Green Goes Home With Brad Pitt

A computer rendering of the future Bancroft Elementary School in Kansas City.

Founded in 2007 by actor and activist Brad Pitt to build 150 sustainable homes in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward following Hurricane Katrina,

Make it Right

is now expanding to Pitt’s hometown of Kansas City to transform the Bancroft Elementary School.

Located in a 150-square-block area that suffers from economic decline, Bancroft has been abandoned for over 12 years. Make it Right aims to return the school building and adjacent landscape to an affordable, mixed-use neighborhood resource.

The abandoned school.

Eco by Cosentino

, the manufacturer of sustainable surfacing generated from recycled raw materials, is continuing its two-year-old partnership with Pitt’s organization as it travels to Bancroft. The cradle-to-cradle and Greenguard-certified manufacturer’s innovative product is composed of post-industrial and post-consumer recycled raw material including mirrors, glass, industrial furnace residuals, and stone salvaged from houses and factories. The raw materials are bonded together with a proprietary eco-friendly resin made in part by corn oil.

“On behalf of Brad Pitt and Make It Right, we are thrilled to be a part of Eco by Cosentino’s continued ventures,” said Tom Darden, Executive Director of Make It Right.  “We rely on the generous product donations from companies like Cosentino and can not thank them enough for helping us to transform this former neighborhood beacon into a thriving, sustainable community.”

A computer rendering of the future school.

Make it Right has also recently completed a four-bedroom, three-bathroom duplex designed by architect Frank Gehry in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward. “I wanted to make a house that I would like to live in and one that responded to the history, vernacular and climate of New Orleans,” Gehry said in a foundation press release.