Brad Pitt hopes to build “green” in New Orleans

By Peter Henderson

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) – Actor Brad Pitt and high-profile
architects on Friday urged New Orleans to think green,
selecting a series of environmentally friendly housing projects
they hope to build in the hurricane-hit city.

Flanked by prize-winning architect Thom Mayne and Pam
Dashiell, president of the neighborhood association in the Holy
Cross area where the first project is slated to be built, Pitt
said construction and housing were major sources of pollution.

“There is a real opportunity here to lead the nation in a
direction it needs to be going, and that is building
efficiently,” he said.

At the same time, Pitt said he was shocked and disturbed to
see how slowly New Orleans was recovering from Hurricane
Katrina, which hit nearly 11 months ago and flooded 80 percent
of the city.

Pitt underwrote and chaired the design competition for
environmentally friendly housing with the goal of creating a
template for New Orleans.

A judging panel chiefly composed of architects chose five
finalists and an honorable mention from a group of 126 mostly
multi-family plans that used renewable resources, solar power
and other green strategies.

Finalists will be unveiled on the Web site of Global Green
USA, www.globalgreen.org, the group working with Pitt, which is
now looking for financing for projects.

Finalists ranged from a design in a typical New Orleans
style to one apparently inspired by modernist Mies van der
Rohe, Mayne said.

Mayne is designing a Central Park-style Jazz park for the
center of New Orleans and argued that New Orleans housing, like
his park design, could be aesthetically modern.

New Orleans is known for columned and balconied homes as
well as long cypress-wood “shotgun” shacks built to suck in the
slightest breeze and carry it through the building.

“That’s all I do — build things that frighten people in
the beginning,” he said.

Dashiell said she thought her neighborhood, on the edge of
the Lower Ninth Ward area most devastated by Katrina, would
embrace modern-style buildings, and hot New Orleans, dependent
on air conditioners, needed energy efficiency.

“Half the time your energy bill is as much as your
mortgage,” she said. “People don’t like change, but if there
ever was a time for it, this is it.”