Simple Cottage Sampler Designs for Modular Houses

Today our project architects Rob Hale and Josh Jones are completing construction drawings for a new collection of small homes designed specifically for modular building. The collection is called the Simple Cottage Sampler, and the ten designs range from 450-900 square feet but can be increased in size by adding modular units.

They were designed for people who want a single-family home and love old-house styles but who don't want or need a larger home, such as singles, retirees, people wanting to downsize, and couples just starting out. The designs all share the same modular construction framework for easy transport and quick assembly.

The designs in the Sampler were inspired by the early house styles that grew out of America's Ten Colonial Cradles of Home:

· Chesapeake Tidewater
· Cape Cod
· Gulf Coast
· Florida Keys
· Hudson Valley
· Louisiana Creole
· Carolina Lowcountry
· Western Reserve
· New Republic
· Southern Piedmont

We will have the Simple Cottage Sampler floorplans posted on the website of our partner, Haven Homes, in the next few weeks. Until then you can see the front elevations on Haven's website by clicking on Partner Architects and then on our blue logo to go to our home page. From there, click on the Simple Cottage Sampler logo to bring up a file with the exteriors for the 10 cottages.

Tidewater Cottage in the News

Recently, several media articles have appeared that chronicle the pre-fab tidewater cottage and our Simple Farmhouse designs. Below are links to these articles as posted on the Web, sans images:

• As McMansions Begin to Die Off, Look to the Past for Housing's Future, Washington Post, Housewatch, November 15, 2008, Katherine Salant
  
  Creating a New 'Old House' Section by Section to Feel Like Home, Rappahannock News, November 13, 2008, Laura Ruby

The original dozen designs in the Simple Farmhouse Portfolio, which you can view in detail on our firm's website, are styles that were commonly built in the Southern Piedmont region. Joining them is a new collection of Chesapeake Tidewater houses; a slightly tweaked version of the tidewater cottage is the first design in the collection. In addition to the Simple Farmhouse designs, which range from 1600-3200 sf and can be built from kits of parts or modular units, we are developing a new collection of small houses designed and engineered specifically for modular building. The new collection is called the Simple Cottage Sampler, and it will be available in 2009.The first ten cottages in the collection are inspired by the Ten Colonial Cradles of Home, which Russell wrote about in his new book, Roots of Home. The Colonial Cradles were the places in America that served as the seedbeds for our early house styles. Each of the Simple Cottages is an American classic style that emerged from a specific Colonial Cradle region.

We are hoping to build the first modular cottage on the exhibit floor at Restore Media's Traditional Building Show in Boston in mid-March. It is a real stretch to make that happen in just three months, but when the cottage design is ready, the process of modular building is very, very fast.