NEW ORLEANS, LA May 21, 2008 - The National Association of Home Builders, (NAHB) held its annual 50+ Housing Symposium and awards dinner in New Orleans on May 20th. NAHB is the nation's largest association of builders, with 235,000 members. Nevada City architects, McCamant & Durrett's design for Silver Sage Village, a senior cohousing project in Boulder, Colorado, received the Silver Award for Best of Senior Living. Competing against hundreds of firms across America, the NAHB rated McCamant & Durrett's design 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 fastest growing segment of the housing industry is 50+ - over 10,000 Americans turn 50 every single day. This growing population of baby boomers seeks solutions that have more to do with continuing life than settling in for the duration. Silver Sage Village, the NAHB winner's website, includes the headline "Imagine living in a community as vibrant as you are."
Silver Sage Village cohousing is part of a trend towards less conventional solutions for aging with independence within communities, or as architect Charles Durrett so aptly puts it "the challenge of aging non-institutionally." Durrett coined the term cohousing - people buying homes in a community they plan and run together - for the type of communities he experienced as an architecture student in Denmark during the 1980's. America may be more ready than ever to consider cohousing's benefits, which include about 25% to 50% less driving, 75% less land used for housing, and at least 80% less energy used.
McCamant & Durrett were honored earlier this year with the Sierra Business Council Sierra Visionaries Award and the National Association of Homebuilders (NAHB) Silver 2008 Energy Value Housing Award. Current projects include Wolf Creek Lodge Senior Cohousing in Grass Valley, California. Wolf Creek Lodge is a 30-unit community for active adults located adjacent to a 32-unit intergenerational community. Construction begins this summer, under the management of Cohousing Partners, LLC.
To learn more about McCamant & Durrett Architects, visit www.mccamant-durrett.com, or call 530.265.9980.
More About Cohousing
McCamant & Durrett Architects have actively promoted cohousing concepts since the 1980's, introducing cohousing to the United States with their book Cohousing: A Contemporary Approach to Housing Ourselves (Ten Speed Press, 1988, 1994). Durrett applied cohousing design to senior communities with his 2005 book Senior Cohousing, A Community Approach to Independent Living - the Handbook.
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