Posted on 02/17/2006 8:08:51 AM PST by Lorianne
ORLANDO, Fla. - At a mere 308 square feet, Katrina Cottage 1 was dwarfed by the big-volume show houses that overwhelmed the recent annual International Builders Show.
And unlike the show houses, which are the stuff dreams are made of, the cottage and others like it represent the new reality for thousands of Mississippi Gulf Coast residents displaced by the hurricane for which it is named.
"This isn't temporary housing," said Sandy Sorlien, a professor of photography at the University of Pennsylvania who is part of the process to rebuild the 11 Mississippi communities torn asunder by Katrina. "It is permanent housing, designed and built to be beautiful and functional."
"It is actually permanent emergency housing," said Marianne Cusato of New York, the designer, who with Sorlien was among more than 100 planning specialists brought to Biloxi, Miss., for almost a week in October by the Mississippi Governor's Commission on Recovery, Rebuilding and Renewal.
Katrina Cottage 1 is just one result of efforts by Gov. Haley Barbour, who said he saw in the hurricane's tragedy a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to rebuild this state the right way."
To get the process started quickly, Barbour turned to the Congress of the New Urbanism, a Chicago-based organization dedicated to adapting traditional city- and town-planning principles to modern communities. Leading the New Urbanist charge is the father of neotraditionalism, Miami architect Andres Duany. "Gov. Barbour is serious about doing this right," Duany told an audience at the builders show last month. "He asked me very few things before he told me to go ahead, but three times the governor asked me if I had ever worked in Mississippi or along the state's Gulf Coast, just to make sure there was no conflict of interest." "He wanted a clean process," Duany said.
It left out builders and casino operators, whose presence would have "overwhelmed the process," he said. "It would have been like having an elephant in the room," Sorlien said of the casino owners and residential builders. "They were brought in after the charette (the October brainstorming session) had finished its work." "Most of the builders seem to think what we want to do can be done, or are willing to try," Duany said, indicating that Katrina engendered a spirit of cooperation that has yet to dissipate.
Officials and residents of the 11 Gulf Coast towns hit hardest by the storm participated in the October sessions, Duany said. A report was submitted to Barbour Dec. 31.
"What the commission searched for are recommendations for Mississippi's renewal that are sensible, doable and truly make a difference to our citizens' lives," said commission chairman Jim Barksdale. While not all of those 238 recommendations may be agreeable to everyone, "together they reflect our determination to move toward a renewal of South Mississippi that includes everyone."
Although many communities have embraced the charette's proposals, Biloxi hasn't done so wholeheartedly, said Sorlien, who was head of the building-codes team. "I think it is because Biloxi depended on casinos for its income, and that when the hurricane hit, there were more casinos in the pipeline."
Housing is part of the renewal plan, and the idea behind Katrina Cottage 1 is to provide real, rather than temporary, housing to help people feel as if things are getting back to normal.
"During the charette, Andres talked about the long-term effect FEMA's temporary trailers had on Dade County in the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew," Sorlien said. "Thirteen years after Andrew, people are still living in those trailers. He didn't want that to happen in Mississippi."
The cottage Cusato designed is just one of several included in a "Patternbook for Gulf Coast Neighborhoods" developed by Urban Design Associates of Pittsburgh along the lines of similar plan books that exist for towns such as Celebration and Seaside in Florida and the Kentlands in Maryland. Some of the other cottages are larger - one is 800 square feet - but all are designed in keeping with the vernacular architecture of South Mississippi.
Cusato said her cottage, a downsized version of the Mississippi coastal-style house, is designed for both residents and emergency workers as an alternative to the FEMA trailer, but for about the same price - $35,000 - "once the cottage goes into mass production." The house can be manufactured or modular, panelized or built on site with traditional construction.
Unlike the FEMA trailer, the cottage (there are three versions) and other houses that will be offered "are designed to withstand hurricanes, since we know that they will continue to occur," Cusato said. "It is a secure house that you can live in and build from," she said, designed either to be the first piece of a larger permanent house or to be placed at the back of a lot and turned into a guest house or other outbuilding after a permanent house is completed. One of the cottage's three rooms is the front porch. "It is designed to be used and be comfortable, and comes with storage," Cusato said.
The porch opens to a combination living room and dining room, then to the kitchen, "which defines the space between that room and the bedroom, which has bunk beds for the family with storage underneath," she said. "We use every inch of space in that house. They are not large spaces, because we've found that people tend to gravitate to small spaces because they are secure and cozy."
Cusato compared her cottage with the 10,000-square-foot New American Home and other large-scale show houses that were open to those attending the builders show, saying that with that much space, "those houses aren't planned at all well."
"Sarah Susanka (author of `The Not So Big House') has proved that we can live in smaller spaces as long as we use them well," Cusato said. "Properly designed and planned, a 1,000-square-foot house can meet a family's needs perfectly, whether it is permanent or emergency housing."
That's why Cusato is creating a series of these cottages, including a two-bedroom house of almost 400 square feet. She's been surprised at the interest Katrina Cottage 1 generated.
"Developer after developer came up to me, asking for the plans so they could build the cottage as beach-front housing or in ski resorts," she said.
"I insisted that this is, first and foremost, emergency housing for the people of the Gulf Coast, but that once their needs have been met, I would consider it. "Then it hit me that what I had done was to come up with a prototype that could take off as a new way of building," she said. "The irony is that these builders never realized that affordable housing can be attractive."
It's jargon.
Contractors do too.
I accompanied a relative who was looking at some property in a Duany-inspired community near here. The place seemed a little creepy to me. It reminded me a lot of the village in the Prisoner TV series with Patrick McGoohan.
"It is a secure house that you can live in and build from," she said, designed either to be the first piece of a larger permanent house or to be placed at the back of a lot and turned into a guest house or other outbuilding after a permanent house is completed."
I live in an old colonial four-square farmhouse built in 1906. On the corner of our property, built into the side of the hill with a fieldstone "basement" is 'The Homestead House.' This is where the family lived while they were building "the big house." They kept a cow, a goat, a pig, maybe some chickens in the basement of the house, which opens up onto a fenced area for grazing. The upstairs has an area for a kitchen and an area for sleeping, with a fireplace in the kitchen area. The outhouse is long gone. (It's in bad shape, but I may restore it some day; it would make a neat summer kitchen.)
It's about the size of this starter cottage, and that's the ONLY way (besides a tent, or in an underground home if you're a "Wisconsin Badger") people used to live while they were improving their lot in life and settling this great country of ours!
(And I had to answer to you, Arkady, because whenever I see your name on the boards, I silently remind myself to thank Martin Cruz Smith for inventing you! Can't wait to read of your new adventures; your stories are too few and far between for me!)
Thanks for the ping. Interesting little house! Several of the posters are correct about more space not being necessarily a good thing. You know how much of our 3000+ FSF is wasted.
It was at the Frisco store.
Really? Good, haven't been there yet. I think we will try to get there next weekend, too cold this weekend ;)but at least the ice hasn't come yet.
There are plenty of cabins in Alaska about that size. Smaller is better in Alaska if heating is a concern. There are two cabins right up the street that are 120 sf and don't even have a porch. Couples live in both of them.
The most useless part of a house is the ceiling; the only thing you can do with it is to hang a dust magnet.
Thanks for the most lucid explantion yet. Based on the responses I've gotten, this appears to be the definition: It is a new liberal buzz word for a committee meeting to advance a liberal 'community planning' agenda by pretending to allow the lesser folk to have some input after the decisions have been made.
What a nice post. How many of our ancestors started in a humble home that grew as the family did. Dormers enlarging attics into bedrooms, porches added and them enclosed. No offense to those who live in trailers (I've lived in several) but they lack a sort of permanence.
(And I had to answer to you, Arkady, because whenever I see your name on the boards, I silently remind myself to thank Martin Cruz Smith for inventing you! Can't wait to read of your new adventures; your stories are too few and far between for me!)
Boy, I'm pining for the return of Arkady as well. He always had a sort of honesty, dignity and resolve that I wish I had. It is amazing that Gorky Park was written while the Soviet Union was still The Enemy... Seems a lifetime ago, doesn't it?
A_R
There IS a new Arkady novel out..."Wolves Eat Dogs." Very good, set in Chernobl, dealing with fraud and money and murder and radiation poisoning. (I read it in two days; that's why I'm wanting more, LOL!)
It wasn't quite as suspenseful as Gorky Park, but a very interesting setting and motive nonetheless. :)
Huh? That's about the size of my bathroom. I can't see how you could possibly have a bed, a stove, a toilet, and a sink in 120sqft of space. I don't think it's possible.
Lots of people do it. 10X10 is a little tight. 12X12 is easy. 20X24 is luxurious.
I grew up in a "shotgun" house in Dayton, Ohio. It was two story, we rented the first floor. It was living room, behind that bedroom, behind that bedroom, then kitchen in the back witih bath off. You could shoot a gun straight through the entire thing. Big front porch.
I would vote for him over anyone who might be in the race.
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