Brad Pitt On Rebuilding The Lower Ninth Ward: ‘This Project — It’s So Beyond Me!’

Updated 3:48 PM CST, Mon, Dec 1, 2008

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Tonight, Brad Pitt will premiere his Christmas-due film, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” in the city the story is set in — New Orleans. But Brad’s love of the city goes far beyond just filming in the town.

Brad recently returned to the patch that was devastated in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina to help a family move into a Lower Ninth Ward home built by his Make It Right Foundation.

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“You have no idea what a high it is for me to see the delight on people’s faces when they see how these homes work,” Brad said in a new interview, which appears in the January issue of Architectural Digest.

Brad combined his love of architecture and the environment in his Make It Right Foundation, utilizing ideas from architects from around the world to design affordable, sustainable homes.

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According to the magazine, Brad held meetings with the home designers, community leaders and residents and they all came up with guidelines for putting the neighborhood back together.

“I never had any idea that so many people would show up for this,” Brad said. “This model works and it’s replicable.”

Make It Right plans to build 150 homes in total, in an area – the Lower Ninth Ward – people were looking away from.

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“It seems to me that this is about fairness,” Brad said of rebuilding the predominantly black area. “We may have been designed equal, but we certainly weren’t born equal. I feel great happiness whenever we level the playing field.”

So far, six of the homes have been completed and Brad told the magazine he hopes the housing formula they created can be replicated worldwide.

“We’ve cracked something here…these houses redefine affordable housing…this is a proving ground for a bigger idea that could work globally,” he said. “This project is not mine anymore. It’s so beyond me.”

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