Architecture and vernacular architecture

Vernacular Architecture has reached its 50th year, and during that time has established itself as the leading UK journal devoted to the study of traditional buildings. This collection of short essays looks back at how the subject has changed, the extent to which it has responded to or helped shape new thinking, and the challenges students of vernacular buildings face in the light of new expectations, scholarly debate and the fast-moving science of dating

“How other peoples dwell and build”: Erwin Anton Gutkind and the architecture of the other

In 1953, architect, planner, and historian Erwin Anton Gutkind published a series of articles collectively titled “How Other Peoples Dwell and Build” in Architectural Design. At a glance, the series seems an anomaly in Gutkind's extensive oeuvre, and it remains little known in the field of vernacular architecture. In “How Other Peoples Dwell and Build”: Erwin Anton Gutkind and the Architecture of the Other, Marcel Vellinga aims to place the series within the broader context of Gutkind's writings. Running through Gutkind's work—and underlined in Vellinga's article—is the thesis that the historical development of human settlements mirrors the degenerating relationships between individuals and their communities, and between human beings and the natural environment. Thus, the Architectural Design series is an integral part of Gutkind's writings on the history of urban development. The series is one of the first architectural publications to focus on vernacular traditions from an international perspective and to emphasize the importance of studying vernacular architecture in its larger cultural and environmental contexts

The end of cities: Erwin Anton Gutkind and the inevitability of decentralisation and dispersal

During a career that spanned six decades, the architect, planner and historian Erwin Anton Gutkind consistently argued for the abandonment of the concept of the city and for the emergence of a new form of environmental organisation where communities lived in settlements that did not stand in a hierarchical relationship to one another. Such an ‘expanding environment’, to be achieved through the decentralisation and dispersal of settlements and people, would allow for a rejuvenation of the relationship between individuals, communities and their environment and herald the beginning of a new post-urban era in human history. To Gutkind, this new era was not only desirable but inevitable, as it aligned with contemporary understandings of the nature of an expanding universe. This article aims to provide an overview of Gutkind’s little-known work in planning on decentralisation, dispersal and the end of cities. It will argue that, even though many of Gutkind’s utopian ideas concurred with those of his contemporaries, the way in which he combined them into a complex argument, drawing on his practical experiences and a range of disciplinary perspectives, was truly his own and remains worthy of consideration in a time of continued interest in the growth, ‘liveability’ and sustainability of cities

An Illustrated Glossary of Wooden Architecture: Endangered Wooden Architecture Programme

This glossary has been produced to support the documentation processes of the Endangered Wooden Architecture Programme. The Endangered Wooden Architecture Programme is a grant-giving programme that offers small and large grants for the documentation of endangered wooden architecture. The programme is hosted by Oxford Brookes University and delivered in collaboration with CyArk. EWAP was established in 2021 with funding from Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin

Constituting Unity aand Difference: vernacular architecture in Minangkabau Village

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Living architecture: Re-imagining vernacularity in Southeast Asia and Oceania

Southeast Asia and Oceania have a long tradition of outstanding scholarship that studies the rich and diverse vernacular architectural heritage of the region. Up until the early twenty-first century, this work tended to focus on traditional forms of vernacular architecture, emphasising their regional distinctiveness and analysing the ways in which they reflected social and cultural structures. However, recent decades have seen rapid and fundamental social, economic, and environmental changes in the region that require new perspectives on the design, use, and meaning of vernacular architecture. Processes like population growth, urbanisation, globalisation, climate change, migration, natural disasters, conflicts, and the internationalisation and commercialisation of architectural practice have exerted increasing pressure on vernacular architectural traditions. In recent decades more dynamic and active approaches to the study of vernacular architecture have emerged that attempt to challenge the dichotomies inherent in earlier definitions and representations of the vernacular. Those approaches raise interesting and indeed fundamental questions about the way the vernacular architecture of the region has been represented in the past; about the validity of those representations; and ultimately about how relevant they are in the here and now. Indeed, they call into question the validity and relevance of the concept of vernacularity itself

Vernacular architecture

This chapter explores the notion of vernacular architecture. Comprising an immense variety of diverse building traditions, vernacular architecture makes up a significant part of the built environment of the world. Because of its rootedness in place, culture and tradition, it often plays a central role in processes of cultural, national and political identification. Vernacular architecture has frequently served as an inspiration for contemporary design, while at the same it has found itself subject to processes of appropriation, folklorisation and commercialisation. In recent decades, many forms of vernacular architecture have been heavily impacted on by the combined forces of globalisation, conflict and environmental change. Vernacular architecture has emerged as a significant area of architectural research during the twentieth century. This research has traditionally involved the documentation of the vernacular architecture of specific people, cultures or places. But in the last few decades in particular, in line with developments in cultural theory more generally, more dynamic and active approaches that engage with issues around the definition, analysis, representation, appropriation and sustainable development of vernacular architecture have also begun to emerge. This chapter explores the history and development of the discourse on vernacular architecture. It will indicate the key authors, approaches, publications and debates that have helped shape the field of vernacular studies, using a variety of examples to illustrate key themes. A central argument of the chapter is that vernacular architecture is a residual concept that has served to define a category of architecture in opposition to ‘capital A’ architecture, in order to define and validate the architectural canon. Its continued use in architectural discourse raises important questions about the way in which the latter values and represents the architectural traditions of other peoples and cultures in a time of increased globalisation and multiculturalism