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Brad Pitt stops by green project site: New Orleans (AP) – Brad Pitt toured the construction site of a house in the city’s Lower 9th Ward that is based on the winning design in a competition he launched to help the area recover from Hurricane Katrina. Brad Pitt aims to keep focus on Katrina recovery: Pitt was in the Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood to tour an ecologically sustainable single-family being built by Global Green USA, an environmental group he backs. Brad Pitt tours New Orleans homes: Brad Pitt was seeing green Tuesday. The actor checked out progress on the first “green” home being built as part of the Holy Cross Project in New Orleans’ devastated Lower Ninth Ward. Brad Pitt may be in Prague, where his significant other, Angelina Jolie, is filming Wanted. But that won’t stop him from celebrating the fact that today in New Orleans, groundwork begins on the first of five energy-efficient solar homes.
Pitt spent $100,000 last summer to fund a design competition for an energy-efficient cluster of five houses, 18 apartments and a community center slated to be built in the Holy Cross neighborhood near the Mississippi River levee. On the first anniversary of Katrina, architects Andrew Kotchen and Matthew Berman of New York City were chosen to plan the development. Housing project needed Hollywood muscle – Greenola could become a template for sustainable communities along the Katrina-ravaged Gulf Coast On Thursday, builders of the first single-family homes in Greenola’s eco-development broke ground. In a city where so may infrastructure and housing projects have been delayed or cancelled, where bureaucratic incompetence has paralysed vital reconstruction, and where federal money has been slow to reach the people who need it most, this is a remarkable achievement. …it’s an important initiative offering a prototype for sustainable housing for a city in search of an economy and a stable populations. Designed by Workshop APD…the development consists of five single-family homes, an 18-unit apartment building, a day car facility and a community center. It occupies less than half and acre of land. Greenola’s client is Global Green USA, the savvy American affiliate of Green Cross International, which was founded by former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in 1993. Matt Petersen is the president and front man of Global Green – he’s the guy who convinced Salma Hayek and Penelope Cruz to diver energy-efficient cars to this year’s Academy Awards gala rather than traveling in gas guzzling limousines. Planning panel approves ‘green’ project – Low income Housing backed by Brad Pitt ...the prosaic terminology of government bureaucracy could not hide the unusual nature of the project that won approval last week from the New Orleans City Planning Commission: a 23-unit “environmentally friendly” low-income residential development in the Lower 9th Ward being built by Global Green with backing from actor Brad Pitt. The complex is being designed, thanks to the use of solar panels and other “green” technology, to require 75 percent less energy than typical New Orleans buildings, said Beth Galante, director of Global Green’s New Orleans office. Global Green hopes to break ground in May and complete the first home by August 29, the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Galante said. New Orleans Project Backed by Brad Pitt Unveiled The outlines of an eco-friendly residential development backed by actor Brad Pitt were sketched on Thursday in a New Orleans neighborhood hit hard by Hurricane Katrina… Global Green said the Home Depot Foundation had agreed to be lead funder for the $9 million project, which is expected to be finished by August 2008. Separately, it said it received $2 million from the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund for a project to make New Orleans schools more environmentally friendly. Pitt’s Gift to the Big Easy – GreeN.O.L.A by Workshop/APD The rebuilding of New Orleans is one of the most pressing projects on the national agenda. Pitching in, actor Brad Pitt, an aficionado of design and architecture, put some of his movie moola where his big heart is by underwriting a design contest for an ecologically adventurous reconstruction project. The winner of the competition, which was sponsored by Global Green USA, was the New York firm Workshop/APD, whose principles are Andrew Kotchen and Matthew Berman. |
Holy Cross Project Designs Press Contacts Sam Boykin Jeanne Nathan |
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