make it right houses

Ginger. Make it Right house. New Orleans. deep fried kudzu, November 19, 2010

Deep Fried Kudzu is a website about southern life. Ginger, whose site it is, lives in Alabama and has an intense interest in folk art, material culture, cemeteries, food, architecture and craft. Her site is always delightful.  This week she posted a photo-report on the post-Katrina houses built by Make it Right, a charity headed by Brad Pitt. 

There is a house by Morphosis, by David Adjaye, and no doubt a number of other names.  They average $150,000 each.  If these photos are representative, these houses are making a very strange environment.   Some float, some collect rainwater, they are cubic and bright generally.  The New Orleans housing vernacular is nowhere to be seen. They are exhibition houses and most take a good photograph. 

Their logic is impeccable, staircases for people to sit and watch the sidewalk, expendable ground floors for the next flood, sleeping porches and such, but the language is Corbusier x trailer punk.  Each house is exceptional.
Not sure this is how one builds a community. 
Anyway, have a look here and see what you think. 

The house above I quite like for its sagging roof.  I wondered at first if it really was part of the project but then I found it on the Make it Right website.  For the life of me I cannot find anything about the architects of these houses on this very extensive site, so I don't know who did this.  Are the architects not important unless they are Morphosis?