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The Katrina Cottage Story

Katrina Cottages were born during the Mississippi Renewal Forum in Biloxi in October of 2005 and first introduced on the front page of the SunHerald. They provided innovative answers to this question: Why not create a new kind of emergency housing that could be an appealing, cost-effective, storm-worthy alternative to FEMA trailers?

            One of the first cottage plans was from New York designer Marianne Cusato, who produced a 350-square-foot Mississippi vernacular house that immediately caught the imaginations of not only Gulf Coast residents, but the national housing market. Thanks to the Governor’s Commission, a prototype of Cusato’s design was assembled in a Jackson warehouse and trucked to Orlando in time for the International Builders Show in Orlando in January, where it got raves from builders and developers. The made-in-Mississippi Katrina Cottage movement was off and running.

            Now there are some two dozen different designs for authentic Katrina Cottages and more on the way. They range in size from versions even smaller than Cusato’s initial “little yellow cottage” to models over 1,000 square feet. But they all have these characteristics in common: They are ready for the storm zone, engineered to withstand 150 mph winds and built with sturdy materials (such as fiber cement siding and metal roofs) usually found in custom homes; they can “grow” to accommodate families’ expanding needs and resources, either by becoming a studio apartment or other accessory dwelling or by forming a core house that’s easy to add onto; and they can be produced  through the full range of building systems – stick-built on site or delivered from a factory as modular, panelized, of full-manufactured housing.

            Unlike the travel trailers and manufactured homes FEMA has been using for temporary emergency housing, Katrina Cottages are real homes designed to appreciate in value in communities likely to welcome them because of their appealing looks and quality construction. And because Katrina Cottages come in a variety of styles and sizes, they can be arranged in a community – a cottage cluster – to create an attractive neighborhood. In fact, one of the first new, permanent neighborhoods to be built after the storm will be a Katrina Cottage model village in Ocean Springs.

            Developed by Mississippi architects who participated in the Mississippi Renewal Form, the Ocean Springs Cottage Square will display some 23 homes and live-work units. Property owners shopping for replacements for houses lost to Katrina can come by the Square and “kick the tires” of the models, check out the various building systems, and order their own cottage on the spot.

            The movement is already registering with developers and builders in the region and throughout the country. The first cottage to go up in the Ocean Springs Cottage Square is a new 544-square-foot version by Marianne Cusato that will be offered, along with three other designs, in kit form by regional Lowe’s stores. Mississippi can be proud, as well, that these designs, born during the painful days of the immediate aftermath of the storm, are being embraced nationally and even internationally. Katrina Cottage designers are fielding requests from developers and builders from California to New England to Africa and Central America.

For more information on Ocean Springs' Cottage Square, contact:

Tolar LeBatard Denmark Architects, PLLC
624 Jackson Avenue
Ocean Springs, MS  39564
Phone: (228) 872-2598
Fax: (228) 875-3806

For Katrina Cottage plans and ideas: www.cusatocottages.com and www.newurbanguild.com