Revenge of the Small
via Future House Now
Affordable, fresh, modern and only 800 sq-ft. is architect David Sarti’s house. Using simple materials Sarti built a great home on an urban infill lot in expensive Seattle for well under $200,000. The house has huge windows that let light pour in, high ceilings, spacious and comfortable rooms, and an attached workshop.
Metropolis: Portland, Oregon. Seattle, Washington. Vancouver, British Columbia. In these three Pacific Northwest cities, the progressive power of urban planning is taken very seriously, and concepts like livability and sustainability dominate the local civic culture to such an extent that to visit all three in rapid succession, as I did in October, is to drop in on another country. It’s not the United States or Canada, but a more highly evolved combination of the two.
But what I found most interesting on this trip was not the landmark developments but smaller changes in the residential fabrics of the cities. All three are wrestling with the problem of affordable housing and have begun to encourage, or at least allow, the construction of well-designed small houses. While McMansion bans have been proposed in many cities—and have succeeded in a few—what Portland and Vancouver, and to some extent Seattle, are doing is more difficult and more interesting. They’re inventing mechanisms that say yes to small instead of no to big.
