Cottage Court

Not a single building type but a design approach. Not a density target but a set of principles. Applied consistently, across different conditions, it produces neighborhoods that feel like neighborhoods rather than developments.

The best projects don't always start with a blank slate. Sometimes they start with a problem: a 1920s landmark hotel that needed saving, and a site that could hold new homes if they were designed with enough care not to overwhelm what made the place worth coming to. That was the brief for the Cavalier Residences — and where our work with the cottage court began.

The cottage court is one of the most powerful housing ideas America ever produced — and then forgot about for seventy years. Not an apartment complex, not a subdivision: small individual homes arranged around a shared garden, each with its own front door, its own porch, its own sense of home. In this first article in our missing middle series, we look at why the cottage court disappeared, why it's coming back, and what makes it work when it's done right.