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Alys Beach

My list of favourite things starts with sunshine, good architecture, and the beach — Florida’s Alys Beach has all three. This is the third of the communities on the Gulf Coast designed by Duany Plater-Zyberk.

Their first, Seaside — well known as where ‘The Truman Show’ was filmed — is iconic but now feels a little sterile and over-planned. It has earned its place in the history books of urbanism and architecture regardless.

Rosemary Beach, their second development, was a vast improvement and based its architecture on the actual Spanish colonial styles used when the Cross of Burgundy flew over Florida rather than the more Mediterranean-influenced Spanish Colonial Revival of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Alys Beach is a splendid melange — a touch of the Cape Dutch, Bermuda here, the Maghreb there, and every now and then a hint of the French Caribbean. And it works: this is one of the most successful attempts at a beautiful and pleasing urban arrangement in twenty-first century America.

If any criticism can be issued it’s that Alys Beach is a holiday destination that will never be a “real” community where most people dwell all year round.

But if I was sitting en famille round a rooftop firepit watching the sun go down, I don’t think I’d complain.

For Elizabeth J. — my third-favourite Floridian

Published at 5:54 pm on Thursday 28 July 2022. Categories: Architecture Tags: .
Comments

You’ll have to pay Santa Barbara a visit sometime.

— Peter Grace 3 Aug 2022 2:57 am
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