People found the design by MVRDV, from Rotterdam, offensive. It takes a shotgun house and breaks it in the middle, sending the ends up into the air to form a V. (The floors stay level.) It’s startling and original: “They really put forth an idea to think bold, to be grand in our ideas, not to be caged-in in any way,” Pitt said. But with a car parked underneath, the design looks like the aftermath of the storm, with houses tossed on top of cars. Winy Maas, principal at MVRDV, made no apologies. “People said, ‘Is this a joke?’ And we said, ‘No, it’s serious.’ Because it takes Katrina even more seriously and monumentalizes itself, and it shows that it was there.” No doubt, MVRDV knows how to design functional housing. They just didn’t think that was the point here. “People say, ‘Why would Brad want to do this?’” Maas said just before catching his flight back to the Netherlands. “It’s to address a wider perspective, isn’t it? And then maybe our design embodies that. Provocation is good because it pushes people. We need architectural Michael Moores.”

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