The cottage that can go for a swim

Vulnerable neighborhoods like those in Biloxi, on Mississippi’s Gulf Coast, need buildings that are “able to take a swim every 30 years,” architect Stefanos Polyzoides said last October during the Mississippi Renewal Forum. Some disagreed. They thought it was dangerous, perhaps heartless, to let people live where floodwaters may roll again. But “Katrina Cottages” — devised by new urbanists trying to meet the need for small, quickly erected dwellings — are now taking on the role of water-resistant dwellings, houses that can be cleaned up and reinhabited after a flood. A March 22 press conference in Chalmette, Louisiana, two miles downriver from New Orleans, introduced the prefabricated Katrina Cottage II, which was built with lightweight panelized walls containing six inches of hard foam insulation sandwiched between sheets of Hardie Board, a fibrous concrete product. “There are no cavities within the walls for mildew to develop,” a fact sheet said. “The electrical switches and outlets would need to be changed in their boxes through a simple and inexpensive process.” The cottage’s ceiling has a steel finish, and its roof is made of steel panels with six-inch solid foam insulation. The cottage contains not a speck of Sheetrock. “This one can flood,” Miami architect Andres Duany was quoted in the New Orleans Times-Picayune as saying about the diminutive dwelling, which can be raised above the ground, on piers. The cottage contains 470 square feet of living space in its first floor plus a 300 sq. ft. loft, and was designed by a group of architects and others that included Duany, Steve Oubre, Susan Henderson, Matt Lambert, and Diane Dorney. It was placed on the parking lot of a Wal-Mart in Chalmette and presented as an answer to the need for inexpensive, quickly assembled, durable dwellings. The cottage was designed, engineered, prefabricated, and built within three weeks by a crew consisting of workers from HomeFront Homes in Englewood, Florida, workers led by builder Jason Spelling of Jackson, Mississippi, and contractors from Louisiana. A cottage of this kind can be built and installed for less than $60,000, not including land acquisition, according to manufacturers such as HomeFront, Cavalier Homes, and Southern Energy Homes. Andy Kopplin, executive director of the Louisiana Recovery Authority, and Walter Leger, an Authority member from St. Bernard Parish, praised such cottages as cheaper, safer, and more lasting alternatives to the 23- to 28-foot travel trailers that FEMA has been spending about $75,000 to deliver and install as temporary housing on the Gulf Coast. Unlike trailers, Katrina Cottages are sturdy and attractive enough to be used permanently. They can be added on to as well. built to last Katrina Cottages are unlikely to deteriorate in a few years — as happened to mobile homes that were hastily installed in South Florida after Hurricane Andrew and remain there, many in poor condition, 13 years later. Both Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco and Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour have urged the federal government to pay for Katrina Cottages rather than continue using travel trailers or mobile homes. So far, FEMA has refused, claiming federal law prohibits it. Leland Speed, director of the Mississippi Development Authority, said that during a hurricane, cottages would be more secure than travel trailers. The cottage concept has progressed furthest in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, where Bruce Tolar of Tolar Lebatard Denmark Architects has taken the lead in finding two acres on a well-traveled local road that can accommodate as many as 17 cottages. Following up on the original 308 sq. ft. Katrina Cottage by New York designer Marianne Cusato, Tolar and others are arranging to have about six architects and probably four to six manufacturers produce prototype cottages. Some of the architects are expected to be members of the New Urban Guild, which is producing collections of house designs. The cottages in Ocean Springs will be in a series of sizes and designs ranging from about 400 to 1,200 square feet, Tolar said. “It isn’t meant just to be a very small cottage. They could be two or three bedrooms. They could be expandable.” The housing cluster will fit into a master plan that incorporates new urbanist ideas. “We’ve got the support of the city,” he said. “The mayor and [planning director] Donovan Scruggs are behind it.” Tolar, who has worked on new urbanist developments such as Rosemary