Floating House Unveiled in New Orleans

If the water ever rises again in the Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood of New Orleans, so will this new house. Brad Pitt's Make It Right Foundation showed off the first "permitted" floating house in the United States on Tuesday.

Known as the  FLOAT House , the structure is built to float as much as 12 feet.

"We came up with the idea of a chaise. If you look underneath it looks like concrete, [but] it is a piece of foam. At the end there are two invisible uprights and in the condition of water, it is going to just float up like a pier and move up and down," explained architect Thom Mayne of Morphosis Architects.

NOLA.com reported that the house was prefabricated on the University of California, Los Angeles campus, then trucked across the country and assembled at 1638 Tennessee St. in the neighborhood.

With break-away utilities and back-up battery and solar power, the house is not intended to encourage people to stay in severe storms, but to be there when they return.

"The notion is when they come back, the community is regenerated immediately," said Mayne. "They have protected their belongings and the things they have in the house."

"We hope that it never has to do what it is designed to do. We have embedded two masts into the foundation and so the chaise is able to float or rise up and down on those two masts in the event of a flood," said Tom Daren, Executive Director for Make It Right.

Daren said the floating house is one of 27 different designs from which residents can choose.

"They get to chose their color palette and their floor plan so it is up to the families we work with which house they choose to build. But this one will be available for other families to select, we hope," said Daren.

Rosemary Griffin, a resident of the neighborhood, proudly gave a tour of her Make It Right home. She was one of the first to move in, more than a year ago, and looks forward to welcoming new neighbors.

"They are going to build a house over here," pointed Griffin. "When, I don't know, but the gentleman told me they had built 35 houses."

Make It Right plans to have many houses ready by the end of next year.

"We hope to have 50 houses done by the end of the year... and then 150 done by the end of next year," explained Mayne.