For more photographs, click here for a Sky slideshow. Homes built at Sky will feature a variety of architectural elements, including “tree house” porches (seen here), louvered shutters, and durable stone walls.

Culture and Acreage
At its core, Sky will be something of a high-end farm and garden community. It will have amenities such as horseback riding and tennis facilities, but 154 of its 571 acres will be designated as agricultural. Think Rosemary Beach or Alys Beach with life centered around farms and gardens instead of sand and surf.

Julia, a designer who has worked on projects ranging from planned communities to feature films, splits her time between Amelia Island and Rosemary Beach. Bruce, a developer and systems analyst, lives in Rosemary Beach. Both emphasize the need to preserve farm culture as well as acreage. “Sky is a model for rural development,” says Julia. “It prescribes a way of life that allows the last land frontier of the state—the farmlands and cattle ranches—to be preserved.”

While the Sky team plans to tend the larger tracts of land with the help of local farmers and students from area schools and colleges, part of Sky’s mission will be to help residents learn how to organically garden through the Sky Institute, an all-in-one teaching, research, and conference center that will be located in the community.

A Livable Laboratory
The Sky development team plans to not just employ the latest energy technologies when building begins, but also to help develop and test more of them as time passes. For starters, Sky, in conjunction with Florida State University’s Center for Advanced Power Systems, received a $1.8 million grant from the state to be used to study and implement a plan for utilities in the town.

Among the technologies under consideration are a solar energy plant, a system of cisterns that will be used as an auxiliary water source, and a chiller plant that will pump cold water to all buildings for an ultra-efficient air-cooling system. The community will also serve as something of a laboratory for new sustainable energy technologies. “We have plans for five villages,” says Bruce. “Each village will have a three-year build-out from start to finish. Because of that, each successive village will be able to use the next generation of technologies.”

For and of The Ages
Sky isn’t, however, only about the latest technologies. Sky’s five villages, which will encompass slightly more than half of the total developable area, will be surrounded and separated by agricultural land and open space. As planned, the villages will offer home sites ranging in size from 1?5 of an acre to 3 acres. Julia will direct much of the design protocol for Sky. “I studied and lived in Europe when I was young, and I was struck by the permanence of the buildings and public gardens,” says Julia. “It is environmentally responsible to build structures that last. We hope to create buildings that last a millennium. “Sky is an opportunity for Florida to take a leadership role in the implementation of solutions for a sustainable world,” she adds. “Hopefully, in 20 years, Sky will have inspired hundreds of similar communities.” •