Alys Beach hired Steve to photograph every good building in Bermuda and in Antigua Guatemala in preparation for the creation of Alys Beach's architectural language. Town Planner Andrés Duany had been looking for an architectural language that was more sustainable, especially in the face of the Gulf Coast's threats of hurricanes, heat, humidity, and termites. He also was looking for relief from the hyper-colorized exteriors of the rest of the Design Coast, so the white masonry walls and roofs of Bermudian architecture fit the bill. Antigua Guatemala's zaguan courtyard house type allowed for the creation of an urbanity that Bermuda's detached cottages could not achieve. Andrés, Steve, and the other design team members crafted Alys Beach's iconic look from the patterns of these two languages of architecture. All work shown here is by others, but it is consistent in spirit because all of the early designs were guided by Steve's two catalogs of several thousand images of Bermuda and Antigua Guatemala. Alys Beach is widely known for building in a very durable way, but it’s also a great modern-day example of a securable place.
