Highly classical buildings are beautiful because of their skillful arrangement of carefully crafted and thoughtfully proportioned parts. Buildings that are a part of a simple living tradition, however, are beautiful because that when seen together (like along a street, for example,) they exhibit a tremendous variety within a very narrow range. Nature does this much better than we do, of course. Every leaf on a tree grows from the exact same pattern, but no two are identical. But while nature does it best, people don't do it badly, either, if they do it within a living tradition. Look at these six photos: All are images of French Quarter galleries. Each gallery has exactly the same parts arranged in exactly the same way, but each is slightly different from the other. This is what we mean by "tremendous variety within a very narrow range." Places with this quality are commonly known as "real places." This is exactly the opposite of "cookie-cutter" developments where houses are mechanically stamped out with no variety at all. Tremendous variety occurs most often when there are many people deciding how to build things, rather than just a few specialists. "But wait," you might ask, "aren't the architects and designers that drew up the house plans on this site specialists, and where's the variety if each of these house plans gets repeated again and again?" Good questions. Yes, they are specialists. But if we can go beyond just delivering plans and deliver principles, too, then everyone who builds one of these plans will be equipped to modify the details a bit in order to personalize the house. So what are the principles necessary to personalize a house? This section of the Katrina Cottages website describes categories of principles, like Natural Variety, Kernel Houses, and the Transect, but it is far beyond the scope of this chapter to lay out all of the principles of door detailing, window detailing, column detailing, etc., that are required to properly customize a house. Laying out all those principles would require a book, and in fact, some have been written. A Pattern Language, by Christopher Alexander, describes principles that are universal. A Pattern Language has been a best-seller for at least three decades now, and should be available in most bookstores. More recently, Traditional Construction Patterns (Steve Mouzon, McGraw-Hill, 2004) is one of several recent books that present patterns of American detailing in the "rule-of-thumb" format, illustrated with simple "do's" and "don'ts."