Revenge of the Small

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Seattle architect Dave Sarti purchased a neighbor's backyard for $35,000 and built a house there for $180,000.

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Unlike accessory dwelling units (a.k.a. granny flats), which Seattle recently decided to allow to increase density in the far southeast corner of the city, Sarti’s home is ­completely independent from the house in front—he owns his small patch of land outright and can sell it separately.

In Vancouver, where home prices have skyrocketed 57 percent in the past three years (average home price: 652,448 CAD), a set of new guidelines is being implemented in selected neighborhoods to encourage the development of smaller 1,000–1,300-square-foot­­ single-family homes, duplexes, and town houses. This strategy of “neighborhood intensification” is the logical sequel to the program of high-rise building downtown.

Urban designer Patricia St. Michel says that homeowners in outlying ­single-family areas are now willing to “engage the topic” of higher density because they realize that their own children might be priced out of Vancouver. Working with community groups, the city came up with a series of plans for how two to four houses could be fit onto formerly single-family lots, “a new menu of housing variety” with the potential for creating 20,000 additional units. It also includes design guidelines for traditional houses, common in Vancouver, and contemporary ones. Neighborhood advisory groups, according to St. Michel, “felt strongly that we should allow contemporary styles, but felt that fitting in requires a pitched roof.”

Down in Portland, where narrow homes have emerged as an important and somewhat controversial form of entry-level housing, the city held a design competition for the “skinny house.” The competition represented the attempt of the city’s Bureau of Development Services to endorse the narrow house as an option while also creating a catalog of designs that would be acceptable to the famously persnickety city residents. (Remember, it was Portland that banned the “snout house”—with the garage out front.) The 2004 competition produced a catalog of 24 winners, most of them either cute traditional pitched-roof cottages or slim Modernist boxes. There were four People’s Choice ­winners, two modern and two traditional. The city anointed two “permit-ready designs,” which made them, in essence, Portland’s official skinny houses. One, a steeply gabled 1,779-square-foot existing house by local architect Bryan Higgins, is essentially a shotgun house that grew two extra stories. The other, designed by Berkeley, California, architect Roxana Vargas-Greenan with a side-facing gable and fussy detailing that would put it squarely in the tradition of Seaside, can be built at either 1,500 or 1,700 square feet. The plans for these two houses are available free of charge from the city once a developer has purchased building permits on a lot deemed appropriate for the skinny style. So far one developer is building four of the permit-ready ­houses.

Locally, there has been some grousing about how the first two permit-ready houses are traditional even though the catalog of winners contains a range of styles. Anne Hill, the project manager for what is now known as the Living Smart program, says the first two plans were chosen for “mass appeal.” She argues that the designs are more affordable and flexible than, say, the one specifying a glass garage. “One of the next two,” she promises, “will be contemporary.”

Putting aside the issue of style, what’s significant here is that cities which have been ahead of the curve in their civic-scaled gestures are now addressing the problem of affordable single-family homes in a way that could have an impact elsewhere. In an era when ever-bigger houses are the norm, Portland and Vancouver’s carefully vetted plans might help other North American cities and towns promote domestic downsizing. That would be no small accomplishment. Still, it’s revealing that the tiniest and flukiest house I saw on my swing through the Pacific Northwest—Sarti’s wonderful red box—would never have been permitted in the highly restrictive design environments of Vancouver or Portland. I take it as a reminder that while careful vetting may keep out the bad, it can also suppress the good.

Provided by Metropolis Magazine—The Magazine of Architecture, Culture, and Design