Visions of Seaside: Foundation/Evolution/Imagination. Built and Unbuilt Architecture by Rizzoli International Publications

V isions of seaside

D A RY L R O S E D AV I S

Opposite Page: Top: View of Per-spi-cas-ity Market in 1985 when very few houses had been built. The post office was the only structure built in the center of the town center. Bottom: Internal pedestrian walkway between the modest Per-spi-cas-ity buildings. This Page: Early Seaside signboards advertising venues and events were organized to attract potential home buyers, as well as make a place for local residents. All photographs on this spread courtesy of Steven Brooke.

To find other ways to bring guests to Seaside, Robert and I created events on the weekends. We sponsored sunset volleyball on the beach, sailboat regattas from Seaside to Grayton Beach and back, long-tale storytelling, sand castle building contests, watermelon spitting contests, dancing under the stars, Halloween balls, piano recitals on the bluff overlooking the Gulf at sunset, and outdoor movies. A friend from Coconut Grove Theater passed on to me a 16-millimeter projector. I ordered the movies and learned to be the projectionist. Willie Mason, and Leah Stroble, friends who had moved to the area a few years before we did, built a really cool screen made out of PVC pipes and translucent fabric. Movies could be viewed with readable subtitles on one side, by people sitting on folding chairs in the market area. The movie could also be viewed by people on the other side, eating and drinking in Cinderella Circle, the plaza in front of two sharecropper buildings — the place that started its life as the Seaside Shrimp Shack and, after several iterations, became Bud & Alley’s, Seaside’s oldest restaurant. This was another pivotal point in community-making. I was creating ads, flyers, and signage, and I wanted to learn drafting so I signed up at Panama City Vocational School to learn this technique. I had studied perspective drawing in the eighth grade, drawing a Ford Fairlane. Robert and I created the first Seaside logo to print on a tee shirt by using a letterpress. Hanes men and boys tees were 54 © 2013 Rizzoli International Publications. All Rights Reserved.

V isions of seaside

D A RY L R O S E D AV I S

Visions of seaside

Cooper Johnson Smith H U DSON R ESIDEN C E 1998

D O N C O O P E R ’s architectural practice, Cooper Johnson

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Smith has designed twenty-four homes and four guest houses in Seaside, balancing innovation and timelessness, while participating in the resurrection of the traditional city form. The Hudson Residence on Seaside Avenue is inspired by the 1852 Waverly Mansion in West Point, Mississippi, a Classical Plantation style house. The plan footprint is a 44’ square with a 14’ wide center hall that connects the front porch to the rear screen porch. The structural organization supports the 14’ wide octagonal tower that crowns the hipped roof. Adhering to the mandated code requirements for Type IV, the residence addresses the grand avenue with twostory high columns and porches on both levels. Public rooms are located on the entry level and private bedrooms on upper level. The 3,200 square foot house with 1,036 square feet of unconditioned porches was designed for Suellen Hudson and her husband Hal. Suellen had built seven speculative houses in Seaside when she decided to build a house for herself in 1989, which is called “For Keeps.”

PRODUCED BY AN AUTODESK EDUCATIONAL PRODUCT

Visions of seaside

Cooper Johnson Smith H U DSON R ESIDEN C E 1998

D O N C O O P E R ’s architectural practice, Cooper Johnson

PRODUCED BY AN AUTODESK EDUCATIONAL PRODUCT

V isions of seaside

ANDRÉS DUANY

V isions of seaside

ANDRÉS DUANY

Visions of seaside

Deborah Berke H OD G ES R ESIDEN C E 1984

De b or a h Berke was one of the first architects to

work at Seaside, interpreting the morphological code, and adapting and abstracting vernacular architectural forms to meet the needs of pioneering homeowners. In a ten year span starting in 1983, she designed fourteen projects at Seaside of which thirteen were built. The Hodges Residence is located on Seaside’s first northsouth thoroughfare, Tupelo Street. Berke continued the exploration of a vernacular type which was started by Robert Davis in his Red and Yellow Houses. The type consists of a central room encircled by a porch, with a single roof form protecting the indoor and outdoor spaces. The porch is filled in over time as more enclosed spaces are needed. The house has four bedrooms and four baths, with the master bedroom located in an upper level tower. The code permitted towers to exceed the height requirement, provided that the tower footprint was less than 225 square feet. This house was among the first to take advantage of this height exemption. The central living room has a raised ceiling and opens to a screened porch that faces south and east. A private deck is located at the rear facing west. The 2,300 square foot house employs traditional frame wood construction and a v-crimp metal roof. The house was completed in March, 1984. Opposite Page: Entry Facade. Photograph by Dhiru Thadani. Floor plan and elevation drawings are reproduced at 1/16” = 1’-0”. 256 Rizzoli International Publications. All Rights Reserved. © 2013

Visions of seaside

Deborah Berke H OD G ES R ESIDEN C E 1984

De b or a h Berke was one of the first architects to

V isions of seaside

In Praise of Invented Towns ROBERT A. M. STERN

I love S easide and I learn from S easide .

It is a place of great beauty and superb intelligence, sympathetically set in nature yet distinctly man-made, a place that confronts the junk of so much American urbanism with a splendid alternative. What is it that makes Seaside so compelling? On the one hand, it is a resort — a good-time place, a wonderful beachfront site, where one can escape from all the stresses, rigors, and obsessions of big-city life. On the other hand, it is a town, as urban as any. Perhaps what strikes me most about Seaside is how these two aspects are related: a “resort town” replete with the rich measure of contradiction the phrase implies. Resorts are places of escape, yet they are often idealized versions of what we left behind at home, or what we would like to have at home but don’t. So we have city life and its seeming opposite, escape into nature, in one place. For architects and their clients, resorts are design laboratories where new ideas can be tried without the fear of failure we might suffer from in the so-called real world of everyday life. At Seaside the laboratory experiment can be judged a great success. In this town, a cure for many but not all of the diseases of modern urbanism has been identified. This cure, developed by Robert Davis and planned by Andrés Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Léon Krier, is not only a resounding success, it also opens fertile fields for further experimentation. Seaside is not 74 © 2013 Rizzoli International Publications. All Rights Reserved.

V isions of seaside

In Praise of Invented Towns ROBERT A. M. STERN

I love S easide and I learn from S easide .

Visions of seaside

P L AN DE V E L O P M EN T

This Spread: In 1982, on the recommendation of Andrés Duany, Robert Davis asked Léon Krier to review the Seaside Plan. Krier visited Seaside in November 1982 with Duany and Davis. He prepared this plan, dated February 12, 1983, as his critique of the DPZ plan. 1. Krier’s plan defines the town center and Route 30A with dense perimeter-block buildings mediating the transition to freestanding single-family residences. The perimeter blocks were deemed too dense and “European” for an American small town, and were not incorporated into the subsequent DPZ plans. 2. The plan introduces a small space on the central axis between the church and town center. This suggestion is incorporated, enlarged and transformed into Ruskin Place. 3. Krier had suggested mid-block pathways between rear property lines during his 1982 visit. The plan shows this suggestion, which is incorporated into subsequent generations of the DPZ plans. They are today commonly known as “Krier-walks.” 4. On the west side, Krier terminates the south end of the streets into parking courts and continues the mid-block pathways to beachfront pavilions. He leaves the eastside pavilions as is shown in the DPZ plan, probably because those pavilions had been built (or were planned to be built), terminating the streets. 5. Krier makes plazas along the northwestern edge, with axial views to the Lyceum and School (later to become the Pool House) from unacquired St. Joe Company property.

Visions of seaside

P L AN DE V E L O P M EN T

Visions of seaside

R O B E R T DAV IS

Visions of seaside

R O B E R T DAV IS

Visions of seaside

S T E V EN H O L L

Introductory Spread: Left Page: View of Dreamland Heights rising above residential rooftops, taken soon after completion in 1989. Right Page: Ground level floor plan and elevation drawings reproduced at 1/16” = 1’-0”. Previous Spread: Left Page: Watercolor drawing by Steven Holl, gifted to Robert Davis. Right Page: Top Left: Inscription on watercolor drawing by Steven Holl. Bottom Left: Exploded axonometric drawing showing the constituent parts of the building. Drawing by Steven Holl. Right: Oblique perspective of Quincy Circle elevation. Drawing by Steven Holl. This Spread: Left: View of third floor terrace which serves as common access to all residential units. Below: Terrace level view looking east from third floor terrace. Bottom: View of west elevation — town center facade. All photographs of Dreamland Heights by Steven Brooke.

Visions of seaside

S T E V EN H O L L