whitefish COTTAGE CLUSTER HOUSING
-COMPETITION SUBMISSION-
Whitefish, Montana is a great place to live. It is also a hard place to find and afford housing, and residents don’t want to lose the character of the existing town. This design attempts to start a conversation on how to help make that happen.
Buildings are big. People are small. This development needs to address the human scale and not overwhelm the existing urban environment. Large urban buildings should happen in the adjacent and surrounding lots. To accomplish this the surface level parking lots that already exist in the area need to increase their capacity to park cars. They can no longer be just surface level parking. If residents of the this cottage cluster require a car, it could be most likely be parked in a parking garage on an adjacent lot or on one of a few parking spaces around the perimeter of the lot.
The cottages will be mixed in size and typologies. There will be some single family residences, but mostly multifamily residences. There will be very limited car parking in this cluster of small cottage like buildings. If you want to have a car in your garage (or right outside your front door), this is probably not the community for you. Residents of this community would likely walk, bike, take public transport, or utilize ride sharing apps. Residents will walk across the street to one of the three nearby grocery stores, go bowling across the street, and have hotels nearby if their families need to stay.
The increased density that is allowed by less roads cutting through the property creates the room for small parks. The parks will have walking paths to activate life within the community. Walking paths will be professionally cleared during winter months.