Brad Pitt’s Make It Right Foundation will unveil a house today in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward, a neighborhood that was largely wiped away by Katrina floodwaters. The house is different from others that were rebuilt after the hurricane: It floats.
The Float House is a new model for flood-safe, affordable and sustainable housing that is designed to float securely with rising water levels. It is the brainchild of Morphosis Architects and its founder, Thom Mayne, winner of the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize.
“We rethought the idea of a house in terms of the potential conditions of the flooding that took place in Katrina,” Mayne tells Melissa Block.
He says the designers gave the building a chassis, made it out of polystyrene foam and covered it with glass-reinforced concrete.