Telling a New Story About Living Traditions

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the fire pit in the first square built in Alys Beach, Florida surrounded by all-white masonry homes with architectural heritage in Bermuda and Antigua Guatemala

Alys Beach has been building a new living tradition in durable coastal architecture for the past decade


   The heartbeat of a living tradition is four simple words: "we do this because…" If you put every pattern in a language of architecture in these terms, it opens up the "why" of each pattern, allowing everyone to think again. Modernists have long chafed at architectural pattern books, objecting that "they don't allow invention," but with "we do this because…" everyone can invent all they like, so long as it's within a set of agreed-upon principles.

chimney of house in Alys Beach, Florida set against scrolled gable - chimney is punctured by a thin window above and skirted by a wall of green at the street level

   For years, I referred to these four words as the "transmission device" of living traditions. Recently, Kaid Benfield told me that this term "takes something warm and personal and makes it cold and technical-sounding." And he's exactly right. For the last couple months, I've been looking for an alternative. I stumbled across a great candidate just the other day: "we do this because…" is the heartbeat of living traditions, as noted above. What do you think?

   It might sound a bit sappy at first glance, but please consider that it's fairly correct organically. The beating heart moves life-sustaining blood through the body, keeping it alive. "We do this because…" moves principles, which are the lifeblood of any living tradition, to all participants in that tradition. Without knowing why, a tradition is dead… it's just your father's way of doing things. But if we all know why we do what we do, we're free to adapt to new conditions. And when an entire culture knows why, you just might have millions of minds thinking of better ways of building.

heavy timber architectural detailing of home in Alys Beach, Florida

   This transforms a living tradition into a bracing paradox: On the one hand, if many people are thinking of ways to improve their architecture, that architecture is intensely of our time, because it's the latest thought on the matter. On the other hand, if the principles are based on regional conditions, climate, and culture, those things (especially conditions and climate) don't change very quickly over time, likely allowing the architecture to rise to the level of the timeless. This same principle holds in disciplines far afield of architecture as well… living traditions can thrive in everything from music to the blogosphere.

mahogany street light pole working with palm tree to frame a view of porch and courtyard of home in Alys Beach, Florida

   The error of high-design architecture of recent decades isn't that it's too inventive… it's that it throws out everything that has been proven to work. If architecture isn't allowed to learn from things outside our time, it becomes transgressional, rendering it highly unlikely to be lovable.

   Think what would have happened in the computer industry had Steve Jobs not allowed himself to learn from the past. Had he attempted to reinvent the Mac with each new version, it never would have gotten so much better over the past three decades. It's the same story in medicine, in aeronautics, in chemical engineering in space flight, in… the list goes on. If we're talking about core sciences such as mathematics and physics, it's the same story as well. Newton famously said "if I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." The discipline of green building, above all else, needs to be able to learn from the work that others have done.

another view of the first square in Alys Beach, framed by all-white homes - even the roofing is white concrete tiles

   To be clear, inventiveness is great… I love inventing things. But I want those things to be lovable so that they have a chance of being sustained long beyond my lifetime. If we want to sustain things long into an uncertain future, we really should stack the deck in our favor by doing work that embodies principles proven to produce things humans love, and that can become part of a living tradition… one with a heartbeat… shouldn't we?


   ~Steve Mouzon


© The Guild Foundation 2013