Pitt designs own role in Big Easy renewal

Celebrities have worked for decades for such causes as global poverty and AIDS – staging concerts, speaking at hearings, generating donations. But there’s no script for swaying public opinion in the elite domain of architecture.
Brad Pitt, though, has passionate interest in his favor.
“I’m an architectural junkie,” the actor explains, “like the screaming girl in the crowd.”
Pitt is speaking by phone from New Orleans, where he has presided over a summer-long architectural contest to create eco-friendly housing. (The winning entry, by two New York architects, looks like a smart solution to a widespread problem, although it’s no swirl of cutting-edge aesthetics.)
The contest was the actor’s idea, says Matt Petersen, director of Global Green, Pitt’s partner in the New Orleans competition. Pitt has been frustrated over the slow pace of reconstruction in the Gulf region.
“I don’t understand why it’s taking so long,” Pitt says. “We have a real opportunity to turn this catastrophe into something better. It’s a real issue of justice.
“We’re out there in the world trying to sell democracy, and we can’t take care of our own. It’s embarrassing.”
By adopting a neighborhood – Holy Cross in the Ninth Ward – Pitt’s hope is to jump-start the rebuilding process while providing a new standard for architecture that would give the rebuilt city a reputation for forward-thinking design.
The contest’s jury included such experts as the Pritzker Architecture Prize winner Thom Mayne. The winning project, called GREEN.O.LA by Andrew Kotchen and Matthew Berman of Workshop/APD, offered the most potential for adapting to various settings.
Pitt attributes his interest in architecture to a college course about Frank Lloyd Wright. (A picture of Fallingwater, the Pennsylvania house that Wright famously cantilevered over a brook, “really blew my mind,” he says. It proved that people didn’t have to “live in a box.”)
More recently, he has been taken by the work of Frank Gehry, whose Guggenheim Bilbao museum in Spain moved Pitt to tears, he says. (He describes Gehry as a “friend and mentor” but clarifies that a story of an apprenticeship at the architect’s studio is “officially incorrect.”)
The actor says he is inspired by a walk through a beautiful building. By extension, he can see how a thoughtfully designed community center and apartment building – with geothermal heating, recycled rainwater and trellises for shade – could become a healing element for residents.