Katrina Cottages will make their debut as schools

To meet a pressing need for inexpensive classroom space, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools system in North Carolina is going to experiment with a schoolhouse prototype based on Katrina Cottages. A group at Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company, led by Tom Low, director of the firm’s Charlotte office, is designing a prototype 25-by-80-foot “Learning Cottage” that would contain two classrooms.
If the prototype proves successful, Learning Cottages could provide an alternative to the trailer-like “mobile” classrooms that the Charlotte area school system has been using for years to accommodate its rapidly growing student population.
The Learning Cottages incorporate design and construction ideas from the Katrina Cottages produced by new urbanists after Hurricane Katrina as alternatives to FEMA temporary housing. Cottage-like classrooms will cost about $75 per square foot to build, according to Low. That’s more than the school system pays for trailer-like units, but it’s only about half the $130- to 170-per-square-foot cost of constructing conventional, permanent schools in greater Charlotte.
The idea of the Learning Cottage emerged after a group that Low formed — Civic by Design — gave a presentation in Charlotte last year on Katrina Cottages. As of 2003, the school system had 558 mobile classrooms in use — the equivalent of 16 elementary schools. Forty-eight percent of them were over 30 years old, which suggests that they have suffered considerable wear and tear and have begun to constitute a maintenance problem. With the student population rising by roughly 5,000 per year, the system is under pressure to produce more classrooms quickly, at limited cost.

improved look and function
Low says Learning Cottages will look better than trailer-style units, offer better interior design, feature more windows (thus supplying better cross-ventilation and more daylight), and be more durable, leading to reduced maintenance costs. A Learning Cottage would have doors at both ends, plus doors at the center, next to the foyers and rest rooms. Learning Cottages would be offered in traditional and contemporary styles, to fit the aesthetics of the schools that they supplement. The school system is donating a site for a try-out.
Designers suggest that the modules could be organized to form useful outdoor spaces, including shaded courtyards and hardscape plazas. After Learning Cottages are demonstrated to be superior to trailer-like units, the next step, Low says, would be to use the cottages as alternatives to “those big factory schools they’re building, which may be just as bad.”
Using this concept, 24 classrooms could be grouped to form four squares, accommodating 400 to 500 students on about 4.5 acres. Although the Charlotte school system may insist on larger, permanent buildings for some functions, such as gymnasiums, Low thinks it would be possible to design a school made up entirely of the cottage-like structures. The cottages are flexible enough, he says, to serve as administrative, library, and cafeteria space.
In addition to working with the Charlotte school system, Low has talked with school districts in Rock Hill, South Carolina, and Burlington, North Carolina, about the concept. The idea, he says, has national potential. For more information, see www.learningcottages.com.