On behalf Global Green USA’s board of directors and competition jury chair Brad Pitt, welcome to the Sustainable Design Competition for New Orleans – Advancing the Green Rebuilding of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast!

This competition combines Global Green USA’s commitment to green affordable housing, sustainable cities, and climate solutions that work for communities, with Brad Pitt’s passion for intelligent architecture. The competition is a central component of Global Green USA’s sustainable rebuilding initiative for New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, which began 10 days after the landfall of Hurricane Katrina. The idea for the competition developed from a conversation between Brad Pitt and myself at the Clinton Global Initiative meeting in New York City in September 2005.

This design competition is truly an opportunity to give back to New Orleans, the birthplace of great culture, music, food, and architecture. It is our goal that green design, clean energy and healthy building be central to the rebuilding of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Using culturally, environmentally and climactically appropriate designs, materials and strategies, we hope the submissions to this competition will use great creativity and offer powerful ideas to help achieve this goal.

Global Green USA’s “Healthy Homes and Smart Neighborhoods Response Team” initiative for New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region is an outgrowth of the organization’s decade-long commitment to improving the lives of low-income families through greening affordable housing, creating sustainable neighborhoods, and advancing climate solutions that work for communities. In short, focusing on community solutions that address two of our greatest global challenges: climate change, and poverty.

Global Green USA’s goals include: greening 10,000 homes (via policy incentives through tax credit financing and guidelines developed with organizations such as Habitat for Humanity); educating the public and professionals about green and healthy building (via our New Orleans resource center, education, and workshops); encouraging the greening schools and places of worship. With support from the Home Depot Foundation, Jerry and Ann Moss, and dozens of individuals (including staff members of Global Green USA), we opened a New Orleans’ office in February and a Green Building Resource Center in May. The office and center were established also in part to serve as a design collective – with a front end education center for the public and professionals with nearly museum quality display of products and systems that are green, of good design, and regionally available -- to help build the green building expertise of the local professional community. The competition will help advance this goal.