Five years ago, on August 23, 2005 Hurricane Katrina destroyed over 4,000 homes in New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward district, devastating the neighborhood. Two years later, actor Brad Pitt toured the neighborhood, finding it still destroyed. That year he founded Make It Right, an organization committed to rebuilding the Lower 9th Ward by building 150 new homes.

Much has been written about the effort, particularly in architectural circles. Was this another of Brad Pitt's architectural tourist spots, along the lines of the famous glue-gun incident in Frank Gehry's office? Was this like the dozens of other initiatives to rebuild New Orleans, destined to fail again because of poor local planning and even more overreach of architectural theory? Three years on it is easy to answer these questions.

The project has built or is in the process of building 20% of the homes promised, all of them affordable, environmentally sustainable, and storm resistant. For that alone, this project is Character Approved. But what makes it even more extraordinary is that all of the homes are architecturally interesting, without being tone-deaf to the rich culture and community that exists in the Lower 9th. The houses range from tweaked green-built prefabricated shotgun houses to some workable interpretations of those homes that expand our notion of what a house in New Orleans can be. The project is on track to help bring back the Lower 9th, while also setting the gold standard for how to do community-based architectural planning.

[Image: Make it Right]