Books | Mouzon Design

Traditional Construction Patterns

Sat, 17 Sep 2011 15:24:46 -0500

Traditional Construction Patterns is written for contractors, owners and architects, setting out in plain-spoken fashion basic principles of proper design & construction. It is illustrated with approximately 1,000 photographs and 400 drawings.

Chapter 1: The Story of the Languages of Architecture

This is the theoretical underpinning of the book, focusing on the patterns that make up the Most-Loved Places and how those patterns work together. Patterns are organized within the Four Realms of Architecture as follows: The First Realm: The Universal; the Second Realm: The National Language; the Third Realm: The Regional Dialect, and the Fourth Realm: The Local Particulars. Chapter 1 also discusses how the languages were lost and how they can be revived.

Chapter 2: Three Great Themes of Traditional Architecture

The themes are Buildings for People, Apparent Structure and Celebration of the Act of Building. They underlie nearly all of the pat-terns that follow.

Chapter 3: The Classical Orders

The Katrina Cottages Collection

Sat, 17 Sep 2011 15:20:04 -0500

Steve Mouzon co-founded the Katrina Cottages initiative with Andrés Duany in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The Katrina Cottages Collection is Steve and Wanda Mouzon's personal contribution to the growing number of Katrina Cottage designs. This collection includes the only second-generation Katrina Cottages to date, which are meant not only to be smaller and more charming, but also smarter... much smarter. Some of the space-saving ideas are very old, while others have been developed since the hurricane. If you're interested in Katrina Cottages, you might also check out Gulf Coast Emergency House Plans, which contain Katrina Cottage designs by others as well as Steve and Wanda.

Gulf Coast Emergency House Plans

Sat, 17 Sep 2011 14:43:23 -0500

Just six weeks after Hurricane Katrina, New Urbanists gathered on the devastated Gulf Coast for the Mississippi Renewal Forum. With nearly 200 design team members, this was the largest planning event in human history. The architecture team was composed almost entirely of New Urban Guild members, and several of them had already been working on designs they called "Katrina Cottages," which were originally conceived as "FEMA trailers with dignity." They were also intended to be lovable enough and durable enough that they would still be there a hundred years from now, rather than getting pulled out in 18 months like FEMA trailers.

After the Forum, a number of Guild architects generated working drawings for their designs, completely at their own expense. Funding to support Katrina Cottage designs, if it ever came, would clearly be months or years in the future. But the need was great, and so we didn't wait. Just two months after the Forum, in mid-December, there were enough completed designs for us to begin assembling this book. By early spring, the book was done.

The Bienville Collection

Sat, 17 Sep 2011 14:40:05 -0500

The Bienville Collection is Steve & Wanda Mouzon's collection of attached home plans, including townhouses, live/work units, mews units, liner buildings, and others. The Bienville Collection is named in honor of Bienville Avenue in New Orleans, which begins at the Mississippi River and turns inland through some of the most architecturally diverse parts of the French Quarter, flanked by these home types and many more. Steve & Wanda are a husband-and-wife design team based in Miami Beach. They are New Urbanists, so their work is designed for traditional neighborhoods, whether new or old, where the streetscapes are beautiful and you can walk to all your daily needs if you want to. Places like the corner store, restaurants, coffee shops, news stands, offices, parks, church buildings, and even the school, the gym, and the general store can often be just a short walk away from home in a traditional neighborhood.

the Original Green

Sat, 17 Sep 2011 14:36:36 -0500

The Original Green is the sustainability our ancestors knew by heart. Originally (before the Thermostat Age) they had no choice but to build green, otherwise people would not survive very long. The Original Green aggregates and distributes the wisdom of sustainability through the operating system of living traditions, producing sustainable places in which it is meaningful to build sustainable buildings.

Original Green sustainability is common-sense and plain-spoken, meaning "keeping things going in a healthy way long into an uncertain future." Sustainable places should be nourishable because if you cannot eat there, you cannot live there. They should be accessible because we need many ways to get around, especially walking and biking because those methods do not require fuel. They should be serviceable because we need to be able to get the basic services of life within walking distance. We also should be able to make a living where we are living if we choose to. They should be securable against rough spots in the uncertain future because if there is too much fear, the people will leave.

A Living Tradition [Architecture of the Central Gulf Coast]

Sat, 17 Sep 2011 13:45:14 -0500

A Living Tradition [Architecture of the Central Gulf Coast] is the first in the Living Tradition series. It is a richly illustrated description of the architectural traditions of the Gulf Coast over the past three centuries. But this is not just another catalog of American architecture of Caribbean heritage. Rather, it is a workbook, or "pattern book," that examines each pattern of architecture in detail, such as the proportion of a window, the slope of a roof, or the design of a garden wall. By doing so, it directs the design of new buildings that can become part of the centuries-long tradition of the architecture of the Most-Loved Places of the Gulf Coast.

Until now, pattern books of our day were something akin to recipe books, instructing which details to use for each style of architecture. A Living Tradition re-thinks pattern books from the ground up. It is principle-based, not style-based. Those principles are based on the architecture that makes the most sense for the Gulf Coast, not a random collection of historical styles. And each principle is explained in the plain-spoken fashion of "we do this because…"

A Living Tradition [Architecture of the Bahamas]

Sat, 17 Sep 2011 13:44:03 -0500

A Living Tradition [Architecture of the Bahamas] is a richly illustrated description of the architectural traditions of the Bahamas over the past four centuries. But this is not just another catalog of architecture in paradise. Rather, it is a workbook, or "pattern book," that examines each pattern of architecture in detail, such as the proportion of a window, the slope of a roof, or the design of a garden wall. By doing so, it directs the design of new buildings that can become part of the centuries-long tradition of the architecture of the Most-Loved Places of the Bahamas.

Until now, pattern books of our day were something akin to recipe books, instructing which details to use for each style of architecture. A Living Tradition re-thinks pattern books from the ground up. It is principle-based, not style-based. Those principles are based on the architecture that makes the most sense for the Bahamas, not a random collection of historical styles. And each principle is explained in the plain-spoken fashion of "we do this because…"

The St. Augustine Collection

Sat, 17 Sep 2011 13:20:30 -0500

Steve & Wanda’s original getaway location was New Orleans, dating back to the early 1980s. Steve’s work in recent years has included custom designs based on the coastal Louisiana architecture, and also has included photographing New Orleans and St. Augustine for the Catalog of the Most-Loved Places. His A Living Tradition [Gulf Coast Architecture] book is based on the same sub-tropical architecture. Recent travels and projects has shown a tremendous similarity of patterns in these places and others, including most of the Caribbean.

The St. Augustine collection contains plans of all sizes that are designed for the regional conditions, climate, and gumbo of cultures that occupy the American Gulf Coast and the lands that rim the Caribbean Sea.

NOTE: As with the Key West Collection, none of these plans are based on specific houses in St. Augustine; rather, they honor the character of the region.

The Outbuildings Collection

Sat, 17 Sep 2011 13:19:39 -0500

This collection includes a broad variety of outbuilding types. It leads off with carriage houses, which are living spaces over garages. The cover image is a carriage house. Next up are free-standing garages. Gazebos follow, and then towers. The section on barns includes examples that are quite rural in character, but the Toy Box is meant for a more urban setting. The book closes with garden and utility structures, including one plan of the original outbuilding types... the outhouse!

The Mooresville Collection

Sat, 17 Sep 2011 13:18:27 -0500

This was our first collection, with work on these designs beginning in late 1996. From the beginning, the Mooresville Collection was conceived as a traditional neighborhood collection. It is named in honor of Mooresville, Alabama, a tiny planters’ hamlet just a stone’s throw from the Tennessee River that, while not excellent enough to be nationally renowned, nonetheless inspired us to believe that if our ancestors could do better, we could do better, too. Most of the plans in the Mooresville Collection are Large Houses and Mansions, although there are a few smaller designs in the collection. Most are designed to be built of brick, and they generally tend to be more classical than most of the plans in the other collections.

The Key West Collection

Sat, 17 Sep 2011 13:07:45 -0500

Steve & Wanda Mouzon transplanted themselves to Miami Beach in 2003 to facilitate a closer working relationship with some of the founders of the New Urbanism. They quickly discovered that the simple laid-back island charm of Key West just a few hours down US 1 made for a perfect getaway counterpoint to more urban setting of their South Beach home.

The plans of the Key West collection do the same: they are generally smaller than the Mooresville Collection plans, with most designs being Cottages or Houses. Nearly all of the construction is wood-frame, and the designs generally are more vernacular than those of the Mooresville Collection.

NOTE: As with the St. Augustine Collection, none of these plans are based on specific homes in Key West. Rather, they honor the simple vernacular wood-frame character of the place.