Brad Pitt and his Make It Right foundation got hit in a weird way in the New York Times over the weekend. The NYT sent someone from the “Travel” section down to New Orleans to check out what New Orleanians are calling “Brad Pitt Houses”. These are the dozen or so “green” homes Make It Right has put up in the lower Ninth Ward. The travel writer got mixed reviews of the homes… and yet… I don’t know, it’s a weird article. The full NYT piece is here, but here are some of the highlights:

AL ANDREWS, who lives on Tennessee Street in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, said he didn’t mind the tour buses coming through his neighborhood, but he wished the visitors “would give some of what they pay to the community.” Mr. Andrews lives in one of the brightly colored, modernist houses rising on a small patch of the Lower Ninth, four years after it was devastated by Hurricane Katrina.

In 2007, frustrated by the slow pace of rebuilding in the Lower Ninth, Brad Pitt set up a foundation called Make It Right; the foundation then commissioned 13 architecture firms to design affordable, green houses. The organization plans to build 150 homes, all for returning Lower Ninth residents. So far, just 15 of them are occupied, but those 15 make a big impression.

Indeed, from the main route into the Lower Ninth, the Claiborne Avenue Bridge, it’s impossible to miss the Brad Pitt Houses, as everyone here calls them. They are sprawling, angular buildings in bold hues not usually seen outside a gelateria. Monuments to the city’s resilience, and to Hollywood’s big heart, they are also New Orleans’s newest tourist attraction.

“Brad Pitt’s neighborhood” is a beehive of activity, with builders and landscapers vastly outnumbering residents. A sign in front of each of the houses gives the name and city of its architect. One, called the Float House, was designed by the Pritzker Prize-winner Thom Mayne of Los Angeles. The main part of the house is built to rise with surging flood waters, on pylons that keep it from coming loose. It’s difficult to see the innovative foundation, but unusual external features are easy to spot, such as a kind of trellis cut into intricate patterns and painted turquoise, set against the raspberry-hued building.

Nearby, an angular house by GRAFT, a multinational architecture firm, features a porch enclosure that looks as though it had been cracked open by a storm, an unfortunate visual resonance. A house by the Japanese architect Shigeru Ban has a private courtyard space between the living room and bedrooms, but none of the detailing that would make it feel like a part of New Orleans.

Indeed, the houses seem better suited to an exhibition of avant-garde architecture than to a neighborhood struggling to recover. A number of designers I talked to, some of whom had visited the neighborhood, lamented the absence of familiar forms that would have comforted returning residents.

James Dart, a Manhattan-based architect who was born and raised in New Orleans, described the houses as “alien, sometimes even insulting,” adding, “the biggest problem is that they are not grounded in the history of New Orleans architecture.” But, like other architects I spoke to, he expressed admiration for Mr. Pitt. “He deserves a great deal of credit,” Mr. Dart said, adding that Mr. Pitt had “done more for New Orleans” than any government agency.

Jennifer Pearl, a broker who has several houses for sale in the Lower Ninth, has a practical view. “Brad has the very best intentions,” she said. “However, had he come here with houses that looked like what had been here before, he probably could have had four times, five times as many houses up by now.”

Another issue with the houses (except for Mr. Mayne’s) is their elevation: to protect them from future floods, they have been built on stilts that turn their front porches into catwalks. The goal of porches is to create a sense of community, and that’s hard to do when neighbors and passersby are literally overshadowed.

“It’s like New York — you know, the skyscrapers,” said Ms. LeBlanc, who lives in a single-story house next to one of the much larger Make It Right creations, like a Mini Cooper boxed in by SUVs. “And there are going to be more,” she added.

To most residents, the construction is simply good news. “It’s hard living here now, but it’s going to be worth it,” said Melba Leggett-Barnes, a cafeteria worker, who is concerned about crime in the neighborhood. The lack of commercial activity is also disappointing. “We used to be able to go to the corner store,” she said. “Now we don’t have a grocery; we don’t have a laundry.”

Ms. Leggett-Barnes, whose house was designed by the Philadelphia firm KieranTimberlake, is — literally — the poster child for Make It Right; her image, plastered on bus-shelter signs around the city, urges former residents to return to the neighborhood.

“There may be people who want to move back,” she said, “but don’t know that it’s possible.”

[From The New York Times]

I don’t really get the criticism… so, some people are upset that the architecture is not the same classic New Orleans stuff. Okay. But the classic New Orleans architecture was drowned. Perhaps using different styles in a different way isn’t such a bad thing? And the complaints about how the skyline is shifting? Same thing – your city was built below sea level, folks. I’m sorry, and I feel for you, but I don’t feel get the complaints about a structure being tall enough to survive another levee breech. Gawker points out that the lesson could be: “Volunteerism sucks sometimes. Even if you’re Brad Pitt, to someone, somewhere, you still can’t do the right thing, no matter how hard you try. Depressing, right?”

Gawker also gets a quote from a genuine New Orleans resident/blogger, The Cajun Boy, who says: “I have absolutely nothing but respect and admiration for Pitt for all he’s done back home. So often we as a culture fixate on the endlessly retarded ways celebrities spend their money and often overlook the instances where they use their money and influence to do genuine good. Contrast Pitt with Nic Cage, another celebrity who bought property in the area. Pitt’s become a true part of the community while Cage’s houses are now up for auction because he has a fetish for stupid sh-t: shrunken skulls, exotic cars, etc. Brad Pitt should be lauded for what he’s done. I personally would run through a wall of fire for him. And then I’d cook him up a pot of crawfish etoufee, because that’s just how we do where I come from.” Well – it looks like the Brangelina is now causing controversy in Travel sections. That’s how bad it’s gotten!

Brad Pitt photographed at the Clinton Global Initiative in September, discussing Make It Right. Additional photos of the “Brad Pitt Houses” in New Orleans courtesy of MakeItRight.org (additional photos at website).