Are we there yet? Beyond the actions of the torchbearers among us, have we finally pivoted in how we see and value our houses, departing from the purely egocentric in favor of the ecocentric? From single-minded status- and investment-focused self-interests to—dare we say it—a place somehow closer to representing the greater good? State to state, the work of the Forbes Architecture lists suggests that, at the scale of the architect-designed custom house, it is indeed happening. Taking us past the beneficial requirements of building codes, a renewed focus on the relationship between architecture and sense of place, a new regionalism, has become impossible to miss. As a badge of honor, the development has rather clandestinely overtaken “Sustainability,” with its decades of exhausted rhetoric, and not a moment too soon. Just don’t let the deniers know that regionalism and sustainability are essentially one and the same. For now, we get to celebrate, in that we are getting there—closer to reaching critical mass in heeding the advice of Thoreau’s “Walking,” his famous essay calling attention to the lifetime of evercurious detail that awaits the person who commits to learning, within even a 10-mile radius of home, the nuances of their local terrain.

Dedicated to this very path of unearthing and, moreover, evidence of our........

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