On Authenticity and 'Traditional-Style' Development

"In short, the initial skepticism people tend to have towards a place like Rosemary - the almost visceral sense that some sort of illusion is taking place - is, in my opinion, misplaced. It's lazy. It's less about the true nature of authenticity and more about a particularly modern - and perhaps fleeting - perspective on what's real and what's not."

That quote is from Scott Doyon, who takes on the facets of character-based new construction that in many ways are not of our time, and are therefore deemed as fake by some. The shock in the abrupt change in character emerging out of a sprawling landscape may be issues of scale and architectural syntax, but on a higher plane, they are questions of community character, form, and organization. Doyon continues on Rosemary Beach:

"Where the cynical skeptic might suggest that its architecture bears no relationship to its mid 1990s groundbreaking or its place on Florida's route 30-A, I'd counter that it actually incorporates the lessons of Caribbean life, with all its climatic challenges, in ways that conventional, tourist-strip practices do not and that its masonry, balconies and deep eaves are not nearly so much about style as they are about function and performance."

"Thus, it is more real, because it embodies who we are, where we are, and what we've discovered over time."

Thanks to Hazel Borys