Vernacular architecture

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.

Influences on the vernacular

Vernacular architecture is influenced by a great range of different aspects of human behaviour and environment, leading to differing building forms for almost every different context; even neighbouring villages may have subtly different approaches to the construction and use of their dwellings, even if they at first appear the same. Despite these variations, every building is subject to the same laws of physics, and hence will demonstrate significant similarities in structural forms.

Climate

One of the most significant influences on vernacular architecture is the macro climate of the area in which the building is constructed. Buildings in cold climates invariably have high thermal mass or significant amounts of insulation. They are usually sealed in order to prevent heat loss, and openings such as windows tend to be small or even absent altogether. Buildings in warm climates, by contrast, tend to be constructed of lighter materials and to allow significant natural ventilation through openings in the fabric of the building.

Buildings for a continental climate must be able to cope with significant variations in temperature and may even be altered by their occupants according to the seasons. In hot arid and semi-arid regions, vernacular structures typically include a number of distinctive elements to provide for ventilation and temperature control. Across the middle east, these elements included such design features as courtyard gardens with water features, screen walls, reflected light, mashrabiya (the distinctive oriel window with timber latticework) and bad girs (wind-catchers).

Buildings take different forms depending on precipitation levels in the region – leading to dwellings on stilts in many regions with frequent flooding or rainy monsoon seasons. For example, the Queenslander is an elevated weatherboard house with a sloped, tin roof that evolved in the early 19th-century as a solution to the annual flooding caused by monsoonal rain in Australia's northern states. Flat roofs are rare in areas with high levels of precipitation. Similarly, areas with high winds will lead to specialised buildings able to cope with them, and buildings tend to present minimal surface area to prevailing winds and are often situated low on the landscape to minimise potential storm damage.

Climatic influences on vernacular architecture are substantial and can be extremely complex. Mediterranean vernacular, and that of much of the Middle East, often includes a courtyard with a fountain or pond; air cooled by water mist and evaporation is drawn through the building by the natural ventilation set up by the building form. Similarly, Northern African vernacular often has very high thermal mass and small windows to keep the occupants cool, and in many cases also includes chimneys, not for fires but to draw air through the internal spaces. Such specializations are not designed but learned by trial and error over generations of building construction, often existing long before the scientific theories which explain why they work. Vernacular architecture is also used for the purposes of local citizens.

Culture

The way of life of building occupants, and the way they use their shelters, is of great influence on building forms. The size of family units, who shares which spaces, how food is prepared and eaten, how people interact, and many other cultural considerations will affect the layout and size of dwellings.

For example, the family units of several East African ethnic communities live in family compounds, surrounded by marked boundaries, in which separate single-roomed dwellings are built to house different members of the family. In polygamous communities there may be separate dwellings for different wives, and more again for sons who are too old to share space with the women of the family. Social interaction within the family is governed by, and privacy is provided by, the separation between the structures in which family members live. By contrast, in Western Europe, such separation is accomplished inside one dwelling, by dividing the building into separate rooms.

Culture also has a great influence on the appearance of vernacular buildings, as occupants often decorate buildings in accordance with local customs and beliefs.

Nomadic dwellings

There are many cultures around the world which include some aspect of nomadic life, and they have all developed vernacular solutions for the need for shelter. These all include appropriate responses to climate and customs of their inhabitants, including practicalities of simple construction such as huts, and if necessary, transport such as tents.

The Inuit have a number of different forms of shelter appropriate to different seasons and geographical locations, including the igloo (for winter) and the tupiq (for summer). The Sami of Northern Europe, who live in climates similar to those experienced by the Inuit, have developed different shelters appropriate to their culture including the lavvu and goahti. The development of different solutions in similar circumstances because of cultural influences is typical of vernacular architecture.

Many nomadic people use materials common in the local environment to construct temporary dwellings, such as the Punan of Sarawak who use palm fronds, or the Ituri Pygmies who use saplings and mongongo leaves to construct domed huts. Other cultures reuse materials, transporting them with them as they move. Examples of this are the tribes of Mongolia, who carry their gers (yurts) with them, or the black desert tents of the Qashgai in Iran. Notable in each case is the significant impact of the availability of materials and the availability of pack animals or other forms of transport on the ultimate form of the shelters.

All the shelters are adapted to suit the local climate. The Mongolian gers (yurts), for example, are versatile enough to be cool in hot continental summers and warm in the sub-zero temperatures of Mongolian winters and include a close-able ventilation hole at the centre and a chimney for a stove. A ger is typically not often relocated, and is therefore sturdy and secure, including wooden front door and several layers of coverings. A traditional Berber tent, by contrast, might be relocated daily, and is much lighter and quicker to erect and dismantle – and because of the climate it is used in, does not need to provide the same degree of protection from the elements.

Permanent dwellings

The type of structure and materials used for a dwelling vary depending on how permanent it is. Frequently moved nomadic structures will be lightweight and simple, more permanent ones will be less so. When people settle somewhere permanently, the architecture of their dwellings will change to reflect that.

Materials used will become heavier, more solid and more durable. They may also become more complicated and more expensive, as the capital and labour required to construct them is a one-time cost. Permanent dwellings often offer a greater degree of protection and shelter from the elements. In some cases, however, where dwellings are subjected to severe weather conditions such as frequent flooding or high winds, buildings may be deliberately "designed" to fail and be replaced, rather than requiring the uneconomical or even impossible structures needed to withstand them. The collapse of a relatively flimsy, lightweight structure is also less likely to cause serious injury than a heavy structure.

Over time, dwellings' architecture may come to reflect a very specific geographical locale.

Environment, construction elements and materials

Vernacular architectural styles typically predate widespread access to means to transport large amounts of materials. Because of this, the local environment, the construction materials it can provide and the durability of these materials in the environment govern many aspects of vernacular architecture. Examples of structural material choices influenced by the environment include:

• Mud bricks are most common along river valleys in arid environments, where mud is available and rainfall is too low to damage unfired brick
• Fired bricks require access to clay and shale or brickearth, as well as fuel for kilns. Their colour is dictated by the mineral composition of the raw materials and the firing temperature
• Log houses require plentiful access to long, straight, softwood and are thus most common in taiga or temperate coniferous forest biomes
• Timber framing is associated with temperate broadleaf forests that provide hardwoods
• Bamboo construction is common in warm and moist tropical and warm temperate climates
• Dry stone huts are most common in mountain regions above the tree line and other rocky environments lacking trees
• Ashlar is more common is regions with access to workable stone such as sandstone, while hard stone materials favour rubble masonry

By contrast, petroleum products, such as bitumen, are uncommon, except in the vicinity of tar pits.

In early California redwood water towers supporting redwood tanks and enclosed by redwood siding (tankhouses) were part of a self-contained wind-powered domestic water system. Vernacular, almost by definition, is sustainable, and will not exhaust the local resources. If it is not sustainable, it is not suitable for its local context, and cannot be vernacular.

Construction elements and materials frequently found in vernacular buildings include:

• Adobe – a type of mud brick, often covered with white-wash, commonly used in Spain and Spanish colonies
• Cob – a type of plaster made from subsoil with the addition of fibrous material to give added strength
• Mashrabiya (also known as shanashol in Iraq) – a type of oriel window with timber lattice-work, designed to allow ventilation, commonly found in Iraq and Egypt in upper-class homes
• Rammed earth often used in foundations
• Saddleback roof
• Thatch – dry vegetation used as roofing material
• Windcatcher – a type of chimney used to provide natural ventilation without the use of air conditioning, commonly found in Iran, Iraq and other parts of the Middle-East
• Wychert – a blend of white earth and clay

Legal aspects

As many jurisdictions introduce tougher building codes and zoning regulations, "folk architects" sometimes find themselves in conflict with the local authorities.

A case that made news in Russia was that of an Arkhangelsk entrepreneur Nikolay P. Sutyagin, who built what was reportedly the world's tallest single-family wooden house for himself and his family, only to see it condemned as a fire hazard. The 13-storey, 44 m (144 ft) tall structure, known locally as "Sutyagin's skyscraper" (Небоскрёб Сутягина), was found to be in violation of Arkhangelsk building codes, and in 2008 the courts ordered the building to be demolished by 1 February 2009. On 26 December 2008, the tower was pulled down, and the remainder was dismantled manually over the course of the next several months.

Types and examples by region

Inter-regional

• Bender tent – a temporary dwelling used by Nomadic people
• Stilt house – a raised house found in monsoonal regions, especially monsoonal South Asia or other areas prone to flooding

Brazil

• Bustee – a dwelling made from waste materials, often associated with the slums of India or the favellas of Brazil

Canada

• Canadian Railway style – Railway stations built in Canada in the 19th and early 20th centuries were often simple wood structures that lacked decorative features. Some of these stations survive today but not as active railway stations.

England

• Bank barn, a type of combination barn found in Cumbria and Devon
• Bastle house, a fortified farmhouse on the Scottish border
• Burgaroosh, a poor-quality composite building material used around Brighton
• Cob and wychert, earth-based materials used in Devon and Buckinghamshire respectively
• Cruck, a curved timber used in pairs to form structures in western England in the Middle Ages
• Pargeting, a form of decorative external plaster seen in East Anglia
• Wealden house, a type of timber-framed hall house found in south-east England

Germany

• Gulf house
• Low German house
• Middle German house
• Old Frisian farmhouse

Indonesia

Iraq

• Desert castles – (in Arabic, known as q'sar) fortified palaces or castles built during the Umayyad period, the ruins of which are now scattered across the semi-arid regions of north-eastern Jordan, Syria, Israel, Palestine and Iraq. These often served as hunting lodges for noble families.
• Mudhif – a traditional building constructed entirely of reeds and common to the Marsh Arabs of southern Iraq.

Israel

• Sukkah – a temporary dwelling for use during the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. A sukkah must be made of organic materials, have three walls, and must have a roof that is partially open to the sky. The roof is typically made of branches or thatch.
• Four room house – Iron Age structures constructed of mud and stone.
• Wild Bau cladding style – the practice of repurposing rubble from Israeli structures destroyed during wars and terrorist attacks in masonry, especially in Katamon.

Italy

• Alpine 'barn' houses – dwellings built on the storey above the ground floor, which housed cattle during winter
• Dammuso (Dammusu) – dry stone housing of Pantelleria
• Sassi di Matera – cave dwellings
• Trullo – dry stone hut-shaped house with a conical roof

Norway

Philippines

• Torogan sleeping house in Mindanao, Philippines

Scotland

• Bastle house – a multi-storey, fortified farmhouse with sophisticated security measures designed to provide defence against the frequent raiding parties along the Scottish border.
• Blackhouse – a traditional dry-stone wall building, roofed with thatch of turf, a flagstone floor and central hearth, designed to accommodate livestock and people, separated by a partition.
• Crofters' cottage – a simple construction of stone walls filled with earth for insulation, a thatched or turf roof and stone slabs were set into the middle of the room for a peat fire which provided some form of central heating. An unusual croft house Brotchie's Steading, Dunnet was built with whale bone couples.
• Cruck house – a medieval structure designed to cope with shortages of long-span timber. The frame of the structure uses "siles" or "couples" (a type of fork) for the end walls. The walls do not support the roof, which is instead carried on the cruck frame. This type of building is common throughout England, Scotland and Wales, although only a few intact examples have survived.
• Shieling – a type of temporary hut (or a collection of huts) constructed of stone, sod and turf used as a dwelling during the summer months when highlanders took their livestock to higher ground in search of new pasture.
• Tower house or peel tower – a medieval building, typically of stone, constructed by the aristocratic classes as a defensible residence.
• Turf house – e.g. East Ayrshire, Medieval turf house

Spain

• Adobe house – mudbrick buildings found in Spain and Spanish colonies

United States

• Creole architecture in the United States – a type of house or cottage common along the Gulf Coast and associated rivers, especially in southern Louisiana and Mississippi.
• Earth lodge – a subterranean dwelling used by the Native Americans of the Great Plains
• Hogan – traditional dwelling of Navajo people
• Earl A. Young (born 31 March 1889 – 24 May 1975) was an American architect, realtor and insurance agent. Over a span of 52 years, he designed and built 31 structures in Charlevoix, Michigan but was never a registered architect. He worked mostly in stone, using limestone, fieldstone, and boulders he found throughout Northern Michigan. The homes are commonly referred to as gnome homes, mushroom houses, or Hobbit houses. His door, window, roof and fireplace designs were very distinct because of his use of curved lines. Young's goal was to show that a small stone house could be as impressive as a castle. Young also helped make Charlevoix the busy, summer resort town that it is today.

Ukraine

Different regions in Ukraine have their own examples of vernacular architecture. For example, in the Carpathian Mountains and the surrounding foothills, wood and clay are the primary traditional building materials. Ukrainian architecture is preserved at the Museum of Folk Architecture and Way of Life of Central Ukraine located in Pereiaslav, Ukraine.

Wales

• Longhouse (tŷ hir), a combined dwelling for people and animals

Sources and further reading

• Alcock, N. W. (2003), "Vernacular architecture [Folk architecture]", Grove Art Online, Oxford University Press, doi:10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.t088875, ISBN 978-1-884446-05-4
• Bourgeois, Jean-Louis (1983). Spectacular vernacular: a new appreciation of traditional desert architecture. Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith Books. ISBN 0-87905-144-2. Large format.
• Brunskill, R.W. (2006) [1985]. Traditional Buildings of Britain: An Introduction to Vernacular Architecture. Cassell's. ISBN 0-304-36676-5.
• Brunskill, R.W. (2000) [1971]. Illustrated Handbook of Vernacular Architecture (4th ed.). London: Faber and Faber. ISBN 0-571-19503-2.
• Clifton-Taylor, Alec (1987) [1972]. The Pattern of English Building. London: Faber and Faber. ISBN 0-571-13988-4. Clifton-Taylor pioneered the study of the English vernacular.
• Fox, Sir Cyril; Raglan, Lord (1954). Renaissance Houses. Monmouthshire Houses. Vol. III. Cardiff: Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales.
• Glassie, Henry. "Architects, Vernacular Traditions, and Society" Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review, Vol 1, 1990, 9-21 Archived 2018-04-18 at the Wayback Machine
• Holden, Timothy G; Baker, Louise M (2004). The Blackhouses of Arnol. Edinburgh: Historic Scotland. ISBN 1-904966-03-9.
• Holden, Timothy G (2003). "Brotchie's Steading (Dunnet parish), iron age and medieval settlement; post-medieval farm". Discovery and Excavation in Scotland (4): 85–86.
• Holm, Ivar (2006). 2006 [Ideas and Beliefs in Architecture and Industrial design: How attitudes, orientations, and underlying assumptions shape the built environment]. Oslo School of Architecture and Design. ISBN 82-547-0174-1.
• Mark Jarzombek, Architecture of First Societies: A Global Perspective, (New York: Wiley & Sons, August 2013)
• Oliver, Paul (2003). Dwellings. London: Phaidon Press. ISBN 0-7148-4202-8.
• Oliver, Paul, ed. (1997). Encyclopedia of Vernacular Architecture of the World. Vol. 1. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-58269-8.
• Perez Gil, Javier (2016). ¿Que es la arquitectura vernacula? Historia y concepto de un patrimonio cultural especifico. Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid. ISBN 978-84-8448-862-0.
• Pruscha, Carl, ed. (2005) [2004]. [Himalayan Vernacular]. Köln: Verlag Der Buchhandlung Walther König. ISBN 3-85160-038-X. Carl Pruscha, Austrian architect and United Nations-UNESCO advisor to the government of Nepal, lived and worked in the Himalayas 1964–74. He continued his activities as head of the design studio "Habitat, Environment and Conservation" at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.
• Rudofsky, Bernard (1987) [1964]. Architecture Without Architects: A Short Introduction to Non-Pedigreed Architecture. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. ISBN 0-8263-1004-4.
• Rudofsky, Bernard (1969). Streets for People: A Primer for Americans. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-04231-0.
• Schittich, Christian, ed. (2019). Vernacular Architecture: Atlas for Living Throughout the World. Basle: Birkhäuser. ISBN 978-3-0356-1631-6
• Upton, Dell and John Michael Vlach, eds. Common Places: Readings in American Vernacular Architecture. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1986. ISBN 0-8203-0749-1.
• Wharton, David. "Roadside Architecture." Southern Spaces, 1 February 2005, archived
• William, Eurwyn (2010). The Welsh Cottage. Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales. ISBN 978-1-871184-426.