Helmholtz Workforce Housing
Team: 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