"We do this because…" began late one evening in the parlor of the Millsaps-Buie House in Jackson, Mississippi. We had just finished a celebratory dinner at the conclusion of the Lost Rabbit architectural charrette, and the design team members were having one last visit before turning in for the evening in advance of early travel the next day.
Someone asked Milton Grenfell "why do they build so many 'bell-cast eaves' on the Gulf Coast?" Milton, a Mississippian by birth who now practices in Washington DC, replied: "We do this because roofs here need to be relatively steep so they don't get sucked off the building in a hurricane, but in a torrential rain, water rushing off a steep roof would dig a trench in the yard. So we break the roof just above the eave so that it's shallower there, diffusing the force of the water before it leaves the roof."
It took me a minute to get it… I had been searching for 24 years for whatever it was that once transmitted the wisdom of lovable buildings from one generation of townspeople to the next in a living tradition. And then it hit me: "We do this because…" That's it! That's the heartbeat of a living tradition! If you put every pattern in a language of architecture in these terms, then everyone knows why they do what they do and can carry it on, getting better with each generation!
This blog, then, is my "know-why" blog. It has a companion "know-how" blog I call Useful Stuff. This one focuses more on principles, while that one focuses on practical things. I hope you enjoy them both!
