HELMHOLTZ WORKFORCE HOUSINGTeam: Can Vu Bui, Lane Rick
The Helmholtz Cottages are a single-family workforce community that takes the linear, car-friendly streets with which our cities are familiar, and bends them inwards, eliminating cars from the “front door” and instead providing pocket community spaces where a dozen-plus homes can share an outdoor space. Walkable paths connect one pocket community to the next, peppered with playgrounds, formal and informal gathering areas, and xeriscape landscape design, promising to refocus where we live into sustainable communities.
The Helmholtz Cottages is a reimagination of how the American city could create liveable communities, pedestrian forward, affordable homes.
Located in central Oregon, the city shares a familiar condition with many others across the country: it is a small city, about an hour away drive from a larger city with a robust tourist and service economy, but that is quickly becoming unaffordable as demand for housing dries up. This growth provides a unique opportunity to reimagine the American town as a walkable space
Renderings: Office of Things
