Brad Pitt Goes To New Orleans, Makes Everything Better Again

Hurricane Katrina was awful to New Orleans, but if it hadn't have happened then Brad Pitt wouldn't have got the chance to lark about in New Orleans like a proper little architect, so it's not all bad.

Because Hurricane Katrina is almost two years old, Brad Pitt recently took a trip to New Orleans to see how the rebuilding process was coming along. In particular Brad Pitt wanted to see the affordable, sustainable housing that helped commission in a competition after the floods hit. And, by and large, Brad Pitt seemed to be pleased with the progress the project was making, even though he was clearly upset that someone had overruled his decision to lay the housing out so that you saw a giant picture of Brad Pitt's face when you looked at it from Google Earth. He didn't say it, but you could see it in his eyes. 

There's a good chance that Angelina Jolie was the best thing to ever happen to Brad Pitt, because if Brad Pitt hadn't been so desperate to get into her knickers then he probably wouldn't have started doing loads of charity work to impress her. And thank God that they did meet, because a) the charity work cuts down on the amount of time Brad Pitt gets to star in films, heavily reducing the chance of him making Meet Joe Black 2 and b) it meant that Brad Pitt could help New Orleans rebuild itself after Hurricane Katrina in a way that was actually useful, instead of just singing a cacky song like Sharon Stone.

Last year Brad Pitt launched a competition to rebuild New Orleans by seeking out designs for innovative, eye-catching, affordable, environmentally-sustainable housing. It was a win-win for everyone - New Orleans got both exposure and the means to undo the damage caused by the flood, a young architect got a celebrity-backed, high-profile commission and Brad Pitt was named as a great American and it made him feel like a special little intelligent architect instead of the bloke from Troy.

And yesterday Brad Pitt got to take a tour of the New Orleans project as part of the second-year commemoration Hurricane Katrina. USA Today reports:

Brad Pitt was seeing green Tuesday. The actor checked out the progress of the first "green" home being built as part of the Holy Cross Project in New Orleans' devastated Lower Ninth Ward. "This home proves we can build more thoughtfully, affordably and provide a better quality of life for the families within," Pitt said in a statement. To mark the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, he toured the project with representatives of Global Green USA and the Home Depot Foundation, the lead financial partner.

Although Ocean's Thirteen proved that if Brad Pitt gets any smugger he's literally going to dissolve, it's good to see that he's capable of large-scale acts of kindness in between making disappointing films and letting his bodyguard choke photographers. And it's thought that Brad Pitt's work in New Orleans will spur on other actors around the world to do other, equally conscientious, things with their free time. For example, if it weren't for Brad Pitt then Bombhead out of Hollyoaks wouldn't have designed the replacement for the Chesterfield branch of Pizza Hut that flooded in June on the back of a beermat with an orange wax crayon.

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Brad Pitt Tours New Orleans Homes - USA Today