of inspiration and verve to some downbeat neighborhoods.
The per-house budget for the dwellings is $150,000. The foundation admits that it can stay under that cost only by making use of donated materials and other services. Still, that keeps the houses affordable, and the plan is to build 150; the foundation expects to have 40 up by the end of next summer.
Most of the baker's dozen architects went for updated variations on traditional New Orleans houses, which emphasize "porch culture." But not every homeowner has proved to be an architectural conservative: one opted for a modernist design by James Timberlake, of the firm KieranTimberlake, which features a flat roof, sharp edges, and a wooden screen or trellis defining the south side of the building. Ultimately, the screen will fill in with vines and soften the structure.
That real people are living in these houses makes the design presented by the avant-garde firm MRVDV look even more like a travesty than it did a year ago. MRVDV opted to make a political statement, producing a house that looked as if it had already been toppled by a storm -- an oblique shot, perhaps, at President Bush and federal neglect of the city. They got a few high fives from architectural critics, along with plenty of brickbats. Meanwhile, the other firms designed homes for Louisianans.
(Credit for the two photographs: Virginia Miller. All images courtesy of the Make It Right Foundation)
