McCamant & Durrett Architects

McCamant & Durrett received the received the Silver Award for Best of Senior Living by the National Association of Home Builders at its annual 50+ Housing Symposium and awards dinner on May 20 in New Orleans. The award was for Silver Sage Village, a senior cohousing project in Boulder, Colorado, NAHB is the nation’s largest association of builders, with 235,000 members. Competing against hundreds of firms across America, McCamant & Durrett’s design was rated by the NAHB as one of the country’s best senior housing. Firm principal Charles Durrett was on hand to receive the award, “We are excited to see our ideas become working realities in communities shaped by residents, like Silver Sage.”

The firm also won a Golden Nugget award for the Best Affordable Project of 30 Acres or More for their Sacramento Senior Homes.

The National Association of Homebuilders (NAHB) has announced that McCamant & Durrett Architects are the recipients of the Silver 2008 Energy Value Housing Award for their Nevada City Cohousing project. The NAHB searches for the best in the country for the top honors in energy-efficiency, design and innovation.

On receiving the award, firm principal Chuck Durrett responded by stating, “We are honored to have been selected from a field of 500 other projects." Katie McCamant, M&D's other principal, said, "What is key for me is to create walkable communities where people use less of the earth’s resources while living a better quality of life."

The December 3 Webinar of Katie McCamant’s “Investing in Sustainability: Financing Cohousing” was very well received by its attendees. In answering evaluation questions at the end of the webinar, 92% of the respondents rated the webinar content as Excellent or Good. And 88% said that they would Absolutely or Very Likely recommend a webinar to other people.

I used to have contingency plans for where I wanted to live in another five years. For a while, it was New Zealand, then upstate New York, then a small town in western Colorado that doesn’t feel the pace of a fresh-air-challenged metro area like Denver. Where would I try to be comfortable next? Where would I try to meet as many needs as possible with a minimum amount of stress?

Katie McCamant was a featured speaker at the Dwell on Design Conference this fall in San Francisco. She has been recognized as one of Dwell’s National Design Leaders. Watch this interesting and informative video of Katie discussing cohousing in the US.

Kathryn McCamant & Charles Durrett of CoHousing Partners and McCamant & Durrett Architects, received several honors.

The Sierra Business Council honored them October 19, 2007, as part of its the Vision 2020 Award, for their commitment to promoting a unique solution to one of the most vexing problems in the Sierra Nevada - the growing need for affordable, high quality housing. That same day, Katie McCamant was interviewed by Green Living Ideas. The podcast is available here. The firm is also among the finalists competing for the "2008 EnergyValue Housing Award," awarded by the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB). That competition is for their work on Nevada City Cohousing.

In the great and historic town of San Juan Bautista, CA (pop. 1500), any new building project of more than three houses has to win a simple majority vote by the general population in a special election before it can proceed. That is, the applicant has to spend $50,000 and about six months of work just to get an election date, a ballot printed and all of the rest.

The question must have gone through the collective consciousness of more than one cohousing group over the years: “Can we convince affordable housing developers to build affordable cohousing communities?” To the surprise of many cohousers, the answer is actually “yes.”

Chuck Durrett, along with his wife Katie McCamant, popularized the Danish concept of cohousing in this country with the publication of their 1988 book. Here Chuck offers an open letter about his personal experiences in avoiding a corrosive aspect of living in community.

Nationally acclaimed architect and author Charles Durrett introduced “cohousing” to the Senior Citizens of Kodiak, AK, group in October at their fourth annual Aging Connection Conference, a Senior Housing Community Forum, where many of Kodiak’s caregivers, state housing representatives and nationally recognized innovators are searching for ways to help baby boomers as the nation’s largest generational population begins to cope with what is often called the “golden years.”

Thirty-four households celebrated the realization of their dream to create a multi-generational, child-friendly and environmentally sustainable neighborhood at the Nevada City Cohousing (CA) grand opening on June 10, 2006.

Our multi-generational community, La Querencia (pronounced la ker en' see ah), has been busy getting to know each other, purchasing land in a very desirable neighborhood, designing our homes, securing planning approval and having fun. We look forward to breaking ground in late Fall, 2006.

The first two years of living in Doyle Street Cohousing (Emeryville, CA), we scheduled workdays one Saturday a month for six hours. There were one or two coaches, and resident volunteers could come or go fixing whatever the coach(es) previously had decided needed to be fixed. It was completely voluntary – and a total disaster.

Wow, the single-family house – what a workout it can be. After 12 years of living in Doyle Street Cohousing in Emeryville, CA, I'd forgotten how hard it is to live in a "regular" house. How do so many people do it and stay sane?