Biography
JOHN ABRAMS is cofounder and CEO of South Mountain Company, a 32-year-old employee-owned design/build and renewable energy company on Martha's Vineyard in West Tisbury, Massachusetts. Business Ethics magazine awarded South Mountain the magazine's 2005 National Award for Workplace Democracy.
Abrams's book, The Company We Keep: Reinventing Small Business for People, Community and Place was published by Chelsea Green Publishing in 2005, and an expanded second edition was released in September 2008 with a broader and deeper focus on employee ownership.
Abrams serves with the Island Housing Trust and Island Affordable Housing Fund boards and the Island Plan steering committee. He lives with his wife, Chris, in the Island CohousingDevelopment pattern in which multiple (typically 8 to 30) privately owned houses or housing units are clustered together with some commonly owned spaces, such as a common workshop, greenhouse, etc. Automobiles are typically kept to the perimeter of the community, creating a protected area within where children can play. Usually, residents are closely involved in all aspects of the development, from site selection to financing and design.
Neighborhood in West Tisbury, which was developed by his company.
Green Story
More than 35 years ago, John Abrams moved to undeveloped land in Guilford, Vermont, with his wife and child and a small collection of friends.
They had plenty of passion and no plan. They camped on the land, cleared it, planted vegetable gardens, and prepared to build a house. They didn't have money, but they had the energy of youth. They found local barns that were falling down and local farmers who were happy to see them go. Abrams and his fellow settlers dismantled the old structures and hauled the materials back to their land in beat-up trucks. Unskilled but undaunted, they erected shelter from the ruins of the past. It was the first building Abrams ever constructed from scratch and his first green house, all rolled into one. And it was the beginning of his romance with design and building.
Abrams is cofounder and CEO of South Mountain Company, a 32-year-old employee owned design/build and renewable energy company in West Tisbury, Massachusetts. He says the lessons he learned with that first project—salvaging and marshalling resources, using materials in inventive ways, and fearlessly (and sometimes foolishly) trying new approaches—are reflected in the work he does today.
"An extraordinary group of people shares ownership of this company with me," Abrams says. Their definition of a good house begins with the words of English architect Charles Voysey: "Simplicity, sincerity, repose, directness, and frankness are moral qualities as essential to good architecture as to good people."
"We try to embed those qualities in the houses we build," Abrams asserts. "At the same time, we try to make houses that are easy on the land, durable, energy efficient and productive, resource-conserving, and healthy."
There is a new urgency to their efforts. "The future will depend in part on how we address climate change, perhaps the most vexing issue humankind has ever faced," Abrams points out. "It will require us to think differently, act differently, and dream differently. It will require us to remodel our economy and redesign our energy systems. It will require dramatic political change as well."
But Abrams reminds all that each small effort is important, and that it’s essential that each is carried out as if it’s the only thing that matters. "My decades of design and building have convinced me that making houses, neighborhoods, and landscapes, although immensely complex undertakings with attendant stresses and difficulties, can also be joyous adventures," Abrams says. "That’s the way it’s been for me."
