the INCREMENTAL house

Look closely, there is a still a Katrina Cottage there Rebuilding a bit differently. A whole new aesthetic is developing..... I also spoke with Ben Brown, who works with Placemakers, an urban design/planning firm who has been engaged in the process in Mississippi . He described some of the challenges that are now being exposed on the gulf coast. As they have had a severe housing crisis there for the last three years, they have a jump on what the rest of the country is experiencing now. The strange thing is that while most would consider that the Katrina Cottages were only temporary housing, and then envisioned to be used as storage sheds detached from the new main house, they are now marketing them as middle class housing. Their premise is that if people still want high quality housing that has a sense of scale and style, they will have to downsize bigtime, and they think the Katrina Cottage is just the way to do that. This whole endeavor has shifted from some emer...

Two different approaches, manufactured home (front) newly designed/built from GCCDS (back) . East Biloxi. New housing in East Biloxi (designed by Marlon Blackwell in partnership with AFH and GCCDS) One of the groups doing solid work in Mississippi is the Gulf Coast Community Design Studio, working in East Biloxi, one of the hardest hit neighborhoods. It was poor and working class and New Urbanists designs had broad sweeping, new beautiful designs that would replace Vietnamese neighborhoods with new parks. They have been working closely with homeowners to design and build new houses, and there prices are coming in at $65-85/sf (most definitely excluding the Marlon Blackwell designed house). These are hard costs only. I brought up the Katrina Cottages to one of the architects. He kind of laughed, citing the costs for such a small space, and without any user involvement in the process. They are saving some money with volunteer labor. The clear reality is that prefabrication...

Diamondhead HFH Cottage Demonstration Interior showing addition of living room Installation of prefabricated tag unit. Katrina Cottages are sold by Lowe's. New homes at Cottage Square. Enterprise Community Partners will find occupants to move into the 8 units in Cottage Square. I don’t see how the occupants are going to last. Will the people living there be temporary? Can someone last permanently in a space like that? It is not that different from a cheap studio apartment in a city, but this is Ocean Springs. Some of the larger units might be viable. If they go to the trouble of making sure the trailers can be permanent, but if the space is not livable enough to be permanent, then what is the point? Spending time in such a small unit, one realizes that it wouldn’t work for the typical American family. Maybe in other countries, but not in the US. Consequently, the first question is: “Well, what about adding on?” The main challenge is that commun...

One of the interesting components about the Katrina Cottages is the questions it raises about temporary vs. permanent housing. Of course, the original FEMA trailer and mobile homes that were provided were certainly seen only as temporary housing. I don’t need to go into detail about how poorly these were planned and built. Not only were many people forced out the trailers because of toxic formaldehyde issues, there was no plan at all with what to do with them AFTER people got back into permanent housing. In fact, they are now selling most of them for scrap. And while the Katrina Cottage didn’t actually look like a trailer, its scale was such that it was seen as something temporary. And the house was actually mounted on a trailer. The plan was for these to serve as temporary housing to be put on site while people rebuilt their houses. There was no real long term plan for it. Most of the Cottages were produced in Mississippi through their receipt of a $270 million from the...

Cottage Square in Ocean Springs, MS The original Katrina Cottage designed by Marianne Cutsano Mississippi Cottage I went to the Mississippi Gulf Coast to learn more about the Katrina Cottage. Developed out of the New Urbanist charrettes after the storm, it is one of the few decent examples of architecture/planning that I think has come out of the process. It is something that has actually gone to scale and is being put to use. Designed as an alternative to a FEMA trailer that was built and looked better, it was an option many people could be more comfortable with and something people felt a little more up to the standards that one would expect out of our country. Digging into it has been interesting and revealed much about American’s approach to housing. One interesting location where one can track the progress and development of the Katrina Cottage is at Cottage Square in Ocean Springs , MS . There, architect Bruce Tol...

Started, but unfinished And that opportunity after the storm to rethink and tackle poverty in America in a new way? Ummmm. Yes, it is a catastrophic failure on a national level, but on a local level as well, with endemic corruption that could probably rival many places I have visited within the last year. Consequently, for a city that was almost completely inundated, New Orleans is being rebuilt piece by piece with heroic efforts from tons of people. Local business in Lower 9th ward that serves some mean chicken But, zooming out and thinking about this form a larger scale, is this really the best we can do? Is Global Green and Make it Right the best we have to offer? They make look, sound, and smell different, but at the end of the day, they seem like more of the same. Cost overruns and excessive technologies bump up the initial costs of housing for those who need it the most. High profile figures do their best to give money an...

Here, it seems the whole green thing has gotten a little bit out of whack. It is kind of interesting how little I have really thought about green and sustainable stuff on my trip. It was kind of a shock to return and be bombarded with the word, ‘GREEN.’ In returning to the Gulf Coast , I am reminded how green is all the rage, not only here, but in the entire country. While it has always been at the back of my mind, it is just not that relevant in most of the projects I have been looking at. There are so many more fundamental things that are important, like having a home in the first place. Land, electricity, water, plumbing, opportunities, human rights, education, and the ability to leave a better life for the next generation. All these seem much more about sustainability (economic, social, and environmental) than the word, ‘GREEN’, just because it seems to get isolated and represent the latest fad. It almost seems like the re...

Lower 9th Ward Lower 9th Ward from the industrial canal levee Waiting Gym in the lower 9th Unfinished house in the lower 9th Public housing in upper 9th ward On my stop back in the US , I headed to the Gulf Coast to see how things were progressing after Hurricane Katrina. My first stop was New Orleans . One of the more telling things about New Orleans is that now, there are some areas of the city where you can’t really tell if it had been flooded or not. Some parts that had been flooded are back and in good shape, and there are neighborhoods that had never been flooded that look worse than those that have been flooded. The word decay was constantly popping up in my mind. Yet, while decay is very present, growth is very present, with the building industry booming, one of the few places in the country. New projects are popping up all over the place. Part of what makes this time and rebuilding interesting is ...