Few are the reasons we would interrupt an architect on charette, that deadline-crazed period just before a design is due, but when we heard that Judith Kinnard was getting ready to meet Brad Pitt, well, we had to give the UVA architecture prof a call.
O.K., she’s not exactly getting ready to meet Mr. World Leader Pretend, not until her design gets to the final round anyway, but she and several colleagues were busy last week preparing their entry for an architectural competition that he’s sponsoring to benefit New Orleans’ flood-ravaged Ninth Ward. Pitt teamed up with Global Green, an environmental organization best known for its efforts to stem climate change, eliminate weapons of mass destruction, and provide clean drinking water to the one-third of the world’s population that does without it. In branching into architecture (long a favored Pitt cause), Global Green sees an opportunity to advance the issue of sustainable development in New Orleans—still in a shambles eight months after Hurricane Katrina. Here at C-VILLE, we see it as a chance to get one degree of separation closer to Shiloh’s daddy, and oh yes, we commend any and all efforts to restore dignity and livability to the Crescent City.
Kinnard and another UVA A-prof, former Charlottesville Mayor Maurice Cox, along with a former student, Justin Laskin, and landscape architect Pete O’Shea are taking a “modernist” approach to the assignment, which encompasses six single-family homes, 12 apartments, a day care center and a community center in a single city block. Additionally, they foresee using recycled materials salvaged from flood-wrecked structures.
Kinnard and Cox are old hands in the competition biz, but Kinnard says the Hollywood element has enhanced this charette. “Brad Pitt has been interested in architecture for a long time,” she says. “I heard through the grapevine that a huge number of people registered for the competition. I think his name certainly adds a bit of interest.”
We have no idea what she’s talking about.
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