How Do They Do It?

We use tradition and observation, mathematics and folklore, diligence and empiricism. 

We rely on a timeless way of building for suggestions and the ethics of beauty for guidelines as we adapt and develop a pattern language for the built environment that flows from the natural context in which we live and move and have our being. 

We employ Evidence-based Design sometimes, not to tell us what to do (we know that from the other disciplines just mentioned), but for two reasons. One, we love a good heuristic to give us a starting point when deciding things like how much or how far. Two, because as difficult as it is to believe, there are folks out there that employ a outmoded system of magical thinking reliant on "science" that won't believe that it is good for humans to look at things like trees and flowers unless they read about it in a peer-reviewed paper.