Vernacular architecture (also folk architecture) is building done outside any academic tradition, and without the involvement of professional designers and architects. Vernacular architecture is not a particular architectural movement or style. Rather, it is a broad category, encompassing a wide range and variety of building types; with differing methods of construction from around the world, including historical and extant, classical and modern examples. In 1995, Amos Rapoport estimated that vernacular architecture constitutes 95% of the world's built environment, as measured against the small percentage of new buildings every year designed by architects and built by engineers.Amos Rapoport, House Form and Culture (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1969), 2. Vernacular architecture directly influences traditional architecture, a professional and academic practice deliberately and explicitly referencing and continuing local historical traditions and vernacular.
Vernacular architecture usually serves immediate, local needs, is constrained by the materials available in its particular region, and reflects local traditions and cultural practices. The study of vernacular architecture does not examine formally schooled architects, but instead the design skills and traditions of local builders, who were rarely given any attribution for their work. More recently, vernacular architecture has been examined by designers and the building industry in an effort to be more energy conscious with contemporary design and construction—part of a broader interest in sustainable design.
As of 1986, even among scholars publishing in the field, the exact boundaries of "vernacular" have not been clear.
This issue of definition, apparently so simple, has proven to be one of the most serious problems for advocates of vernacular architecture and landscapes research. A straightforward, convincing, authoritative definition has not yet been offered. Vernacular architecture is a phenomenon that many understand intuitively but that few are able to define. The literature on the subject is thus filled with what might be called non-definitions. Vernacular architecture is non-high style building, it is those structures not designed by professionals; it is not monumental; it is un-sophisticated; it is mere building; it is, according to the distinguished historian Nikolaus Pevsner, not architecture. Those who take a more positive approach rely on adjectives like ordinary, everyday, and commonplace. While these terms are not as pejorative as other descriptive phrases that are sometimes applied to the vernacular, neither are they very precise. For example, the skyscrapers of Manhattan are works of high style architecture, but they are also commonplace in Manhattan. Are they not logically New York City vernacular buildings? Vernacular architecture tends to be overlooked in traditional histories of design. It is not a stylistic description, much less one specific style, so it cannot be summarized in terms of easy-to-understand patterns, characteristics, materials, or elements.J. Philip Gruen, “Vernacular Architecture,” in Encyclopedia of Local History, 3d edition, ed. Amy H. Wilson (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017): 697-98. Because of the usage of traditional building methods and local builders, vernacular buildings are considered cultural expressions—aboriginal, indigenous, ancestral, rural, ethnic, or regional—as much as architectural artifacts.
Evolution of the phrase
The term vernacular means 'domestic, native, indigenous', from verna 'native slave' or 'home-born slave'. The word probably derives from an older Etruscan word.
The term is borrowed from linguistics, where vernacular refers to language use particular to a time, place, or group.Dictionary.com definitionMerriam–Webster definition
The phrase dates to at least 1857, when it was used by Sir George Gilbert Scott, as the focus of the first chapter of his book "Remarks on Secular & Domestic Architecture, Present & Future", and in a paper read to an architectural society in Leicester in October of that year. As a proponent of the Gothic Revival movement in England, Scott used the term as a pejorative to refer to the "prevailing architecture" in England of the time, all of it, as opposed to the Gothic he wanted to introduce. In this "vernacular" category Scott included St Paul's Cathedral, Greenwich Hospital, London, and Castle Howard, although admitting their relative nobility.
The term was popularized with positive connotations in a 1964 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, designed by architect Bernard Rudofsky, with a subsequent book. Both were called Architecture Without Architects. Featuring dramatic black-and-white photography of vernacular buildings around the world, the exhibition was extremely popular. Rudofsky brought the concept into the eye of the public and of mainstream architecture, and also kept the definitions loose: he wrote that the exhibition "attempts to break down our narrow concepts of the art of building by introducing the unfamiliar world of nonpedigree architecture. It is so little known that we don't even have a name for it. For want of a generic label we shall call it vernacular, anonymous, spontaneous, indigenous, rural, as the case may be."Rudofsky, Architecture Without Architects, page 58 The book was a reminder of the legitimacy and "hard-won knowledge" inherent in vernacular buildings, from Polish salt-caves to gigantic Syrian water wheels to Moroccan desert fortresses and was considered iconoclastic at the time.
The term "commercial vernacular" was popularized in the late 1960s by the publication of Learning from Las Vegas by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, referring to 20th-century American suburban tract and commercial architecture.
Although vernacular architecture might be designed by people who do have some training in design, in 1971 Ronald Brunskill nonetheless defined vernacular architecture as: ...a building designed by an amateur without any training in design; the individual will have been guided by a series of conventions built up in his locality, paying little attention to what may be fashionable. The function of the building would be the dominant factor, aesthetic considerations, though present to some small degree, being quite minimal. Local materials would be used as a matter of course, other materials being chosen and imported quite exceptionally.
In the Encyclopedia of Vernacular Architecture of the World edited in 1997 by Paul Oliver of the Oxford Institute for Sustainable Development, Oliver argued that vernacular architecture, given the insights it offers to issues of environmental adaptation, will be necessary in the future to "ensure sustainability in both cultural and economic terms beyond the short term." The encyclopedia defines the field of vernacular architecture as: comprising the dwellings and all other buildings of the people. Related to their environmental contexts and available resources they are customarily owner- or community-built, utilizing traditional technologies. All forms of vernacular architecture are built to meet specific needs, accommodating the values, economies and ways of life of the cultures that produce them.Encyclopedia of Vernacular Architecture of the World, volume 1, page not cited
In 2007 Allen Noble wrote a lengthy discussion of the relevant terms, in Traditional Buildings: A Global Survey of Structural Forms and Cultural Functions. Noble concluded that "folk architecture" is built by "persons not professionally trained in building arts." "Vernacular architecture" is "of the common people", but may be built by trained professionals, using local, traditional designs and materials. "Traditional architecture" is architecture passed down from person to person, generation to generation, particularly orally, but at any level of society, not just by common people. Noble discourages the use of the term "primitive architecture".Noble, Allen George. Traditional buildings: a global survey of structural forms and cultural functions. London: I. B. Tauris, 2007. 1-17. Print.. The term “popular architecture” is used more in Eastern Europe and is synonymous with folk or vernacular architecture.The meanings in this paragraph are supported by the Oxford English Dictionary Second Edition on CD-ROM (v. 4.0) © Oxford University Press 2009. Vernacular, a. and n., 6.; Folk 2. a.; Tradition, n., 4. a.; Traditional, a. (n.), 1. a.; Popular, a.(n.), 2. a.
Vernacular and the architect
Architecture designed by professional architects is usually not considered to be vernacular. Indeed, it can be argued that the very process of consciously designing a building makes it not vernacular. Paul Oliver, in his book Dwellings, states: "it is contended that 'popular architecture' designed by professional architects or commercial builders for popular use, does not come within the compass of the vernacular". Oliver also offers the following simple definition of vernacular architecture: "the architecture of the people, and by the people, but not for the people."
Frank Lloyd Wright described vernacular architecture as "Folk building growing in response to actual needs, fitted into environment by people who knew no better than to fit them with native feeling". suggesting that it is a primitive form of design, lacking intelligent thought, but he also stated that it was "for us better worth study than all the highly self-conscious academic attempts at the beautiful throughout Europe".
Since at least the Arts and Crafts Movement, many modern architects have studied vernacular buildings and claimed to draw inspiration from them, including aspects of the vernacular in their designs. In 1946, the Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy was appointed to design the town of New Gourna near Luxor. Having studied traditional Nubian settlements and technologies, he incorporated the traditional mud brick vaults of the Nubian settlements in his designs. The experiment failed, due to a variety of social and economic reasons.
Sri Lankan architect Geoffrey Bawa is considered the pioneer of regional modernism in South Asia. Along with him, modern proponents of the use of the vernacular in architectural design include Charles Correa, a well known Indian architect; Muzharul Islam and Bashirul Haq, internationally known Bangladeshi architects; Balkrishna Doshi, another Indian, who established the Vastu-Shilpa Foundation in Ahmedabad to research the vernacular architecture of the region; and Sheila Sri Prakash who has used rural Indian architecture as an inspiration for innovations in environmental and socio-economically sustainable design and planning. The Dutch architect Aldo van Eyck was also a proponent of vernacular architecture, as were Samuel Mockbee, Christopher Alexander, and Paolo Soleri.
Oliver claims that: As yet there is no clearly defined and specialized discipline for the study of dwellings or the larger compass of vernacular architecture. If such a discipline were to emerge it would probably be one that combines some of the elements of both architecture and anthropology with aspects of history and geography.
Architects have developed a renewed interest in vernacular architecture as a model for sustainable design.Forster, W., Heal, A. and Paradise, C., "The Vernacular as a Model for Sustainable Design" Chapter 14 in: W. Weber, S. Yannas, Lessons from Vernacular Architecture, Routledge, 2013
Influences on the vernacular