ernatives are simply going to waste without ever being used. During recent research upon the DPZ website I came across the Katrina Cottages proposed by Andres Duany during the Mississippi Renewal Forum. The intent of the cottages where not only to provide emergency shelters following a disaster such as Hurricane Katrina, but also for their life span to be longer than the originally designed FEMA trailers. The cottage design was built upon the principles that they should be more “viable and humane alternatives to the FEMA trailer” (http://www.dpz.com/). A typical FEMA trailer cost between $70,000 and $140,000. While they are considered safe and durable struct
ures, they are intended only to be temporary dwellings. As Katrina showed us, these structures will need to be used much longer than ever anticipated than before. The Katrina Cottages are small houses that can be built or installed on site but are intended to be permanent houses that can be expanded into larger dwellings. The cottages range in size from 225 sq. ft. to 1182 sq. ft. Examples of floorplans and styles can be viewed at http://www.katrinacottagehousing.org/location.html.The intent of allowing expansion from the original building has given the concept the term, grow house. The concept is to place the emergency building on a section of the lot and
from this place the owners can rebuild by adding on to the cottage itself or seperately. The link provides a PDF that will illustrate the uses of the grow house and how it can be used in the years following the placement of the cottage.http://www.katrinacottagehousing.org/pdf/Grow_house.pdf).
With such a practicable idea as the Katrina Cottage, why has it failed so miserably? This was the original question posed by my friend’s blog; it was ‘a good idea that went wrong’. How can this blunder be fixed or can it? I suggest that you follow up by reading this blog on that question. http://christianpreuslandscapearchitect.wordpress.com/2009/08/21/a-good-idea/
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