Thinking Re-Vernacular Building

Abstract

This short reflection was inspired by experiences of and thinking. In homage to thinking, it begins with a fugitive reading of Martin Heidegger's Building Dwelling Thinking. In homage to it concludes with my story of constructing a house on eastern slope of Rocky Mountains in southern Colorado, place that I would make home. Along way, and in references, homage is offered to a number of other inspirations for a recovery of what Christopher Alexander calls the timeless way of building but might also be termed conscious vernacular. As Stewart Brand has noted, after farming, is second largest industrial activity in world. Like farming, build ing is being torn loose from its rootedness in earth. What can one do to re-root building, in a way comparable, say, to way organic farming movement attempts to re-root farming? Why should one even try? The ageless way of is at once unthought and vernac ular, although there is no equivalence between lack of thinking and vernacular. The un-scientifically thought but deeply lived act of must to be rediscovered, perhaps in a new kind of thinking. To think is most commonly to think non-vernacular build ing?modernism and efficiency, postmodernism and fun, and more. Is it possible to think non-vernacular in a way that constitutes a recovery of vernacular as something more than scholarship or antiquarianism? Could there be a metaor post-nonvernacular that is re(in sense of really) vernacular?