Cory Johnson and Carol Massar of Bloomberg Radio talk with William McDonough at Sage Summit 2015, about his latest projects and the positive impact Make It Right has had on the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans.
Here is a portion of the conversation:
Cory Johnson (CJ): “I think what you guys did with Make It Right here in New Orleans, is so fascinating. But I also think the way that you started it, is bonkers and wonderful. Tell me about the pink houses, what happened there?”
William McDonough (WM): “Oh well, it was something that Brad initiated, it was very exciting.”
CJ: “Brad Pitt who’s apparently a friend or something.”
WM: “Brad Pitt, he’s a friend of mine.”
CJ: “But a big architectural fan?”
WM: “Yes, indeed and a great designer in his own, right. Brad, called me after we wrote Cradle to Cradle and said can we do something together? And we decided to do something in New Orleans and that something small, would be lost. And we, we really wanted to help. So, we decided to do 150 houses in the Lower Ninth Ward, where the levy broke by the barge and a lot of people passed away there. So we started there. Brad was filming in New Orleans at the time, a movie at the time called Benjamin Button and in filming you have pink as the green screen so to speak, outdoors, because you can’t have green. Because there’s other green around, you need something that isn’t natural. So it was pink. So he had been filming that day and he had a pink house standing in front of the house they put in later, he said you know this is the house that’s missing, it gets filled in later, what if we put pink houses all over the Lower Ninth where we’re going to build and show everybody what’s missing.”
