My Bermuda Trip: Imperfect Pavers, Perfectly

In a recent post, I wrote about the walls of Bermuda and how they were made of quarried coral.  Another beautiful design element I saw during my trip was how Bermudian use concrete for things like pavers and stairs. 

Though overlooked (literally and metaphorically) all the time, pavers are a big part of landscape design.  I am always working with clients trying to get the perfect mix of durability, style and sustainability with pavers for a project. In Bermuda, pavers used with a complete abandon to apparent aesthetic and yet work to bring entire landscaped areas together.

The Bermudians seem to love using concrete for pavers.  The interesting aspect of the concrete pavers was they weren’t trying to be perfectly square and pristine.  Instead, they are allowed to be pastoral and uneven (just the way concrete likes it).  Some pavers are all sized the same and placed in neat, organized rows.   

Others are randomly placed with no organization sense at all.  

These two completely different methods were often located side by side.  Because they are made of the same material and treated with a similar sensibility, they don’t distract from each other.  Grass grows around all of them forming another design element to pulls the pavers into one voice.

In other locations, I found concrete pavers used to make quasi-nautical alphabet.  The nautical script is understated, so at first I thought the squares and triangles were randomly placed.  The concrete allows the pattern to surprise you. Whoever decided to use the pavers like this could have painted the concrete different colors or had painstaking made actual nautical alphabet, but instead they let the pavers hint toward the maritime reference.  This makes it much more impactful, in my opinion.  

Brick is also used in some places as a border or for stair tread.  I’m assuming this is a tip of the hat to the British founders of the country, because I didn’t see clay used in many other ways.     

I’m not a stranger to island construction.  I was tried to develop an eco-resort in the Caribbean back in 2008.  From this experience, I know that construction materials can be very expensive because just about everything has to be imported.  That’s one reason most many buildings on isolated islands are typically void of ornate detail.  Another reason is the salty and humidity conditions of the air.  Sometimes, local labor doesn’t have the same sophistication as other parts of the world. Add a propensity for hurricanes and other severe storms, and you have a recipe to keep the exterior of your building as minimal as possible. 

All of these factors are present in Bermuda.  Simple materials like concrete for elements on pavers can bring together at places to create amazing space even when limits exist.  

The images below of pavers with coral block walls, grass, plants and buildings are a few other examples.

The imperfection of everything makes everything seem, well, perfect.