A stylish cottage for Katrina country is a hit all over

Among the inquiries last week was one from Keith Rogerson, a city councilor from Bridgeport, Conn. "We have lots that are too small for a ... single-family, detached household, so the idea is to bring in these extremely attractive dwellings to provide affordable housing," says Mr. Rogerson. "We're also looking at reorienting the zoning so we can put them in clusters to stave off ghettoizing the city."

Last week, the Katrina cottage concept inspired Norman Bradshaw, a retired deputy sheriff in Tallahassee, Fla., to call Lowe's. He's thinking about moving to a farm in Georgia. "What I'm trying to find is something affordable in the $65,000 to $75,000 range," says Mr. Bradshaw. "Right now, the only thing you can afford is a trailer, and they are so flimsy you can put your fist right through a wall." If Lowe's follows though with the original design, Bradshaw says, he'll buy one.

Urban planners and architecture critics are generally enthusiastic. "Designers have done a good job with toasters and cars, and now they have done housing – and it couldn't have come at a better time," says Anthony Flint at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, a think tank in Cambridge, Mass.

Architect Sarah Susanka, author of "The Not So Big House," calls it "a charming, tiny house with character."

The cottage, though almost doll-size, manages not to feel claustrophobic in large part because Cusato has included a wide porch. "If you live in a small house, you need a proper outdoor room," Cusato says. "In addition to making the house larger, it engages you with your neighbors."

Cusato's design also calls for steel frames and Mr. Hardy's fiber-cement-board siding. It's rated to withstand a hurricane with 140 mile-per-hour winds. The siding makes it termite-resistant, non-combustible, and immune to rot. One intangible aspect of the house: It is designed to be easy to add on to.

The idea for the cottage came during a planning session in Mississippi. Gov. Haley Barbour (R) had asked Andreas Duany, a Miami-based urban planner with the firm Duany Plater-Zyberk, to participate in the post-Katrina Mississippi Renewal Forum. There, Mr. Duany challenged designers to come up with an alternative to the trailers from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Cusato's design was picked as the winning effort.

But the concept didn't really take off until January, when the cottage made its debut – almost by happenstance – at the International Builders Show in Orlando, Fla. Ms. Susanka, the architect, was set to build a small, modular show house for the event, but her sponsor pulled out. Duany suggested that Cusato's cottage go in its place – and it was an instant hit with developers, who clamored for the plans.

The house was then trucked here to Ocean Springs, where thousands of people have explored its confines. Cusato sees the cottage as one way to help the region recover. "If you give people a decent place to live, they will want to settle in," she says. "The most sustainable thing you can do is build something that everyone loves and everyone wants to keep."

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