Hasta La Ideas

There’s been lots of swooning and applauding over the years for actor-turned-architect Brad Pitt over these past few years because of his Make It Right program which has gotten lots of starchitects designing homes for displaced residents of New Orleans. Heck, the guy even landed the cover of Architectural Digest for his efforts. But while a lot of good has been done, in a report filed by the NY Times‘ Fred Bernstein about the project, he slips in a few bits of criticism, receiving some quotes that maybe Pitt and Co. have upset the unique look and feel of the city, robbing some of what made New Orleans “New Orleans” by bringing in all those starchitecture ideas:

Indeed, the houses seem better suited to an exhibition of avant-garde architecture than to a neighborhood struggling to recover. A number of designers I talked to, some of whom had visited the neighborhood, lamented the absence of familiar forms that would have comforted returning residents.

…Jennifer Pearl, a broker who has several houses for sale in the Lower Ninth, has a practical view. “Brad has the very best intentions,” she said. “However, had he come here with houses that looked like what had been here before, he probably could have had four times, five times as many houses up by now.”

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