Serenbe Stories

Land Planning & Sacred Geometry's Influence with Phill Tabb

February 10, 2020 Serenbe / Dr. Phillip Tabb Season 2 Episode 3
Serenbe Stories
Land Planning & Sacred Geometry's Influence with Phill Tabb
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

Today we're talking to Serenbe's master land planner, Dr. Phillip Tabb. Phill discusses sacred geometry and the spiritual and symbolic side of planning and architecture. He also reminisces about the all-nighter he pulled working on the Serenbe charrette - where the omega shape for the neighborhoods took hold - and the weekend he, The Nygrens, and many other friends came together to build Serenbe's stone labyrinth.

Definitions, People + Organizations Mentioned 


Transect
-  Used by Biologists and ecologists to study symbiotic elements  in habitats where specific plants and animals flourish.

Photovoltaic (PV) System- A system composed of one or more solar panels combined with an inverter and other electrical and mechanical hardware that use energy from the sun to generate electricity.

Bill Browning

Pleasant Peasant

Rocky Mountain Institute

Robert Marvin

Keith Critchlow

Robert Lawlor

Charles Brewer

Laura Heery

Andrés Duany

Dr. Jorge Venegas

Chartres Cathedral

Michelangelo

Chattahoochee Hills

Southeastern Engineering

Gainey Hall Gallery

Nygren Placemaking

Biophilic Institute

Seaside

EarthCraft

Hannah Solar

Tesla

Routledge Publishing

Tim Beatley

Biophilic Cities

1973 Oil Embargo

Department of Energy demonstration grant

1983 Solar Energy Tax Credit

Fibonacci’s Kite

Monica Olsen (1s):
Hey guys, it's Monica here. I wanted to tell you about a new podcast that I've started with my very good friend, Jennifer Walsh called Biophilic Solutions. Our last season of Serenbe Stories, Building a Biophilic Movement, was so popular that we decided to dedicate an entire podcast to it. Every other week Jennifer and I will sit down with leaders in the growing field of biophilia. We'll talk about local and global solutions to help nurture the living, social, and economic systems that we all need to sustain future generations. More often than not, nature has the answers. You can find Biophilic Solutions on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and follow us today so you don't miss an episode.

Monica Olsen (41s):
All right, now let's get back to Serenbe Stories. Serenbe is a place where people live, learn, and play in celebration of life's beauty. And we're here to share the stories that connect residents and guests to each other, and to nature. This is Serenbe Stories.

Monica Olsen (1m 25s):
Today we're talking to Serenbe's master land planner, Dr. Phillip Tabb. Phill discusses sacred geometry and the spiritual and symbolic side of planning and architecture. He also reminisces about the all-nighter he pulled working on the Serenbe charrette, where the omega shape for the neighborhoods took hold. And also the weekend he, the Nygrens, and many other friends came together to build Serenbe's stone labyrinth.

Monica Olsen (1m 48s):
But first, Serenbe Stories is brought to you by The Inn at Serenbe. The Inn is nestled in the rolling countryside of bucolic Serenbe, where guests can walk on the 15 miles of trails through preserved forest land, the wildflower meadow, and the animal village. You can relax by the pool, hot tub, or in rocking chairs on wraparound porch. Play on the croquet lawn. swings, and in-ground trampolines. Connect with nature and each other all while staying in luxurious rooms on the Inn grounds or within the community of Serenbe. Book your stay today at serenbeinn.com.

Monica Olsen (2m 16s):
Steve, it's exciting to be back and have our exciting guest today, Phill Tabb.

Steve Nygren (2m 21s):
Phill, it's gonna be fun to reminisce. It seems like yesterday. And then when you start looking at the calendar, man, we're, we're approaching 20 years.

Phill Tabb (2m 30s):
It is amazing. I was really glad to be here and to also reminisce about old times and actually to project into the next few years too.

Monica Olsen (2m 39s):
Well, and Phill, for our listeners, is a Serenbe resident, which we absolutely love. But, but before that, he was, and still is our master planner for Serenbe. Designed the master plan with Steve using what we call hamlet constellation theory, which we'll talk about in a little more detail. Has been a professor at various universities, as well as a published author, as well as sacred geometrist. So we will talk about that as well. So I want to welcome you again and just say, we want to dig right in and start to hear your Serenbe story, Phill, and how you came to Serenbe the first time. And one thing I will note for everybody is that Phill has brought his diary, which is beautiful and we will take a few photos of, but if you could start there from how did you first encounter Serenbe and Steve Nygren?

Phill Tabb (3m 26s):
I'll be happy to. I was a department head at Washington state university at the time and Pullman and had a full-time job. And in fact, being a department head is two jobs I think in one. And a one day out of the blue, I get a call from this guy that I'd never heard of, Steve Nygren, from Georgia. And I don't think I'd ever been to Georgia by that time. And he said, we've got this project that we're thinking about doing, a large environmentally oriented community. And we understand that, you know, Bill Browning, who was a go-between between the two of us, and he mentioned that I knew something about sacred geometry.

Phill Tabb (4m 7s):
And at about that time, I was thinking, wow, I wonder what they're thinking of me, someone who knows something about sacred geometry and a, what are they thinking about how that might get applied to Serenbe? But anyway, the, the gist of the talk was that I was invited to come out and give a two hour presentation, primarily on sacred geometry, but then also on village planning or community planning. So that was in November or December of 2000, which was just about three months after their very first thought leader meeting in September.

Phill Tabb (4m 47s):
So in January, I flew out and spent time with Marie and Steve at the, at the Inn. And the shorter part of the story really is that I gave the presentation and there was some really interesting touch points that resonated with both Steve and Marie in that presentation, primarily the notion of sacred geometry and what it is, and that it could possibly be applied at the community scale. And secondly, the fact that one of the case studies that I brought up was Selborne village in east Hampshire. And it happened to be a village that was about 20 minutes away from where I lived.

Phill Tabb (5m 30s):
And I had visited it many times and it was a village that Steve and Marie had visited many times as well. And Marie's mentor actually lived there. And I think the icing on the cake was when I showed a picture of this beautiful cottage along the main street in Selborne that has a thatched roof. And it's just this beautiful brick structure. That was her house.

Monica Olsen (5m 52s):
That's incredible. Absolutely incredible. And I don't know if we'll be able to find a photo of that, but that

Phill Tabb (5m 55s):
I've got one.

Monica Olsen (5m 56s):
Do you? Oh, wonderful. Okay. We'll definitely get a photo of that. So Steve, tell us why or how maybe you came across the concept of sacred geometry before we get into what that is. And why did you want somebody to come and talk about that?

Steve Nygren (6m 11s):
During my seven years of retirement that I've talked about when we sold the restaurant company, we traveled a lot. And this woman that Marie had adopted a sort of as a, a grandmother figure, lived in this little village outside London, and Marie would go over a couple of times a year and I went over at least once a year when during this period, and just became very enamored with the English village system, the foot paths, the pub, the, the, the food store and the entire concept. And so started learning about some of the English laws that had created this balance between the dense hamlets and villages and the countryside.

Steve Nygren (7m 1s):
And of course, I was just enamored as a visitor. At that point, we weren't even considering that we would develop or seeing how it would apply here. Alice was very involved with a lot of the movements in England where sacred geometry, she knew Keith Critchlow. She knew all the people doing crop circling and really had visited a lot of the ancient sites and was part of restoring them, whether it was Stonehenge or the various folks. So Alice had really introduced us to both the concepts of sacred geometries, some of the leaders in that field in England, and then the English village system.

Steve Nygren (7m 49s):
And so during the charrette or the conference with Rocky Mountain Institute when they were here, I asked Bill Browning, if he knew anyone that knew about sacred geometry, and we were already because sacred geometry, we knew it was in England, and we wanted the English concepts. And so we were looking at all those, and I was thinking how complicated it was going to be to bring somebody over from England. And so I was reaching out and he said, you know, I know this guy who is a professor at Boulder, here's his number.

Steve Nygren (8m 32s):
And I called and I got Phill's ex-wife. And she was feeling very friendly towards Phill and actually gave me his number where I can reach him.

Monica Olsen (8m 44s):
Lucky day.

Steve Nygren (8m 47s):
So that's how that was the basis that it all started. And of course, at this point, we had hired Robert Marvin, who was the big environmentalist and Robert Marvin was in his eighties and he said, Steve, this is going to be the last thing I do. Now, Robert Marvin has done things like Brays Island and the waterfront at Buford, and only stayed in the very Southeast. We were having some lively discussions because he was not quite in line with putting high density pods. His were much more environmentally and spread out. So this, this tension was already happening in what I envisioned in places while we are doing everything else in the environment, which he was a great leader.

Steve Nygren (9m 35s):
And so we had these meetings about every six weeks, and we brought in different disciplines, whether it was art, agriculture, and this was the time we were bringing in sacred geometry to help inform us on how we wanted to develop. So Phill presented in the morning and Mr. Marvin's team presented in the afternoon. Now, Mr. Marvin had gone into the hospital and was not able to join us. So his team did it, and it was just awful. It was nothing at all. And it was so bad that we couldn't even quite comment. And so after this two or three hour presentation, there was just dead silence.

Steve Nygren (10m 16s):
And I asked that we maybe have a break. And as I remember, we walked out and several people could just tell my face that, you know, everyone knew it was wrong. So I had various people tugging at my saying, I know what you need. Cause we had other architects. We had people in the room and, and so Phill and I took a walk cause I was intrigued with his presentation and it really rang true to everything that, that we were thinking about, whether it was the English village system and then the synchronicity of, of, of the village of Selborne that we knew so well. And Phill also knew it well, so that was something we didn't, we had just discovered that morning.

Steve Nygren (10m 56s):
And so, as I remember, we walked out behind like where the vegetable garden is and Phill says, I can do this. I can come back and we can do this. And I said, I think you can.

Phill Tabb (11m 6s):
Well, you know, I remember it is that I said, I don't know quite how it can be done and that you can't lay sacred geometry on an existing plan. And Steve says, yes, well, what do we do? And I said, well, you know, I've got a full-time job. He said, well, what do we do? And I said, okay, I'm going to come. And so then that's when we planned, I think it was about a month later, the charette.

Steve Nygren (11m 32s):
That's right. It was, we, we were in pretty fast mode at that point.

Monica Olsen (11m 36s):
So Phill, can you give us a primer on sacred geometry for those of us that maybe have a sense of what it is, that it has to do with shapes, but I would love, you know, for the lay person, can you tell us a little bit what it is and why it's important?

Phill Tabb (11m 51s):
I knew you were going to ask me this question. And it's not an easy one to answer. But before I do want to give a little bit background that I had the privilege to actually work with and have Keith Critchlow as one of my teachers, along with Robert Lawlor and a few others. And so that's how I became familiar with what it was.

Monica Olsen (12m 14s):
And these individuals are sort of the leaders

Phill Tabb (12m 17s):
Yeah the leaders in the world really. And Robert Lawlor wrote a really beautiful book called Sacred Geometry. And Keith has written so many books. It's just really hard to say. And when I was working on my doctorate in London, I worked for Keith for a year working on the Krishnamurti study center. And so that was like a really direct experience of learning and applying these ideas. But to go back to the question of what is it, well, first of all, it's geometry and we all know what geometry is. It's everywhere. You can't look anywhere and not see geometry. So in a way, what makes it sacred? And in some ways it's partly tied into intention.

Phill Tabb (12m 58s):
And it's a, what we might call its symbolic qualities. I could draw a square and it's just basically a square. But if I'm really thinking about the square as representing earth, which that particular geometry represents the earth principle, then I'm bringing in the earth principle to that particular geometry. So I'm embodying this sort of sensibility into the geometry. And another way to describe it is that various geometric systems and in particular, the ones that have what we call immeasurable qualities, the square root of two, the square root of three and the square root of five or the square root of five plus one over two is golden mean geometry.

Phill Tabb (13m 44s):
So each one of these geometries have a particular resonant quality. And many of these geometries are in our bodies, especially golden mean. So when the pharaohs in Egypt and when the Greeks and when the Romans design buildings based on these geometric principles, they were resonating with the human body. And in fact, the particular golden mean geometry used in the Pharaoh's buildings were keyed into his particular body and size. So when you go to a sacred building, you begin to resonate with that space.

Phill Tabb (14m 27s):
So that's another, I guess, dimension of sacred geometry.

Monica Olsen (14m 30s):
Can you give us examples? Cause I have a few in my head, but I don't know if they're sacred geometry, like Chartres Cathedral in France. Would that be?

Phill Tabb (14m 37s):
Yes, on multiple levels. Chartres Cathedral has many layers. One of which is what they call the Christian layer. Another layer is Platonic. It has the Platonic school there. So and that Platonic school goes back to Pythagoras. And so that's where you have this basic geometry and these with the, in these various kinds of non-repeating geometries. And so they they're employed in Chartres as well as symbolism there with color. For example, the north portal is primarily blue and the south portal is primarily red in the stained glass. And so the north portal is more about the story of Mary and the birth of Christ, where the south portal is about the life of Christ.

Phill Tabb (15m 27s):
And then the west portal, which is where the great, huge rose window is, is the life after death. And that's the portal that shines a light down on the Chartres maze or the labyrinth. So these in a way you would say, okay, could be considered in sacred geometric moves.

Steve Nygren (15m 46s):
And a common figure a lot of people think about is that the ancient pyramids. That's the very simple until you can visualize.

Monica Olsen (15m 54s):
And does Michelangelo use it in his work?

Phill Tabb (15m 57s):
Oh yes. It's it's in some ways almost all of those in paintings golden mean geometry was used to organize the compositions and in buildings, it was always used. And you know, what was complicated back in those days, walls were thicker, right, than they are now. So they would do the proportions on the inside as well as having the same kinds of proportions on the outside, knowing that you had a bigger building on the outside than on the inside, which was remarkable. And in today's, it's much more difficult when you only have like four or six inch wall thicknesses. So it's really difficult to do that. And most students now are not taught these kinds of geometric systems anymore, unfortunately, but,

Monica Olsen (16m 43s):
And I know that you created a sustainable urbanism graduate program. Is that part of it is sacred geometry part of that sustainable urbanism, or is that a very different track?

Phill Tabb (16m 52s):
Not really. Talking about things sacred can be touchy, especially when you're in a relatively conservative state like Texas. So we would, the way we would do it is you can talk different, you can shift languages. It's like going from French to English, you can talk about sacred concepts, but use very common language, you know, terms like placemaking is a really good term because it's, it's not charged. Okay. But placemaking could also embody spiritual ideas right. Or sacred ideas. So you learn after a while, how to shift between different languages talking about it.

Phill Tabb (17m 38s):
Sustainable urbanism really, it was a program that was designed to teach sustainability concepts at the urban scale.

Monica Olsen (17m 46s):
Okay. So I'm going to take us back. That's really helpful. I'm going take us back to that first charrette that you guys did together and how you sort of said, okay, I think I can do this. So tell me what happened that day and sort of, was it a one day, was it a two day and what kind of came out of it?

Phill Tabb (18m 3s):
That was the entree to do the charrette, which happened a month later. Okay, so then there's some interesting stories there too, to talk about if we want to get into them.

Monica Olsen (18m 13s):
I want to hear them all.

Phill Tabb (18m 16s):
But I came out with a, one of my students, Donovan Wick. So it was just Phill Tabb and Donovan Wick coming to Serenbe. And it wasn't even called Serenbe then, but

Steve Nygren (18m 24s):
Didn't you have another student too, drawing?

Phill Tabb (18m 27s):
No, no. It was just Donovan for that one for that one. Later on, I brought Jennifer Vecchi out when we worked on the Chatt Hills, but anyway, Donovan I showed up and Steve and Marie are so accommodating and we had our nice rooms at The Inn and we walked the site again, another three and a half hours walking the site. And as I remember, we had a, a dinner that evening in the room with the oval table at the end.

Phill Tabb (18m 59s):
And I think Rossen and his wife and Steve and Marie and Charles, I can't recall his last name, but- Brewer, Charles Brewer. And maybe his wife was there and Laura Heery and her friend, Andres Duany and Jonathan and me.

Monica Olsen (19m 16s):
Very interesting. Okay.

Phill Tabb (19m 18s):
So it was a very interesting one-sided dinner. It was Andres Duany talking about all the ills of developing environmentally oriented communities, all the things that could go wrong. And the, the backstory of that was, well, you know, if you hire me, then you won't have any of these problems.

Monica Olsen (19m 38s):
Oh, okay. So he was sort of pitching himself it sounds like. Maybe.

Phill Tabb (19m 41s):
He was pitching, yeah. And, and, and I know there's a lot of other stories behind that one that I didn't know about. And I was sitting right next to Andres throughout the most of the dinner. And I'm the one that told him about the transect and he's written now books on the transect.

Monica Olsen (19m 59s):
So he found this from you.

Phill Tabb (20m 1s):
He found that from me, and it was part of my PhD research. And anyway, I don't mind. It's a, I mean, it's an idea that's been used for thousands of years. So anyway, the thing that's were memorable for me as walking out of that dinner. And when we passed into the hallway going towards that bar area, Steve put his hand on my shoulder and he said something like, you're the man, don't worry. And that's all I needed really, because the next morning I was to lead the charrette and you know, here, and I knew who Andres Duany was because we had spent many spring breaks in Seaside. So anyway, the next morning was the charrette.

Phill Tabb (20m 42s):
And like most of our charrettes it's a, the first morning or even the first day is information laden. So, and usually from the larger scale, let's say Fulton county to Chatt Hills and then down to the land in Serenbe and, and then down to various perspectives as real estate people that were there. And wasn't SEI, but it was another engineer there talking about the quality of the land and so on. And like most of our charrettes, again, we had a wonderful dinner and then the design time was to happen after dinner. So Laura Heery, and two of her architects, and Donovan and I went into the Hawthorne room and we had tables set up with maps and everything.

Phill Tabb (21m 29s):
And Jorge Vanegas, who was teaching at Georgia Tech, had provided a beautiful contour model of the site, which was incredibly helpful. And so the first, oh, I would guess we started at about seven or eight o'clock and everybody was just putzing around. I mean, we just could not get a handle on this thing. And Laura and her folks started up one end, like up at the Inn and started doing these detailed little designs that was slowly kind of moving down Selborne lane. And it got to 11 o'clock and she said, we've got to go to bed. She and her two architects got up and left and we basically had nothing.

Monica Olsen (22m 12s):
Interesting.

Phill Tabb (22m 13s):
And we were to present to the group, I think the following morning at nine o'clock. And so Donovan and I just scratched our heads and said, well, we got to do something. And I had him doing little bits and pieces, I would say, okay, give me a parking lot with twenty-five cars that's double loaded, give me a cluster of, you know, five homes or whatever, all to scale. And so we started building this set of drawings of bits and pieces. And then we started looking at the contour model, and then we looked at the land and then that's when the horseshoe or the omega shapes just almost shouted out at us. And I had learned in taking some ecology courses that the most vital land happens between two different qualities, you know, like a meadow and a forest where you have that line between those two, that's where the greatest amount of vitality is.

Phill Tabb (23m 2s):
And so for Serenbe where you have these sort of valleys and hills, the relationship between the hill and the valley is where it's really vital. So that ended up where being the place where these horseshoes or omega shapes were placed. And it ended up being, you were talking about constellating urbanism, the idea that there were many of these sites, and we had identified about four of the sites. And so it seemed an interesting idea to create four hamlets in these sites. The fourth hamlet, which is where we have the education hamlet right now, was less a sort of nurturing site like that and became more like the Italian Hilltown. So we had at least three of

Phill Tabb (23m 43s):
These, you know, nurturing, omega shapes. And then we had the one Hilltown and so Donovan and I just rushed. And we used a ton of scotch tape and little drawings and taped it all on top of the master drawing. And then it was about, I would say four o'clock. We ripped off a clean sheet of tracing paper and threw it on top of that and spent about an hour tracing the whole thing. And then we spent about another 20 minutes coloring it.

Monica Olsen (24m 9s):
Wow. That's fast.

Phill Tabb (24m 11s):
And so it was about five o'clock,

Monica Olsen (24m 12s):
And you're talking 5:00 AM?

Steve Nygren (24m 14s):
AM.

Phill Tabb (24m 15s):
AM. Been up almost all night. And we looked around and there was just piles and piles of junk all around from tracing paper and stuff. We said, we don't want that.

Phill Tabb (24m 23s):
We knew that Steve and Marie were going to come down at six or whenever they get up. So we didn't want the room to be a wreck. So we spent another 20 minutes cleaning up all the trash, and then we pinned the drawing up on the wall. Right as you walk in, we knew they would walk right. So Donovan and I then crashed at about 5:30. And I can't remember when we got up, but it was probably around 7:30 or so. And when we went into the kitchen area, the dining area, we could see Marie and Steve and they had smiles on their faces. So I knew that we had done all right.

Steve Nygren (24m 58s):
It was great. Cause I remember, you know, cause I was touching in through that and I, I stopped making them coffee about two in the morning and I couldn't believe they were still up. And I thought, well, you know, we'll see what we get in the morning. And so, and so I was very aware of the mess. There was rolled up paper everywhere and through that room. And it was quite a pleasant surprise to come in and to see all these concepts that by two o'clock you had getting there, we were close to the, the, the, the whole piece of it. And it was amazing to see what they had brought together. Then this beautiful hand drawing that really it's the hand drying that you have it framed at your place don't you?

Phill Tabb (25m 40s):
The original I've got the original somewhere or a photo of the original. I don't know where it is, but what I have in my house are copies of the one that was done a month later, because what happened is we left that drawing with Steve and Marie and the, and the rest of the folks to take a look at it and just write comments. And then a month later to give me the comments and then I would redraw them, which I did. And we expanded the first, the first shot was very small Hamlet horseshoes, but then we began to expand those and articulated a Serenbe farms a little bit more and so on. And that was a really beautiful drawing.

Phill Tabb (26m 20s):
It was something that was used by Serenbe, you know, for years after that.

Monica Olsen (26m 24s):
Yeah. We still have it.

Phill Tabb (26m 26s):
You still have it. So, yeah, that was amazing. And of course, since that time I've been involved in probably more than a dozen or two dozen charrettes with Steve and others. But I think the thing that I remember the most about them is Steve will articulate the problem or the challenge or the opportunity or what it is we're supposed to be working on. And he provides all the base maps. And again, we will walk the site wherever it is and get that firsthand information. And then he leaves us alone for awhile. And then I say, listen, you can come in and interact at any time. And so he will come down, you know, a half hour or an hour later,

Phill Tabb (27m 4s):
And inevitably we have a question or two in which he's extremely helpful, or I have gone off on a slight tangent that's a little unrealistic. And so we have this great way of working together because he has a depth of ideas that he draws from. And, and then I have an ability to kind of put these ideas down on paper.

Monica Olsen (27m 26s):
Yeah, it's incredible.

Phill Tabb (27m 28s):
And it's an amazing, I think teamwork that we were able to do. And of course then we give it to the engineers and they take the beautiful curved line drawings and kind of chop them up a little bit, but they make them very real, which is important. And then especially in the early days, I would then get a copy of the engineer's drawings.

Phill Tabb (27m 49s):
And then I would sort of round off the edges a little bit to, to bring it back to this sort of, I don't know, scrumptious aspect of the plan.

Steve Nygren (27m 59s):
The sensuousness.

Phill Tabb (28m 0s):
The sensuousness.

Steve Nygren (28m 1s):
Many times I will take it, you know, from Phill's plans, we go to the civil engineers and they look at the reality of it. And there's some things that they adjust that aren't aren't, and then it's always a little stiff. And so I, I many times say Phill, shake it up a little bit. And that's it, it's sort of like, if you can imagine that,

Phill Tabb (28m 19s):
Well, you know, the site, the Serenbe site really lends itself to freehand design work.

Monica Olsen (28m 26s):
And why is that?

Phill Tabb (28m 28s):
Because of all the curvature nature of the site, and it's a very feminine site and the design is feminine. So with all these wonderful curves, and they are sensuous, and it takes some time to get those curves right. And the computer really couldn't do it. I mean, it could do it, but you'd have to take an extraordinary person to be able to, to, to do it. And certainly the computer can't do it in the amount of time that we have on these charettes. And usually the design time is about four to six hours, maybe a little bit longer.

Phill Tabb (28m 59s):
So using it, doing it by free hand, really, I think was something wonderful for Serenbe.

Steve Nygren (29m 7s):
And Phill continues to do free hand drawings, which are just beautiful. I'm sure we'll have some pictures of some of these.

Phill Tabb (29m 14s):
Of course, of course. There's an exhibition coming up.

Monica Olsen (29m 16s):
Yes. Yes. We're going to have all of Phil's work on display at Gainey hall gallery in February. Not only some beautiful watercolors that you do, we will probably have some of the maps on display as well. I'm talking to you to figure out how we can incorporate that because it's not only just to showcase your work, but it's our 15th anniversary. So I want to really highlight all that. One of the things that I just want to step back to that charrette, you know, so it's in the morning, it's pinned up on the wall. Did you guys sneak in and see it? Or was there a presentation? Or did you just leave it

Steve Nygren (29m 51s):
Well there was a presentation. I mean, we, you know, we're coming down and clearly walked in and there wasn't, you know, it was early. So walked in, saw what they were doing. I'd had a few hours between, I saw the mess and I was impressed with that. And then I think we had coffee and breakfast and then there was a formal, more formal presentation. Others, others came in to see it at that point.

Monica Olsen (30m 13s):
And, and tell me how you overlayed sort of the concept of English villages onto it, because I know you did your PhD in that. And so can you share a little bit, you know, for those of us, maybe you haven't been to an English village or what that really means, or maybe the village model.

Phill Tabb (30m 28s):
Well I had studied English villages for five years and I'd learned quite a bit about them. And one of the things is that in Great Britain, there are 10,000 villages. Most of them were actually given birth in the Anglo-Saxon period, which is about 500 BC to 1066. And so that's the birth of most of these villages and

Monica Olsen (30m 50s):
Interesting, okay, that's where the birth of them.

Phill Tabb (30m 52s):
Yes. And out of the 10,000 villages, 50% of them are linear, which makes sense because most of them were located on lines of either roads or paths or rivers. So they tended to be linear. So most were linear, 35% were nucleated, which means that they were evolved a little bit further than just a linear village. Nucleation, meaning that they have a center.

Phill Tabb (31m 19s):
And usually that center was a center of green and usually some sort of a market. So they became like market villages. And then the last 15% are what they call random, but I call them polynucleated. They're just small little clusters that are sort of disorganized in a way. So that made up the, the kinds of village types. Now coming to Serenbe, in a way, Serenbe has all three of those characteristics because each one of the omega hamlets is linear. It just happens to be curved, right?

Phill Tabb (31m 58s):
So it's a linear village and each of the hamlets at the apex has nucleation. So it has the green, like in Grange or in Selborne and it has the pond in Mado. So it's, it's nucleated and it has a clustering of non-residential uses there as well. And then the third one, which is poly nucleated, which is where the term constellated urbanism comes from, that there is a constellation of these linear nucleated hamlets throughout Serenbe. And it's always been my contention in a way that Serenbe isn't a single place.

Phill Tabb (32m 38s):
I mean, it isn't a single point, it's not a single hamlet. But it's the whole, right? So I've always felt like Serenbe is the constellation, it's the constellation. If you were to put the plan of Serenbe up in the night sky, it would be the constellation Serenbe. And so that's where I sort of came up with that idea.

Monica Olsen (32m 59s):
No that's wonderful. And one of the things about the English villages is a little bit about how there's sort of a clustered central commercial that then flows out from there are different types of homes. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Phill Tabb (33m 11s):
Yeah. Well maybe this is a good segue into the Thorburn transect. Yeah, but there's a, Thorburn transect is basically a density gradient, meaning going from either low density from the outside to higher density on the inside or the reverse going from higher density on the inside to lower density on the out. And, and typically in an English village, you go from attached housing, integrated with a commercial in the center, and then slowly you go to cottage homes and then eventually you go to a state homes and then finally you go to farms. So you're going from this rural environment slowly migrating into a more urban center.

Phill Tabb (33m 52s):
So we employed that same thing that Serenbe and this guy, Andrew Thorburn in 1971, published his diagram of this particular kind of transect. And there's another component to it, which I didn't mention, but the landscape also switches with the density. So when you're on the outside, you have more landscape. And the landscape acts as a filter between the street or the road and the buildings. So the houses and buildings or farms are set back then as you slowly migrate into the village, that landscape starts to thin out. And eventually when you get to the center, it flips to the back and in the English village, it goes into Walden gardens in the back.

Phill Tabb (34m 36s):
So you have density building up on one side and you have the landscape building up on the other. So it's a very interesting concept. And I think probably the best example of Serenbe is looking at Selborne. It is so clear here where you see that.

Monica Olsen (34m 52s):
Right. And I know that coming from the Inn is a great way to sort of experience that. If you come off the gravel road from the Inn and drive or walk in, that's going to give you that whole experience.

Phill Tabb (35m 3s):
And Steve was brilliant in being able to take that concept and materialize it. So the whole material experience of coming to Serenbe goes through that same transect, you know, you might talk to them,

Steve Nygren (35m 16s):
So what we really, Phill really taught me about the transects and it seemed very natural. And so we've carried that forward so people can not understand through our various design review boards or landscape design review boards. They think they understand the Serenbe way. Well, no, you have to understand the transects within Serenbe because a, the formation of a bush that might be very loose and fine on the outer transects will not be the appropriate thing nor you should not have the clipped hedge that we see around the townhome houses in the center. Those should not occur on your outer transects. In, in the, in the middle transects, we require front porches, but those are not required on either end of the transect when you're in the very rural or the very urban. We encouraged balconies and things like that.

Steve Nygren (36m 9s):
So you really have to understand the various transects transitions and generally our crosswalks are at transect changes.

Monica Olsen (36m 21s):
Okay.  I didn't realize that.

Steve Nygren (36m 23s):
And that gives you a better clue as to how that happened. So this is the, the layers that make Serenbe so interesting. And it's why, because of the transect and sacred geometry, a common thing here I hear is your pictures don't do it justice. Now, Monica, your team has incredible pictures and videos and I still hear that. And I realize it's because you have to feel it. And when you're here on the streets, you feel it in a very different way than you're just visually seeing it.

Phill Tabb (36m 59s):
Well, you know, the, just walking along the road, let's say, or along the sidewalk, and then the sidewalks stop. A sidewalk is an urban idea. Right? And then you go to the road, which is a rural idea if you're walking out of Selborne going towards the Inn.

Steve Nygren (37m 18s):
And so when you're at Serenbe and you'll notice when we transition from a concrete sidewalk to an asphalt path, that is when you have left the Hamlet and concrete paths are that clue that you're now in permanent preserved areas.

Phill Tabb (37m 37s):
It's pretty interesting. And then the, the other end, the dense end, the buildings do two things. One is that they go closer to one another, and then they go closer to the street until you get to the apex of the omega, where the buildings are right up to the sidewalk and right up to one another. And so what that does, it enables the creation of what we call an outdoor room. It's a public outdoor room. When you close the street off, you know, for one of your markets or a fair or whatever, that is an outdoor room.

Steve Nygren (38m 8s):
And so for each area, once the civil engineers have staked the future roads, so this started with the very first piece of Selborne and until today, Phil and I then walk the center line of that staked road and determine if the grades that are planned are correct. And then we stop at every lot. We have the map and we determine where the front of that house sits from the center curve or the curb, the future curb and the elevation height of that house, not the variable, but what is the height.

Steve Nygren (38m 51s):
And so then from that, we develop a lot specifications sheet that gives this information to the future architect for that site.

Monica Olsen (39m 2s):
Right. Well, the thoughtfulness, I mean, I,

Monica Olsen (39m 5s):
I see it and I've, I'm aware of it. I love been here, but it's so interesting to hear even more because I'm always learning something new, but I think that's what you're feeling when you're here. Besides this, I thought this was really interesting, this sort of nurturing nourishment or sensuality, but that nurturing, there is something very nurturing about being here and it's the way that it is laid out and the way the thoughtfulness to your point, like even how the bushes are trimmed or not trimmed. I had never realized that. Do you think that this is replicable? I mean, I know that, you know, we're, we're a model and these are principles that we are utilizing to build it.

Monica Olsen (39m 48s):
But like, to me, it's like everybody should be building this way. Like, what are your thoughts on that?

Phill Tabb (39m 55s):
Well, I'll start by, you know, what are we talking about replicating because Serenbe has so many layers of what it is. For example, would we push replicating the omega forms? Okay. Maybe, maybe not. It depends on the site. Or another way to say, what is, what are the benefits of the omega form versus just having a straight linear village or having more of a, a gridded Townline village. And so these are questions that I would ask about as replication. I like the idea of constellating cause you can constellate anything. And one of the things that we discovered in our research was that a pedestrian community, in order for it to encourage being pedestrian, you need to be within a one kilometer or a one mile diameter circle.

Phill Tabb (40m 47s):
If you're beyond that, then you discourage walking.

Monica Olsen (40m 50s):
Interesting.

Phill Tabb (40m 51s):
So the idea, depending on the size of these things would be that this notion of replicating them into a constellation is a good idea. So I think that's something that can be is, is a model that could be used. I'm not sure the omega form is, it's really unique to a Serenbe.

Steve Nygren (41m 9s):
Well, I think specifically what can be replicated is thoughtful design in the built environment that relates to nature rather than imposing a design on nature. And now there is a lot of interest in Serenbe, and that's why we've launched Nygren placemaking is a conference to help share the principles rather than trying to copy the physical. And I'm, I'm, I'm curious, sometimes we're sitting here on the, on the second floor and we can look out on the street and sometimes I see obvious planners, just the way they're dressed and, and of course the camera and sometimes the tape measure gives them away.

Steve Nygren (41m 54s):
And I wonder why they haven't called to try to talk. And so many times I'll go out just in a friendly way, because we would like to share the concepts of this. And I'm always surprised by the few that act as though they're stealing something from us and they think it is in the shape or the measurement in the form. And I think, oh my goodness, I'm I still wish they would open up because that is going to be an absolute failure because you can't, you can't copy it because it isn't about any of the physical-ness it's to understand the concept and the relationship.

Phill Tabb (42m 31s):
Yeah. I can't agree more with that. It's it's the principles. And, you know, for example, the open space requirement we have here 70%, and not all developments can do that. And you know, if Serenbe has its transect, which goes from lower density to higher density, think of Serenbe's location relative to downtown Atlanta. So there is also a gradient there, you know, a parcel of land in downtown Atlanta can't necessarily be 70% open space. So concepts need to be developed about this relationship of open space to build space as you go through that entire transect.

Phill Tabb (43m 13s):
50%, well, just under 50% of the world's population is rural. Most people say, well, 50% of the world's population is urban, meaning that most people are becoming urban, but I like to think that most people are still staying rural. So, and obviously Serenbe is in a rural environment. And so there's still a lot of development that can happen, like Serenbe, in this rural environment and even the suburban environments for that matter.

Monica Olsen (43m 44s):
I think in the Greenfield and in the, in that sort of like insidery term, but basically open land, right, would be an equivalent to that in a rural environment or even, you know, we're only 35 minutes from Atlanta, you know, or maybe 40, it's still very, very rural. And so how do we figure out to share this idea? You know, we, we work on it all the time, you know, with Nygren placemaking or the Biophilic Institute, or just even doing press, right. We want to share the concept, but Phil tell me where, you know, you see the ability to sort of share that concept. I know you've done it a lot with students. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Phill Tabb (44m 22s):
Yeah. I maybe I'm pessimistic about it. If you look at Seaside, I remember going to Seaside in the early days and before Seaside was there, there was these large condos along the beach and golf courses and golf clubs and so on. But, and Seaside, there was a model and it was thought that maybe all along 30A would be, you know, more interesting kinds of development. So what happened, you know, over the next 50 years, 40 or 50 years was developments that looked like a Seaside, but weren't really Seaside. They, they took the look, they copied bits and pieces of it. And that's the one thing I agree with Steve here is to not copy Serenbe, but to go to those principles, I think you do exactly what you are doing.

Phill Tabb (45m 8s):
You've got these two conferences you put on each year, the biophilic and the placemaking, and you're getting you're orienting towards, let's say designers on one side and you've got developers on the other side. And more and more of them are beginning to see the, I guess, the advantages of a place like this. Financial advantages, as well as the livability advantages. But I think over the next few years is going to be piecemeal, you know, how much real influence we have on development. And we're almost waiting for more. This is, this is in my own views here. We're waiting for more negative things to happen in the world

Phill Tabb (45m 47s):
Before we actually start doing things more aggressively. Necessity is the mother of invention. And you know, if we start to experience more sea level rising, I mean, look at Venice today. It's unbelievable. But again, I also feel that things can be done incrementally. Now at the planning scale it's harder. You have to have those principles upfront because once you put that infrastructure, that's there for a long time. That's the village I lived in, in England was established by Caesar. The roads. And they were on Cardinal directions, which was a Roman thing to do. And today there is south street and west street and north street, and those were established by him.

Phill Tabb (46m 30s):
Which is amazing. So once you establish that infrastructure, it's pretty much there. So that's the critical piece is to get them to understand the relationship between density and mixes of use and the infrastructure. Because once you put that down, you're locked down.

Monica Olsen (46m 46s):
And does that start with the students or the city planners or a combination? Like where, where would you put your time if you were?

Phill Tabb (46m 54s):
Well you've got to do it all. I gave a lecture or I was on a review at Kennesaw yesterday, Kennesaw state university. And my closing statements was you guys are brand new. You know, you're the new, you know, you're third year students, but when you're my age, you're going to be designing for your grandkids. And I'm hoping that you're going to be more aggressive in your approaches towards sustainability and livability and health and wellness. And right now students are still designing in the ways that we did, you know, 50 years ago. Unfortunately.

Monica Olsen (47m 26s):
And why do you think that is?

Phill Tabb (47m 29s):
It's partly because of the faculty and partly because of the accreditation requirements, for example, biophilia is not a accreditation requirement, it's an elective.

Phill Tabb (47m 44s):
And so that's part of the reason that biophilic concepts are not really taught more broadly. So if it were to be a required course, then you would have more people learning it. You know, it exists on all levels, the professional level, the development level, the architect's level. And, but I think ultimately it's the users because when the users decide that they want to get rid of the automobile or when they decide that they're going to buy electric cars, and that's happening now, then you see change. What do you see? You see all the other automobile manufacturers doing electric cars. And it took Tesla and a few others to, to get there. And I think those kinds of changes will happen. Are happening.

Phill Tabb (48m 28s):
And I think that also incremental change is healthy. To do things too quickly, I mean, in Serenbe, if we had done some of our more progressive ideas too early, it never would have happened. And so you have to kind of ease into it. And, and I think we are easing more and more into more and more the principles.

Steve Nygren (48m 48s)
Well if you compare the layer density in Mado compared to Selborne, it's very different. And you're right, if we had come in with that density immediately in the countryside, it would not have been understood.

Phill Tabb (49m 3s):
And a mandate for geothermal may not have been as interesting or as possible in Selborne.

Steve Nygren (49m 10s):
Well I think that's a whole nother subject. That's a matter of educating people. And, and, and that, that with geothermal is a good principle while it made all the sense in the world, both from sound and, and, and energy, reducing your energy demand, we ended up just having to make it mandatory. And some of these things, you're seeing. Some cities are actually starting to make some of these principles mandatory. The number of large cities that are, are, are, are really prohibiting cars now. Either during specific times or other times. So we're coming into a lot of these principles. They may be called something different, but we're really moving.

Steve Nygren (49m 53s):
You look at the value that green space has. Whether you know, it's a park, cities are now starting to understand how to do biophilic bioretention stormwater because not only is it a wiser thing to do, but it changes property values around those areas. This is starting to change in various ways. And it is it's, it's the demand, the economic demand. That's going to move it.

Monica Olsen (50m 23s):
You're right. The consumer is really the one who starts to push that change as well as creating the knowledge on the planning level. And I think to your point about the larger, you know, ecosystem that we're sitting in, the planet, you know, we have to really start thinking and you're seeing it happening. People are talking about better capitalism, capitalism, that doesn't just take, you know, sales into account or the GDP, that we're actually considering nature and people in that equation. And I don't know, maybe we should start a biophilic economics program or something.

Phill Tabb (50m 59s):
Yes, well, and it's, it's, it's about lifestyle. I mean, it's really easy for me being retired now and living in my own house in a community that I was a part of to say that this is the way things should be. When I was a younger, I couldn't afford my house like many people, but it was something that I aspired to. And I aspire to being able to be off grid, which one day I will be totally.

Monica Olsen (51m 26s):
Yeah, tell us a little bit about your house. Your house is pretty interesting.

Phill Tabb (51m 29s):
Well, it's, I've added things incrementally. The first thing was that it's a small house, three bedrooms, but it's only 1650 square feet and has an office as well. And so its footprint is relatively small. So that's, I think a, a good thing. Secondly, like all homes here in Serenbe, it's, EarthCraft certified. And then I have a passive solar heating, which is pretty rare here, but I've got an insulated concrete slab for thermal mass and a large glass area. Then I have, when I first moved into the house, I put in my first PV system and it was 18 panels and a Tesla battery, which is really exciting.

Phill Tabb (52m 13s):
And then last winter, I added another 12 panels. So I went up to 30 panels and this month I'm adding five more. So I'll be at 35.

Monica Olsen (52m 24s):
And why do you do that? Why would it?

Phill Tabb (52m 25s):
To get more energy.

Monica Olsen (52m 27s):
Okay. Right. And did you need? Okay. In order to go net zero?

Phill Tabb (52m 30s):
Yes. Right. So I'm and I ran out of room on the roof. That's one of the main reasons

Monica Olsen (52m 37s):
Got to find a place to put a solar array, Steve, here somewhere.

Phill Tabb (52m 42s):
But, you know, they cost money. But the problem I, the problem I have, and probably most people here will have with geothermal, which is an electric, electricity driven ground source heat pump, in January requires- December and January and a little bit of February- requires the most amount of electricity during the year. Okay, well, December and January and February are the months where you have the least amount of sun. So you have the most demand and the least supply. That's the problem. And, and I've been talking to a lot of people, but I deal with that. And the, the answer is more supply and more battery,

Monica Olsen (53m 24s):
I was just going to say, the battery, the batteries aren't there yet.

Phill Tabb (53m 27s):
Well, the batteries are there. It's just the amount of the quantity of them

Monica Olsen (53m 30s):
The amount of energy they can hold at a time.

Phill Tabb (53m 32s):
The amount of energy that you hold. I was talking to one of the guys from Hannah Solar is saying that they just did a house that has 40,000. If that had 40, not, it has 40 panels and four Tesla batteries. I've got one. So they're really orienting this thing towards storage.

Steve Nygren (53m 60s):
This is really moving. And, and Phil was one of the early people pushing solar back in Colorado. What in the, in the sixties or seventies, Phil is that dating you?

Phill Tabb (54m 12s):
1973. I, I got out of college in the sixties, late sixties. And like most people at that time, didn't quite know where my career was going. If you might remember, America was in a place, which I won't get into, but so 1973 came along, which was the oil embargo and it gave great purpose to my career. And in 74, I worked on the world's largest solar heated building at the time. It was the community college of Denver. I was working for a firm in Denver and that really got me into it. And then about a year later, I broke away from the firm and we started our own firm. I had two other partners and we totally focused on solar energy projects.

Phill Tabb (54m 56s):
And during the next about seven years, we won five department of energy and department of energy or a HUD and department of energy demonstration grants. And out of those five, four were built and only one didn't get built. And that really, when you do, when you win a government grant, you have to go into so much detail and do all the engineering and all that kind of stuff. And we were able to, to pull those, pull those off. And so then the eighties came and of course the solar tax credits sunset it in 1985. And it was at that time- by 1985, America was by far the leading country in the world in solar energy.

Phill Tabb (55m 37s):
I mean, it was just no doubt about it. We had hundreds and hundreds or thousands of buildings nationwide that were solar and all kinds of solar technology was being evolved. 1985, the solar tax credits sunsetted and the industry just completely died. Nothing-

Monica Olsen (55m 54s):
Because I was gonna say today, you would, I mean, you know, I would have not realized that that had happened.

Phill Tabb (55m 59s):
Well nothing happened for almost 15 years. But what did happen was that solar energy began to take off in Europe and especially in the eighties and the nineties and not huge amount, but enough to keep it alive. And of course, by the time we got to 2000 and now, I mean, it's just unbelievable, the amount of buildings that are going up that're using solar energy.

Steve Nygren (56m 21s):
And so Phil brought that discipline and he did sun studies. And as we laid out the Omegas, here we are a dense area in the village, but the legs all face south. So if you design the house correctly, we have taken a path of trees down because of where the houses densely sit. So we do not really have large trees between houses. And so that opens the path to the Southern sun, which is what you want for your solar panels. So we really haven't forced architects to do that because solar has not been the economical thing that we, we, we forced, but as, as batteries become more common and price wise, I can see the day that, that, that we require solar as we did a few years ago with, with geothermal, because it will make economic sense.

Steve Nygren (57m 18s):
And our land plan then allows architects and all to do that in a responsible way.

Phill Tabb (57m 23s):
I agree. And I think in the future, you're going to, I think as many houses as we can, we'll have small standalone systems, especially if we move to electric cars for that, and imagine so that you can charge your car, never have to pay for gas, never have to pay for electricity for your car because you're charging it yourself. And then to couple that with solar farms. I'm not talking about the future. So you'd have standalones on your house that won't take up the entire roof necessarily. And then solar farms and or other forms of renewables.

Monica Olsen (57m 57s):
So one question would be for like myself, you know, can I retrofit my house for solar?

Phill Tabb (58m 4s):
Absolutely. And there's a limit depending on the complexity of your roof and the orientation of the slopes. My neighbor across the street is now, and the house has been built for about four years now, three or four years is putting on a 12 panel system. And I looked at her October electric bill, and it was $197. And I compared it to mine, which was about $30. So they're a real savings that you can- not necessarily, she's going to go down to $30, but the solar producer is saying that they think that they're going to get that down by half. So I still think that these standalone systems on your house can, and they have a hybrid car,

Monica Olsen (58m 48s):
Okay. So they can use a little bit.

Phill Tabb (58m 50s):
They can use a little bit for that. Some houses you can get a lot on, and I'm talking about existing houses and the, some are going to be a little bit difficult.

Monica Olsen (58m 58s):
Yeah, no, I really do think it's the future. And I think we're just waiting for maybe for Georgia to come in with some tax credits also, as well as making it a little more economical, is that what we're waiting for?

Phill Tabb (59m 7s):
I think so. And also the way that you use the, if you're tied into the grid, if I charge my batteries at night using a lower rate and I've got, instead of using the sun, and then I use the battery power and the sun during the day, then I can become off grid.

Steve Nygren (59m 28s):
The development of batteries for energy independence, I think is going to move this in the market base faster than anything. And so Phill we've skipped over your career from when I found you in Washington and shortly after then you took over as head of the department at Texas A&M as the architectural and as is at the time, I think you said that it's the largest architectural school in the United States.

Phill Tabb (59m 56s):
That's right. I had nearly a thousand students and 65 faculty, more than half of whom had PhDs. So it was a very interesting time, I guess, and not only that I was going through accreditation, so, and that's really difficult, but it was a very, I liked working at Texas A&M because it afforded me the opportunity to go to Italy on one thing. And another one was, once you're a department head, you really understand the nature of architectural education. You have to know all facets of it, you know, what's the curriculum and, and, and, you know, hiring faculty and getting, getting the right resources together.

Phill Tabb (1h 0m 39s):
But in, I'm trying to think of the year, it was about 2003, Dean Tom Reagan mandated for the college that all undergraduate students in the college had to have a long semester away, meaning outside of college station and not the summer. So, and they had two choices. One was to go to a study abroad program or to work in an interim program. And it turns out that probably two thirds opted for the study abroad. And one third, the intern and the intern program was to some degree oriented towards students that couldn't really afford to go to Italy or to Spain.

Phill Tabb (1h 1m 22s):
And it was a good way for them to make some money while they're working. So we had a program in Barcelona and one in Castiglion Fiorentino, Italy. Then the recession happened and families were reluctant to send their kids abroad because it was typically about 18 to $19,000 a semester to do one of these. That included tuition and room and board, and it was travel. So it still was expensive. So that's when I came up with the idea of perhaps doing something at Serenbe, and it took a few years for that to happen. And I believe it was 2015

Phill Tabb (1h 2m 4s):
We finally got our first group and it was only six students, but they really had a great time. I was worried, you know, Italy, Barcelona, Georgia... For somebody from Texas, you know, it's like, eh, but the second they got here, they got it. And, and I thought they were going to spend every weekend outside of Serenbe, you know, exploring and going to Atlanta and stuff. Nope, what'd they do? They stayed here. And they just loved the tranquility of it and the peacefulness and hanging out in the Daisy and so on. They would just set up shop in the Daisy and do a lot of their work there. So it was, I think, beneficial for Serenbe because we worked on only projects, you know, in, in Serenbe.

Phill Tabb (1h 2m 49s):
And it gave the students an opportunity to work with like real clients. And at the end of the semester, they would present their work to the community at Gainey hall. And that was really a rewarding for both the community, I think, and the students. And then the next year we did another one and it was great for me because that year I got to do that and watch the construction on my house.

Steve Nygren (1h 3m 14s):
That's going to say, so in the midst of this then, you decided to actually buy a lot here and design and build your own house.

Phill Tabb (1h 3m 19s):
That's right.

Steve Nygren (1h 3m 20s):
And then you retired, what year?

Phill Tabb (1h 3m 22s):
2017

Steve Nygren (1h 3m 23s):
2017, and moved here full time.

Phill Tabb (1h 3m 25s):
Yep. I like the lot that I'm at. I built a small cottage house on an estate lot, so I got the land and I have a small house. But another thing, you know, in the original days of Serenbe, one of the taglines was if I can get it correct, is living amongst

Steve Nygren (1h 3m 44s):
A village of people living in a village of trees.

Phill Tabb (1h 3m 47s):
Yes. And I took that to heart on my property because I took down the fewest amount of trees you can take down. I mean, there are trees that are like six inches away from my house and I love it because when you walk around, you just see these trees.

Monica Olsen (1h 3m 59s):
Yeah, it's a great house.

Steve Nygren (1h 4m 1s):
It's a great house. We'll have to put pictures of the house on the webpage.

Phill Tabb (1h 4m 4s):
Yeah. And going back to biophilia, it's, it's one of those terms that I think we knew Serenbe was all about, but we never really used the term in the early days. If you look at all the principles that are surrounding biophilia, you'll see that that's here at Serenbe. And my house in particular, again, I wasn't designing it as a biophilic house. It was just designing my house, you know, in Serenbe. And it turns out that it has a tremendous number of these biophilic principles, which I think is really cool. And yesterday I just got a contract from Routledge for my sixth book called Biophilic Urbanism.

Monica Olsen (1h 4m 48s):
So exciting.

Phill Tabb (1h 4m 49s):
And I, and Tim Beatley is writing the forward to that.

Monica Olsen (1h 4m 52s):
Congratulations.

Phill Tabb (1h 4m 54s):
And so I'm really excited because other than his work in Biophilic Cities, there's nothing really out there on biophilic urbanism. And probably a third of the book is going to be on Serenbe. And two-thirds, as the publisher required I look at a lot of other projects around the world.

Steve Nygren (1h 5m 13s):
That's great. Well, one thing that I'd like to talk about is the building of the labyrinth. And this relates to some of the patterns as you think about it, because we, when we were at Chartres cathedral, we, we saw the pattern and as a family and talked about, wouldn't it be fun to do something like this with stone in the woods. And then a couple of years passed and Marie ran into these folks that said they were starting to facilitate building labyrinths. So we decided what a grand idea. And that's when we sent the invitation out and of course, Phill joined. And that was when we had not started Serenbe yet, we had the plans and we were in the active planning.

Steve Nygren (1h 5m 56s):
And so Phill was one of the 40 people that came that weekend. And of course it started on Thursday evening. And this was an area that when we were deciding where it should go, I said, well, there's a fairly flat area over the lake and I find I meditate there a lot. So I think this would be the place. And so we flattened it a little bit and put the base rocks, brought the rocks from the farm. And then from Thursday night it happened, we started and they divided us into five teams and Phill was in charge of the center.

Steve Nygren (1h 6m 38s):
And so his team worked on the center while the rest of us worked at setting rocks according to the, the, the plans. And, and so by Sunday morning, this beautiful labyrinth completely done and we did the dedications. Everyone brought a rock. And Phill wasn't leaving until the next morning. And so that night at dinner, I said, Phill, how does this fit in to our sacred geometry? We became so involved in planning that we didn't talk much about sacred geometry. It was just, where are we going to plan? And where are we going to put this? And about six months after we had the plan and the civil engineers were doing all the engineering grading, it dawned on me at one of Phil's visits.

Steve Nygren (1h 7m 25s):
I said, what's the pattern? Are, are, do we have a sacred geometry pattern here? And Phil says, well, that's a good question. Let me, let me, let me identify the key points. And then you came back and you might tell about the pattern that, that you identified.

Phill Tabb (1h 7m 42s):
It is it's Fibonacci's kite, which was a especially derivative out of Selborne because you have a Selborne Way coming in on an angle to the top of the Omega. And then you had the stream on the other side coming in at the same angle. And they both point right to the center of the omega. And that became, and those lines actually formed a Pentagon. And then when you extend to the the lines of the Pentagon down, you get what's called Fibonacci's kite.

Steve Nygren (1h 8m 13s):
And it's amazing when I watch people posing for pictures or pausing, how many times they're standing in these key sites. One that everyone will identify with is the bench in the wall below the Hill restaurant is one of those points. And it's amazing. And so there are physical places throughout Serenbe that these are identified. When we were doing the labyrinth and Phill was not flying out until the next morning,  Phill said there was such energy for these four days, three days when we were working there.

Steve Nygren (1h 8m 54s):
Let's do you have the map here? Let's roll out the map of Serenbe and let's see how it, it fits in to the kite. And to the amazement, without any pre-planning or even thinking about this, it formed a perfect triangle with the market green, the center of the market green and the hill that's been identified for a fire pavilion that has not been built yet, but it's on the main path coming through Selborne.

Monica Olsen (1h 9m 23s):
Wow.

Phill Tabb (1h 9m 25s):
Yeah, it was, and it's kind of interesting because maybe these things are done subconsciously, I don't know, or maybe there's other powers that are here guiding this process, but it's not necessarily a conscious process that's going on there.

Steve Nygren (1h 9m 38s):
Well, and I've often identified when people are trying to understand it, that there are energies within ourselves and within the earth and the atmosphere. And while you might think of this as a new age, if you ask any of the old time farmers here, how to find water in a well, they bring out the divining rod. And it's an understanding, there is an energy force. It's an energy grid that happens. And if we sort of calm ourselves in meditation or whatever it is, we can actually feel that on some level.

Phill Tabb (1h 10m 12s):
But one of the points I wanted to share, and this was one of the early stories with Steve, when we were walking the land and we came into the area around where Selborne is now, it was just all woods. There was only one thing here that was a human made and it was a deer stand right across the street I think. It might've been right about here, which is kind of interesting. And we pondered for a moment and we said, can't you just see it, you know? And we even used, I think this kind of curve, you know, can't, you just see it, you know, there's houses and shops and restaurants and all this stuff. And I kept thinking, this is maybe the, the skeptic in me,

Phill Tabb (1h 10m 53s):
Maybe we're both imagining something that really isn't going to happen, but it sure is fun to kind of luxuriate in this image. And you know, here we are probably almost on the site where that deer stand was. And then you look around and here's Selborne. And I was talking earlier about the early days of Serenbe. And this was before there was very much built. And I was, and this, these are my reflections, but there were three things that really made Serenbe successful, particularly in those early days. The first was the land. And when anybody ever came out here, they walked the land and you got the sense of the quality of the land.

Phill Tabb (1h 11m 35s):
Now, the second thing was Steve and Marie's enthusiasm and vision and excitement about doing something here. And the third in those days was the plan, because that's all you had the land, the plan and the idea. And it was amazing because that drove it into realization in those early days.

Monica Olsen (1h 11m 53s): 
I love that. That's wonderful. So I want to say thank you to both of you, for coming and spending this time with us.

Steve Nygren (1h 12m 0s):
Thanks Phill for sharing today. And, and for the last 20 years. It's a, it's been a really fun watching us dream together, and now you put it on paper and we build it and it's been a great friendship and relationship.

Phill Tabb (1h 12m 16s):
It sure has. It's been a blessing for me. So thanks.

Monica Olsen (1h 12m 23s):
Thank you for listening to Serenbe Stories. New episodes are available on Mondays. Please rate and review the podcast and make sure to email your questions for Steve Nygren to stories@serenbe.com. You may even get to hear them on the podcast. More details about episodes and guests are available on our website, serenbestories.com.

How Dr. Phillip Tabb and Steve Met
Bringing Sacred Geometry to Serenbe
What is Sacred Geometry?
Returning to Serenbe
English Village Systems
Replicating Serenbe
Phill Brings Biophilic Principles to His Own Home
Educating Future Architects
In A Community of Trees