On the first day of the Towards Carfree Cities Conference in Portland, I was immediately impressed by a presentation on high-density co-housing projects that are the collaboration of Orange Splot LLC (a cohousing developer) and Communitecture, an architecture firm using innovative green building techniques and superb design to create beautiful and inviting high-density living arrangements in Portland neighborhoods.

The first project they showcased, Sabin Green, was probably the most relevant to the cahllenges of doing infill development in our population centers. They remodeled a house and the garage behind it, and added two more houses to a 75X100 foot lot. The results look pretty inviting to me.

Two of the houses are quite small, at 600 square feet, one with only a 400 sq ft footprint! The cozy quarters are made up for with fifth building which a is a small shared tea-house space, and a shared courtyard. Having no off-street parking was critical to creating this living arrangement. Although they had to get a variance to skirt the parking requirement, development in Portland within 500 feet of a transit stop does not.

Because of the efficient use of land and the compact size of the houses, units were very affordable.