Duplex house for Make It Right / Atelier Hitoshi Abe

We have told you in the past about Brad Pitt´s Make It Right Foundation. They have been working with a group of international architects to redevelop the Lower 9th Ward in New Orleans, after hurricane Katrina. The name of the foundation addresses the desire of Pitt, architecture enthusiast, to design these houses the best way and not just as a temporary solution, in a process that also included working not only with these renowned firms, but also very close with the community, with a focus on sustainable development.

At Make it Right, they submitted their idea to the Pepsi Refresh Project. The most voted idea will receive $250,000. If Make It Right would receive this grant, the money will go towards continuing to help build affordable, sustainable, high-designed and storm resistant homes for families in the Lower Ninth Ward. So click here to vote for their idea and help them carry out this great project!

GRAFT was one of the first practices that started working with Make It Right to redevelop the Lower 9th Ward area in New Orleans. Their single family home design has been picked by 3 homeowners so far, with 2 already finished and 1 in construction phase.

GRAFT’s proposal for the new set of duplex homes we featured yesterday, has LEED Platinum certification and in my opinion proposes an interesting strategy to connect with the street level, mandatory to all MIR projects.

Architect’s description and more images after the break:

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Atelier Hitoshi Abe shared with us their duplex house for the new phase of the Make It Right project we presented earlier. A renovated version of a shotgun house, the Hotlinks project offers several configurations depending on the client´s needs as described on the architect´s description and diagrams after the break:

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William McDonough + Partners duplex home for Make It Right

Brad Pitt´s Make It Right Foundation has been working with a group of international architects to redevelop the Lower 9th Ward in New Orleans, after hurricane Katrina. The name of the foundation addresses the desire of Pitt, architecture enthusiast, to design these houses the best way and not just as a temporary solution, in a process that also included working not only with these renowned firms, but also very close with the community, with a focus on sustainable development.

The designs are referential, and each client (as the houses aren´t “free”, yet they use existing finance ways and low interest loans) can pick a design, which is then adjusted by local firm John C. Williams Architects to suite the client´s needs.

A first phase included single family homes, designed by practices such as Kieran Timberlake, Shigeru Ban, Morphosis, MVRDV and Trahan Architects. As of now 8 houses have been built, and more than 10 houses are already on construction or in the permit process.

Make It Right has recently unveiled a second phase with 14 duplex homes to accommodate up to 2 families, which include a site-specific sustainable strategy and flexible plans for future family growth. But also, the practices were required to meet integration with the street and the use of landscaping as a design and energy element.

The result?  The 14 duplex homes after the break:
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It’s no mystery that you don´t need to graduate from architecture school at university to become an architect – just ask Le Corbusier, Mies or Frank Lloyd Wright.

Clearly Brad Pitt didn´t go to school either, but trust me that I wouldn´t be too surprised to see him receiving an architect award or the honorary title from a renowned US university. Who´s more “architect”? The one that went to school and never built, o the one who didn´t went to school and builds?

Despite the fact that he states that “whilst acting is my career, architecture is my passion”,  not only he has more work that most of the architects i know.  As if announcing a 800 room sustainable hotel in Dubai wasn´t enough, he spent his visit to Washington DC meeting senators and congressmen -such as Nancy Pelosi, as pictured above-  to gather support for this project/foundation Make It Right, aiming to develop housing prototypes for the reconstruction of New Orleans.

This project works with practices such as MVRDV, Shigeru Ban and Morphosis, who developed 13 prototypes for the first stage to consolidate a 150-house neighborhood, having 90 financed so far thanks to donations to his foundation.

On previous news about Brad Pitt and his passion for architecture, several people commented that this was just an actor´s caprice… I would take this more seriously.  The fact of studying at an architecture school or not  seems very irrelevant to me, compared to the smart way on using his fame and exposition to develop and finance architectural projects, such as his house, a multi million dollar hotel, restaurants and interiors with Frank Ghery or a foundation to rebuild New Orleans, getting goverment´s attention and raising dozens of millions of dollars, something that lots of architects would really like to.

I´ve heard of very succesful architects coming from totallly unrelated backgrounds, such as finances… it seems that Hollywood and architecture don´t work bad either.

But beyond the anecdotal aspect, I think that what´s remarkable on this is how an “outsider” to the architecture world is able to give us a good teaching on how to origin, develop and finance an interesting project such as MIR making a good use of his available resources, such as public image and influence on this case.