Brad Pitt’s Architects Give New Orleans Safer, Snazzier Homes

As I strolled along Tennessee Street in New Orleans at dusk earlier this month, I saw neighbors chatting on shady porches and a few friends drinking at a picnic table under a house set high on stilts.

Five years ago, after Hurricane Katrina struck, a wall of water burst through the Industrial Canal levee just west of Tennessee Street in the city’s Lower Ninth Ward, and blasted 4,000 homes into kindling. A barge tumbled through the breach and lay at a crazy tilt just yards away from where I walked.