This cohousing community utilizes design to retain maximum open space with clustered duplex units and the creation of small, compact dwellings supported by the provision of shared common facilities in a “common house”. This project involved creating a group of, and working with, the eventual residents as “resident developers” in the process of designing and developing their own community setting.

Duplexes are created as two-story cottages linked by a single-story common entry, thereby reducing their mass and providing a distinct house form for each family — “This is my house.” The steeply pitched roofs allow the second floor walls to be 2 feet lower, thereby reducing the building height and their scale in this closely spaced arrangement of houses. Roofs are oriented and cleared for future PV installations. The small houses have their basements developed as supplementary living rooms, so that the first floors can be completely opened. Stairs are arranged in a U-shape such that basement access occurs adjacent to the stair to the second floor, thereby elevating the status and therefore the functionality of these basement spaces. Most of the buildings are heated and cooled using Ground-Sourced Heat Pumps (GSHP), a relatively new and efficient technology the draws and deposits heat from and into the hay field that was retain open by the clustering of the buildings.

Awards Received:
• Honor Award for design excellence from the AIA New England 1995
• ‘Energy Value Award — National Association of HomeBuilders, 1996
• National award for green development, Renew America, 1996
• Award for “expanding affordable homeownership” from the U.S. Dept.
of H.U.D. 1996

Excerpt from an article about Pine Street Cohousing in The Boston Globe (March 14, 1996):  "[Bruce Coldham] resembles William Shakespeare, although Shakespeare might not pair candy-striped magenta socks with a candy-striped green sweater."