Celebrating Building Beauty's Inaugural Year

Building Beauty has completed its first year with remarkable accomplishments that the students and staff are celebrating. Expanding on Christopher Alexander’s work, we learned appropriate building techniques during the course in Sorrento and in Summer School. A detailed description of our activities throughout the course can be found in our Learning Journal. One notable achievement is the Form Language we developed for traditional Sorrento gardens. The Form Language served as a point of departure for the project in the Sant’Anna Institute gardens that enhances its current structure. The project model, overall design, and the large bench that was built this year show respect for tradition, but do not copy other gardens. Rather, they are timeless. Many visitors to our Graduation Day celebrations said of the bench, “It looks like it’s always been there.”

Summer School brought another challenge – working under the guidance of a mastro trullaro to build a large-scale model of a trullo, the traditional round buildings with conic roofs in Puglia, Southern Italy. In ten days’ time, we were able to experience the whole cycle of building a trullo from the ground up, starting with the design of the circle on the ground.

The work we did this year sets the stage for the next course which begins in November 2018. Pre-registration is open NOW. Course details can be found at www.buildingbeauty.org. You can reach us at hello@buidingbeauty.org to express interest or ask questions.

The formal accreditation process we are pursuing is at an advanced stage. Students who register for 2018-19 can expect accreditation to be achieved by the end of this year.