Katrina Cottage Finds New Life

"The Katrina Cottage is the house a storm built.

Two weeks ago, the original yellow shelter that was designed in Mississippi won a People's Design Award from the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. By tomorrow, a second-generation model, set on a parking lot at the Gwendolyn E. Coffield Community Center in Silver Spring, is expected to be polished and ready for visitors.

Both models are architect-designed and light-filled. The one in Maryland, called the Katrina Kernel Cottage, is also steel-framed and, despite being factory built, quite charming.

The architect, Steve Mouzon, is a New Urbanist from Miami and a noted developer of pattern books in the neo-traditional style. Southerners will recognize the cottage as a shotgun house, but from the front it also resembles a small Greek temple. A pitched roof is supported by four Doric-style columns that demarcate the front porch, and the 523-square-foot box is packed with details that would make Thomas Jefferson proud (including lathe-turned columns and an architectural niche defining the master bedroom)."