A COUPLE of weeks ago, a ship bearing cement block arrived at the Dockyard and its grey cargo was offloaded on the wharf. For the next week, round the clock, trucks of all sizes thundered their way through Somerset with their loads of building blocks for the seeming insatiable Bermuda construction industry.

Some of these blocks found their way off the back of the trucks to crash on the roadside, as often happens with trucks out of Dockyard carrying bags of cement. Perhaps the Police or TCD could do something about enforcing the law, if such there is, about securing the loads on trucks on public roads.

Given this latest concrete invasion, one does wonder how much more building is "sustainable development" on this small piece of heavenly rock. Sustainable development may be an unsustainable phrase, as development is a straight-line progression: it simply goes on and on consuming land and other resources, usually for one-time usage.

Farming is more on the idea of what sustainable should be as it re-uses the same ground over and over. We can sustain whatever it is, if we rework, reuse and renew.

The restoration of the Dockyard and Commissioner's House, for example, is good sustainable development. The replacement of the defunct Bermudiana Hotel with office blocks is the same, for the site had already been built over.

Traditions, the conceptual side of building, are eminently sustainable and no other traditional concept is more sustainable on this island than our unique vernacular architecture.

The idea of a Bermuda house or office building can be sustained and renewed with each new generation, although one must say that many over the last decades have failed miserably to sustain the elegant traditions of Bermuda architecture.

One visiting professor some 80 years ago noted that those traditions "have developed an architecture worthy of perpetuation". Perpetuate means "to continue indefinitely; to preserve from extinction or oblivion". Sustainable or other development at the moment seems to mean to consign to oblivion much that we love about Bermuda.

John Humphreys, the professor, in his 1923 book Bermuda Houses, made this statement in his Preface, and it is a statement about us that should be subject itself to perpetuation.

"If Bermuda's prosperity continues to increase, it is to be hoped that the designers of new houses that appear will seek their inspiration in Bermuda's own older architecture. It is eminently appropriate to the climate and other local conditions, harmonious and in scale with its surroundings. It has a unity, charm and simplicity of an architecture that is the unaffected expression and natural outcome of environment and, from it simplicity, is entirely adaptable to the modern requirements of Bermuda."

Nowadays, we often see the totally affected expression of too much prosperity plastered across the countryside. Humphreys would be dismayed at the lack of sustained perpetuation of Bermuda's astounding architectural traditions.

WITH all this often in mind, it was a delight to see a few houses of old in the reproduced album, Bermuda, the possession of E.A. Smith in 1897, as photographed by a George Nelson. Gwen and Carl Paiva have donated the sales of this small and handsomely made book to the Masterworks Foundation, a generous gift to a worthy cause.

In the album are a number of masterworks of Bermuda architecture, a couple of which are produced here; it is obtainable from C-Travel or Masterworks. One of these is a picture of a great stone quarry, probably in Warwick, which had some of the best limestone in the island.

Two Bermudians of African or part African descent are at work, one cutting stone, the other stands with a long chisel for digging a saw-hole behind a great slab of rock, prior to its felling for cutting into block.

We have seen such pictures before, but the emphasis here is that African Bermudians were mostly responsible for the production of stone for our unique architecture. The majority, at least, of the masons who built the buildings were of the same origins.

This is something of which that part of the community and their descendants should always be proud.

It was back-breaking work under an inexhaustible sun that gave the island the means to produce an architectural tradition worthy, nay imperative, of perpetuation.

Another photo shows a young man with his cabbage patch and possibly his grandmother leaning in the shade of a cedar tree. A massive Bermuda chimney rises behind her, but the property is somewhat in decay, reminding us that the island of yesteryear was not the money barrel it is today and that many families across the community were poor, were close to the land, yet lived in sturdy Bermuda houses.

The most stunning picture in the album is described as "The Ruins of the Oldest House" and what a view into the past it is.

Three men stand nearby and there is not a casuarina or pepper tree to mar the landscape. A stand of cedars grows cheek to jowl in front of the house, but allows a gap for entry to its welcoming arms staircase.

Three chimneys adorn the buildings, one for the main house, another for the cookhouse and a wonderful stubby third on an out building, probably originally the cottage for slaves, prior to emancipation in 1834.

The buildings are tucked onto the slope, away from the ridge-line and heavy weather. The ruins have all the trademarks of good and sustainable Bermudian architecture, but as far as we know, all that is left of this total gem is photograph No. 22 in the Smith/Paiva album.

MORE than any other medium, including the natural environment, architecture gives people, by subliminal education, a sense of place and identity in a changing world.

If we do not sustain our architectural traditions, by restoring and renewing the old, and building afresh in the concepts of a proven and worthy past, we will consign future generations to the oblivion of the coming universal and worthless identity of the shopping mall, suburbia, gangsta rap and pants that droop around your knees, like a baby's full diapers, to name but a few of the imported ideas that can destroy Bermudian identity.

Some years ago, I saw many billboards in a foreign land that urged one to "condomise".

For a brief while, I thought they were going the way of Bermuda and advocating the covering of landscape with condos, until I realised it was a sexual health warning.

The Surgeon General of Bermuda should issue a warning to all that building in non-Bermudian architectural traditions is a serious health risk to present and future generations of this island.

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Dr. Edward Harris, MBE, JP, FSA, Bermudian, is the Executive Director of the Bermuda Maritime Museum. The views expressed here are his opinion and not necessarily those of the trustees or staff of the Museum. Comments can be sent to drharrislogic.bm, to PO Box MA 133, Sandys MABX, or by telephone at 734-1298.