the INCREMENTAL house

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...

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...