This visual exploration of the details found in the design of Alys Beach is a continuation of our “of Alys” series. As we closed 2021, we revisited “Floors of Alys” with a new collection of images featuring the color, pattern, and textures of flooring found throughout town. Here at the start of the New Year, the almost quiet days before spring pushes into gear, we celebrate a very different Alys detail, zooming in on the Lines of Alys. 

In planning, Alys Beach was designed to be on a simple, clean grid of north-to-south, east-west lines leading us with ease and simplicity from the Nature Preserve to the beach, and from one amenity to the next. Whether we view Alys from a distance or home in on the intricate details, we notice that the simplicity and symmetry of straight lines and straight angles dominate the town. Stepped roofs create a zig-zag pattern mimicked in the exterior detailing of a chimney or the rise of a staircase, the panels of a shutter or a custom wood entry door, the simple geometry of the rooflines of our town, the square openings that ventilate the walls of private courtyards, even the brackets beneath a veranda contribute to the clean, straight lines and angles that form such a compellingly hard contrast to the bright blue sky, the organic curves of a palm frond or curled tendrils of rosemary. 

While we focus in on the straight lines in this edition and encourage you to notice them and the visual framing they create as you walk through town or peruse digital imagery at a distance, this can only set the stage for the contrasting curves, arcs, bends and circular patterns that also grace the space of the white walls and details of Alys. Alys is, after all, a wonderfully aesthetic and functional lesson in geometric beauty.