Using an autoethnographic approach, this photo essay documents and describes a building typology that once dotted the eastern tip of Lake Erie’s shoreline: the small, seasonal cottage. Documentation is focused, in particular, on Fort Erie, a small town in Ontario’s Niagara Region with the highest percentage of foreign-owned homes in the province. [1] Tiny, unassuming and cheap to build, the typology, in the context of Fort Erie, has supported and encouraged a specific kind of cross-border, ecocentric, collectivist social organization for several decades. [2] But a confluence of social, political and economic factors, including a new vacancy tax for foreign-owned homes, the prolonged border closure during the pandemic, a steep rise in housing costs and availability across the province, and populist preferences (in the area) for low-maintenance new-builds, has meant that many old, American-owned cottages have been put on the market, purchased and demolished by local developers. [3] The focus of interest, in this presentation, is the typology of the seasonal cottage itself, its gradual obsolescence, how it could have been – or can be – seen and seized as a kind of existing, de facto ecocentric building type, intimately bound with its surroundings and inhabitants with an underlying, shared love ethic. [4] In the presentation I argue that its precisely the traits that most identify as undesirable – tiny footprint, crawlspace instead of basement, no air conditioning, no garage, no second floor, drafty windows (or no windows at all), light weight construction – that contribute to both the ecological equilibrium and social interconnectedness that this building type (and its occupants) can create, over time, within the landscape and community. I’ll touch on how the transformation of the built character of the area is tied directly to a shift in environmental equality for local residents, a reification of several types of borders, and how a “fortress mentality,” perhaps exaggerated during the pandemic, is now characterizing a place once associated with “voluntary simplicity,” convivialism and a more porous international border. [5,6] In addition to documenting 25 remaining, seasonal cottages, I will draw upon descriptions of experiences of this place, from a book self-published by the American inhabitants of this Canadian town, use interview excerpts from the few US cottage owners who remain, as well as situate myself within the narrative, as a resident for the past four years.[7]
Study Architecture 
ProPEL 
