Steve Mouzon @stevemouzon Twitter profile

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

6 years

Life is beta.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

1 year

What is the 15-minute city? It's every city ever built by humans on this planet until a century ago, but with a catchy new name. And if the old parts haven't been destroyed in the last century, it's where the tourists go. And people travel across oceans to see the best of them.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

3 years

The left image is Renaissance Florence; on the right is an Atlanta interchange, shown at the same scale. This was my first image to go viral, thanks to a repost by Lloyd Alter at Treehugger. For weeks, I had to keep proving that the scale was the same; I still have proof. 1/

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

1 year

A French farming village surrounded by farmland, with nobody more than a couple blocks from long views into the countryside. An allee of trees welcoming you to town, the nearby expressway skirting by, leaving the village unmolested. What needs to change to do this in the US?

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

2 years

Street design in the French Quarter breaks every rule of transportation engineering. This curb radius is about 6', and the gallery columns are about 6" from the street. It's important to study seemingly impossible things & ask "why does this work?" & "are the rules wrong?"

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

1 year

Street design in the French Quarter breaks every rule of transportation engineering. This curb radius is about 6', and the gallery columns are about 6" from the street. It's important to study seemingly impossible things & ask "why does this work?" & "are the rules wrong?"

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

28 days

The five-over-one type does not require the nonsensical & pastiche Ransom Note Style. The exact same type could look like this. There is no excuse for foisting the unlovable upon the city.

YIMBYLAND

@YIMBYLAND

29 days

You might not like the way they look, but Five-over-Ones have unlocked walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods for hundreds of thousands of people over the past decade. The YIMBY and urbanism movements wouldn’t be half as popular as they are today without these.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

2 months

You periodic reminder that 5-over-1s could look exactly like this if the architects had enough humility to learn things long proven to work. But no, it’s trained out of us in architecture school, where I spent 5 years. Been trying to make up for it ever since.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

1 year

Millions of Americans say they don't want density, but what if the density looked like this? And these aren't complex buildings; just boxes with regular windows. So let's be clear: objections to density are often objections to ugly, but ugliness has no power in open debate.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

1 year

Would it offend anyone you know to have a cottage court in your block? This is Missing Middle Housing.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

3 years

Florence has a pattern of urbanism that changed the world during the Renaissance, and that still thrives today. In the Atlanta image, you can see a pattern of development that will break countless communities dependant on that pattern for growth. 5/5

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

1 year

@DanBallenger1 Unless you'd like to be able to walk to stuff instead of being forced into compulsive commuting to everything. And I understand that some people just love quality time with their steering wheel. That's their choice; not mine.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

1 year

Forty years ago, a few pioneers decided to start building 15-minute cities again. Actually, they built 5-minute cities because they didn't think people would walk 15. This is Seaside, Florida where it all began. Time magazine called it "the little town that changed the world."

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

1 year

@Fwiz Here’s an Ohio village and the French village:

Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

1 year

Thanks to @concord_purple for being the first to name a US town to compare to this one. Here's Minerva, Ohio & Villeneuve-sur-Verberie, France. For the 300 or so people who said "villages like this are all over the US" today, just look. There is so much difference.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

1 year

The term "15-Minute City" is much newer; Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo laid out the 15-Minute City idea in her 2020 re-election campaign. It was a sticky term, and has spread around the world since then. People who understand it realize it's much like the most-loved parts of the city.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

3 years

In the Florence image, over 95% of the land is occupied by private property or civic spaces and buildings. In the Atlanta image, most of the land is wasted due to a highly inefficient land use pattern. 3/

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

3 years

The Florence image is +/- 40 blocks left to right; the Atlanta image, is 4. In Florence, most streets are 10-15 feet wide, with only the largest over 30. Most are paved inexpensively. In Atlanta, most rights-of-way exceed 500 feet, at millions of dollars per mile. 2/

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

2 years

Architects are now mastering the art of inflicting terror upon the people of the city. Even if it never falls, who wants to walk on the bad side of this thing?

Dongho Chang

@dongho_chang

2 years

Wow!

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

3 years

The sprawl-based development that occupies almost all the built areas in the Atlanta image is famously unsustainable as Strong Towns have long shown. 4/

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

1 year

Every 15-Minute City should include an old-line hardware store that includes 95% of your hardware needs. Sure, for the other 5% you'll need to go out and fight traffic on the highway to get to Home Depot, but having a store like Anders nearby gives you choices.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

1 year

This 🧵 is about what the 15-Minute City is and what it includes, not what it's not. The first thing it includes is neighborhood groceries. Ideally there are several in a 15-Minute City because I'm of the few people happy to walk that far with a bag of groceries.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

10 months

Andres Duany says that the lessons of urbanism are broader and more numerous in New Orleans than anywhere else. What follows are a few of them.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

4 years

Skyscrapers have a number of problems that my big-city friends don't want to hear about. If you're from NYC or Vancouver, you just might want to skip this thread. It won't be the end of skyscrapers because skyscraper cities have too much sunk cost but others may reconsider. 1/?

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

1 month

Cookie-cutter design can be great if the cookies are good.

Max Dubler 🏳️‍🌈

@maxdubler

1 month

Can’t believe these cheap ass developers won’t pay for unique building designs. Look at this cookie cutter bullshit from my neighborhood 😤

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

1 year

One of my ideal city street sections. 6-7 story buildings each side make +/- 1:1 enclosure, wide sidewalks w/room for sidewalk cafes, single travel lanes narrow enough to cross quickly, middle refuge in landscaped center median, great street tree canopy. What's not to love?

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

5 months

Honfleur is a French town on the English Channel at the mouth of the Seine with so many lessons on how to get small-scale urbanism right. This 🧵 is a small sampling of patterns we need to see a lot more often in the US.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

1 year

Both New Urbanist and conventional developers commonly make the mistake of trying to make a new shopping street too uniform. The magic of a great Main Street comes in large part from each business being themselves with passion.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

1 year

The 15-Minute City makes it easy for people to open a business and become an entrepreneur. It's important to be able to start small with a Single-Crew Workplace like these food carts at Seaside.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

6 years

How many of these places do you walk to: Grocery Coffee Shop Post Office Restaurant Bookstore Hardware Store Pharmacy Doctor Dentist Accountant 0: #sprawl 1-2: recovering place 3-5: good #urbanism 6+: great urbanism #SimpleIndicatorComplexCondition

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

1 year

Had Le Corbusier succeeded, this could have been Paris.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

5 months

There are no skyscrapers in this view of Brooklyn. But with 5-12 story urbanism, you can build pretty much anything. Actually, traditional cities before elevators achieved champion densities at 5-7 stories. There is no magic story number, but low-mid-rise can get the job done.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

4 years

The Pritzker Prize, long promoted as the "Nobel Prize for Architecture" was just announced, and this is one example of the work of the winning firm. A colleague noted that "it looks like it was modeled after a huge piece of rock-crushing machinery."

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

10 months

5-over-1 buildings can be exactly like Paris... but where in the US is there one such building? Just ONE? The fact is the architects are not equipped, either with classical principles or a library of useful details, to implement anything like this today. I am one; it's on us.

YIMBYLAND

@YIMBYLAND

10 months

5-over-1 apartment buildings don’t have to be generic or forgetful. This is a beautiful example of one donning traditional Parisian styling on the Rue de Rivoli in Paris.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

1 year

Thanks to @concord_purple for being the first to name a US town to compare to this one. Here's Minerva, Ohio & Villeneuve-sur-Verberie, France. For the 300 or so people who said "villages like this are all over the US" today, just look. There is so much difference.

Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

1 year

A French farming village surrounded by farmland, with nobody more than a couple blocks from long views into the countryside. An allee of trees welcoming you to town, the nearby expressway skirting by, leaving the village unmolested. What needs to change to do this in the US?

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

4 years

If people knew how much street trees increase home value, they would plant their own. $2K/house for one tree on the block except $7K for the house it's in front of, or $22K/house for a tree-lined street.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

1 year

Places that transform themselves into 15-Minute Cities attract a lot of young talent because they have a much higher Cool Factor than places with much fewer choices. Boomers & older grew up with few choices (ABC, NBC, CBS), but young talent won't tolerate that. Have more choices.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

2 months

@YIMBYLAND The Denver airport has an entry drive that's 10 miles long. Great for running up Uber & taxi miles. And the previous landowner was apparently the mayor's brother. The actual land in use is about 20 square miles (yellow perimeter).

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

2 years

South Main is a new neighborhood of Buena Vista, Colorado. I collaborated with Kenny Craft on architecture there in 06-07 just as it was getting started. It has faced criticism I believe is the result of people being unable to see the beginning of something good as authentic. 1/

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

1 year

Most people don't want to, but some love living over the shop where things are hopping at the town square, or on Main Street. America was largely built by people living over Main Street. The 15-Minute City brings back this fundamental choice.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

1 year

@BWWoosterEcon I've lived in the US all my life. There's a bunch of convenience retail at the interchange, sucking life out of town, and the town is sprawling so that it's much more than a 2-block walk from Main Street to countryside. I could go on, but that's about one tweet.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

1 year

Wherever you choose to live in a 15-Minute City, you're more likely to get to know your neighbors because places not dominated by cars make it easier to get acquainted. After these two finished visiting, the lady on the porch said "that's a new neighbor I met just then."

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

1 year

America built many romantic stone bridges like this in the 1920s, and it's now easier than ever to do them again because you can use a large elliptical concrete culvert as the structure and face it with stone for relatively little additional expense.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

11 months

Just completely nuts.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

1 year

If you build higher Cool Factor, you'll have more visitors. So 15-Minute Cities need a good supply of B&Bs scattered through their neighborhoods, but not on the quietest streets.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

2 years

Nothing boosts Walk Appeal more than a street cafe because the most interesting thing to most people is other people.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

3 months

How can I triple-repost this?

Coby

@Cobylefko

3 months

These townhomes may look like they were carved out of a historic warehouse, but the entire structure was actually built in 2022, within walking distance to downtown Savannah. We can do great things today when we put our minds to it!

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

2 years

The big purple Bin 612 building welcoming you to the Cotton District immediately intimates that you're entering a place that's not normal. Built incrementally from a shabby mill village after the mill closed & beginning a dozen years before Seaside, it's audacity incarnate.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

8 months

Yes. The need for speed has great impacts on the places we build. Renaissance Florence and an Atlanta interchange at the same scale.

Ashley Fitzgerald

@RizomaSchool

8 months

I do think the solution to a lot of problems is simply to slow down

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

1 year

@MarinoZacharius The QR code has nothing to do with the 15-minute city. That’s a conflation manufactured out of thin air, IMO. I’ve been working on this stuff for decades and nothing remotely like that has ever been mentioned in my hearing & I’ve been in the highest levels of discourse.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

26 days

The Brits are world-class masterful at doing large buildings beautifully. And I was shocked to see so much excellent Missing Middle Housing at Poundbury, King Charles’ town. The new parts are mostly MMH.

YIMBYLAND

@YIMBYLAND

27 days

The Brit’s love their curves. I need more curvy buildings.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

1 year

@mountpelerin Naaah... that's known as "reaming out Main Street and destroying the town." Happens all over the US, unfortunately. DOTs are great in the countryside but have no idea how to behave in town.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

1 year

A good 15-Minute City doesn't just have lots of choices on where to do business within walking or cycling distance, but also lots of choices on where and how to live. Here's a great cottage court in New Town at St. Charles, just across the river from St. Louis.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

1 year

A 15-Minute City also has a wide range of home sizes. This cottage and this mansion are just a few blocks away at the Waters near Montgomery, Alabama. The lady of the mansion said "I love living in a place with many home sizes; it's far more interesting this way.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

3 months

My new commute, as of today, is seven steps door-to-door. (OK, I take big steps.)

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

4 years

Or bone-crushing machinery. This might take the prize for the most brutal piece of Brutalism Revival architecture ever completed. Is it any wonder the profession of architecture has fallen so far, when buildings like this with no shred of humanity are hailed as its best work?

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

5 months

Many people hate 5-over-1 buildings, but the problem is only skin-deep. This Parisian building is the same size, but with calmer skin that’s beautiful & durable. Calm massing saves $$$. Skin 5-over-1s like this and be a hero.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

3 years

UNESCO World Heritage town Pienza, Italy and 6 blocks south and west of our house in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. 13.52 acres in Pienza, with +/- 1,600 residents. 26.44 acres in Tuscaloosa blocks with +/- 200 residents. Pienza has 8 times the people on half as much land.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

2 years

There are countless good bones in American downtowns across the country, but they're seldom connected to enough good tissue to be filled with life. This thread is on the Downtown Top Ten things needed to make downtowns thrive. And none are the usual suspects.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

11 months

Porches & fences are attacked as sentimental pastiche, but they're actually finely honed social engagement devices. Someone sitting on the porch is within easy conversation distance of someone walking by, but feels protected by the fence & rail. So people get to know each other.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

1 year

The 12/22 tweet went viral & generated a firestorm of controversy. Many said it looked just like Ohio. Here's another nearby village that's much more similar to American villages. Can anyone see the difference in village structure & edges? Just curious.

Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

1 year

A French farming village surrounded by farmland, with nobody more than a couple blocks from long views into the countryside. An allee of trees welcoming you to town, the nearby expressway skirting by, leaving the village unmolested. What needs to change to do this in the US?

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

2 years

Agricultural outdoor rooms on the edge of a neighborhood can provide fruits and vegetables to neighborhood restaurants, but there is a hidden benefit that might be greater. Ask children “where does food come from,” and the overwhelming answer is “the grocery store."

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

1 year

South Main is a new neighborhood of Buena Vista, Colorado. I collaborated with Kenny Craft on architecture there in 06-07 just as it was getting started. It has faced criticism I believe is the result of people being unable to see the beginning of something good as authentic.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

2 years

Build neighborhood schools again. Do this and many children can walk to school, reducing school traffic & eliminating the need for land-wasting stack lanes. This is Providence Elementary School, a public school in the Village of Providence where I serve as Town Architect.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

2 months

Here's your periodic reminder that calls to build as much as possible as tall as possible with no regard for what's destroyed gets you this: Modernism's god Le Corbusier's Plan Voisin which would have destroyed the best of Paris for soulless towers.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

1 year

Single-Crew Workplace shops around a court have a long history in 15-Minute Cities. This is Perspicacity at Seaside, but this goes back to the forums, markets, and bazaars of antiquity. No 15-Minute City was ever complete without them.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

3 years

Architecture begins by solving utilitarian needs. It continues by doing so beautifully.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

2 years

Townhouses without a town, out on the expressway, next to the distribution center. Drive everywhere for everything. This last-resort living is what naturally happens when we accept the auto domination proposition.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

1 year

Back to other ingredients: every 15-Minute City should have a Maker Space or two. It's part laboratory, part classroom, where future entrepreneurs are figuring out new stuff and learning new skills that will serve them (and maybe you) well for years to come.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

2 years

If it doesn't have essentials like market & mail within walking distance, it's not a neighborhood; it's a subdivision.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

1 year

@37smadAmaS LOL!! Classic sprawl! So sparse you can't walk to anything! Lots of quality time with your steering wheel. But there's still good stuff likely nearby. Too bad the developers don't pay attention.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

10 days

This is a classic example of the failure of metrics. 112 units/acre sounds like a soul-sucking slum. This building is uplifting, and should be legal everywhere. It's a good neighbor.

Jonathan Berk

@berkie1

11 days

Built in 1920, this 9-unit Marblehead building on a 3,400sf lot has a density of 112 units per acre. Monday’s town meeting will ask voters to support rezoning just 1% of its total land area to allow for 15 units per acre, in compliance with MBTA Communities. 📍 Marblehead, MA

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

3 years

Not sure if I've ever seen more architectural respect for one's predecessors as this building shows for this tree!

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

2 years

Every building should have an identifiable top. Slamming the body of the building unceremoniously to the sky makes the building appear as if it has been decapitated. A reflection of the assembly line, not the human form.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

1 year

Do live/work units bother anyone you know? They are Missing Middle Housing. And American downtowns were once built by people living over the shop.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

1 year

Awnings do several good things for a mixed-use streetscape: they’re shelter from the rain, they’re entertainment for the eyes, both with their color and their fringes fluttering in the breeze, and they lower glare on storefronts, making it easier to see what's for sale inside.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

2 years

@Cobylefko Have you seen the Wheeler District in Oklahoma City? Done by New Urbanist colleagues. A progression of color on this street, but while the scheme is different, it's still color as a tool of delight.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

3 months

Trees are bollards which procreate and regenerate.

Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

3 months

Like bollards? We think you'll love trees.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

3 months

Some say “we can’t build Paris because that’s way too slow.” Haussmann built Paris as we know it in 17 years. 17 years ago was 2007. How much housing has the US built in 17 years vs. just the arrondissiments of one French city?

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

1 year

"Breaking the mass" is the only composition tool most architects were taught in school. The utter inability to compose a calm & elegant elevation has now bridged several generations, so the only architects who can do that today are self-educated.

Dmitriy Molla

@DmitriyMolla

1 year

Who comes up with this stuff? The house on the top looks so much better.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

1 year

How about these? Any objections? Townhouses are Missing Middle Housing.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

3 months

Our home remake was an attempt to help it become what it wanted to be in 1920 but didn't know how because the builder was working from pictures, not principles. It's now elevated from a vernacular builder bungalow, but not too far. As a friend said, "don't sanitize it too much."

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

1 year

This gallery adds over 400 square feet of outdoor garden space to this building that would have had none otherwise. And it shades the sidewalk below while providing some shelter from the rain. Cities should welcome galleries over public sidewalks.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

1 year

Why can't we do plain old good architecture anymore? A Missing Middle commercial apartment block, 5-stories (walk-up for most), 5 bays of 3 windows each, load bearing masonry, so no need for a fragile stud sandwich. Architects should be able to do this in their sleep.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

4 years

Conventional urbanism wisdom has it that bridges across streets take life off the streets, and I usually agree. But when a bridge gives something back like beauty, or like creating a gateway between quarters, maybe the exchange is worth it. What do you think?

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

4 years

I'm working on a piece on the senselessness of skyscrapers. I know many reasons why they're a bad idea, beginning with things learned from @LeonKrier decades ago, but what might I have missed on why this building type is such a bad idea?

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

28 days

Exactly. And I'm amazed at how few people on these threads understand anything about the difference between building type & building style. The original point is that there's nothing wrong with the 5-over-1 type if it's clad in a lovable skin.

newmike2021

@newMike2021

28 days

@JaMikeyMike @stevemouzon That's not at all true. In the hands of a capable architect, mid-rise residential can be masterfully executed in a classical style. These examples from German architect Ralf Schmitz follow classical proportions but still feel modern and approachable.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

4 years

Some say "the coronavirus is the end of urbanism. Sprawl wins." I'm not so sure. Here are some reasons why. I'm just working through this myself and could be wrong on several counts, so please join the discussion and let's try to sort this out.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

1 year

We've been experimenting with construction that allows buildings to open up and breathe like they always did in the tropics before AC. One key is removing everything that doesn't handle moisture well, like drywall. This is open-wall construction; more interesting than drywall.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

2 years

Here's an Auxiliary Commercial Unit (ACU). This is a classic ACU office, built in front of a home in Portland. Over time, it could be retail, a restaurant, or a bar as well. As neighborhoods intensify, it is natural to build ACUs in the front yard, right at the sidewalk.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

1 year

The city of Guanajuato, Mexico is built on impossibly steep terrain with deep gorges all over town, but that's where the silver was, so they built the city anyway. They first capped the gorges with streets, then capped the streets with the pedestrian realm where buildings are.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

3 months

On the fourth evening of an occupied studio, all books are shelved and everything is essentially done except a couple punchlist items. It feels so good working in this tiny space!

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191

Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

2 months

Traditional architecture is perceived as being historical architecture, both by the general public and the profession of architecture. Put another way, "traditional" = "style." There's no awareness of the process of tradition that creates what's later named a style.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

2 years

From midday on, it's faster to walk across the French Quarter than to drive across. Design places for people, and the people will walk; design places for cars, and the cars will dominate. We get more of what we encourage and less of what we discourage. Auto domination is on us.

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186

Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

17 days

I may have done my most @StrongTowns thing ever yesterday. On the final day of a charrette in a long-disinvested place, I put up a couple boards of ideas people could adopt as their own to help make their town stronger & healthier. Let locals live strong and healthy. Pick one:

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188

Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

1 year

Greeneda Court in Winter Park, Florida is really creative Missing Middle Housing which gets 6 apartments over 6 shops on a 50-foot lot. Would this be a problem near you? If not, why don't we legalize it?

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183

Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

11 months

Renaissance Florence and an Atlanta interchange at the same scale. Consider it a Public Service Announcement to remind us of the cost of Auto Domination. In one, you can explore world-changing things for days; you zip through the other in just a minute or two, then forget it.

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

5 months

This building compensates for its 100% lot coverage by being beautiful. Judging urbanism solely by its metrics makes us all stupid. Focus on what it takes to build places people love, and that’s a much smarter conversation.

push the needle

@pushtheneedle

5 months

no setbacks, no modulations, 100% site coverage great urbanism. why do we ban buildings like this today?

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Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

1 year

Here's a new Waters 🧵: When you are gifted the chance of planning a place, have high respect for what's there already. This was a rural fencerow in which century-old oaks had grown. We preserved it, and with it, the feeling that the place might have been here that long.

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180

Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

11 months

@clairebennie They’re not prepared to design simple buildings beautifully. Literally, in architecture school, I heard professors say “if you can’t blind ‘‘em with your brilliance, baffle ‘‘em with your BS. More than a time or two.

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178

Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

4 years

In unsettled times, there's something deeply satisfying about things built simply, clearly, and strong, without the many layers of complexity & fragility normally associated with construction today. @1000yearhouse at @CarltonLanding .

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160

Steve Mouzon

@stevemouzon

2 years

A single step is a well-known tripping hazard and should never be built. Two steps make for a great place to sit a while.

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