Make It Right Houses

Actor Brad Pitt established the Make It Right Foundation in 2007 to provide houses for people of the Lower Ninth Ward who lost their homes after the levee failed and Hurricane Katrina’s storm surge flooded this neighborhood with twelve feet of water. Approximately one hundred houses have been built, mostly along four streets parallel to the flood protection wall and the Industrial Canal. Some of the new houses are inventive and colorful reinterpretations of traditional New Orleans residential types, such as the shotgun house, but others follow more traditional forms. Prominent architects from the region, the nation, and elsewhere in the world, who participated in the rebuilding effort, are responsible for the more creative designs. Although there are still some vacant lots between these houses, the contrast with the mostly empty streets a few blocks downriver is striking and speaks to the devastation the area experienced. However, the lack of a coherent urban program has demonstrated that high profile individual buildings do not constitute a successful urban neighborhood.