Posted on Sun, Sep. 02, 2007

Half a century made all the difference.

We went from designing with the climate to defensively shutting it out while shutting ourselves in, and today we are paying the energy price.

''As air conditioning became more viable on a residential scale, it became a part of affluence in America,'' says Janet McIlvane, a research analyst with the Florida Solar Energy Center and the U.S. Department of Energy's Building America Program.

Additionally, after World War II, there was a move away from individually crafted homes, she says. ``We began to produce homes with a subdivision production mind-set. We were going to build 30 houses, not one, and build them all alike.

``And in that transition, we started looking at how to make things easier, how to build more easily and quickly. That's how the industrial revolution transitioned into the housing market.''

So we jettisoned the front porch, made the windows smaller and sealed up our houses. In Florida, those were the very components that allowed us to survive in the hot, humid climate, McIvane says.

Energy was cheap, and ''as long as residential energy has remained affordable, people haven't felt the bite'' of the loss of natural ventilation and shading, she says.

As we move into the era of escalating energy costs, we are looking back at vernacular architecture as not being so disagreeable after all.

-- GEORGIA TASKER