Vernacular Experience Research Articles

Towards Creating Wholesome Architecture by Re-inventing Vernacular Qualities: Validating a Tool to Measure Genius Loci through Two Sites in Mumbai, India

With the modern and post-modern impact, Architecture is still fighting to become wholistic, regional, and multi-sensory. Reflection of vernacular design experience in contemporary Architecture is one solution in this struggle. Norberg Schulz’s Genius Loci is a lens for studying local identity of a place. Schulz argues that local identity comes from the relation of architecture to a region, its environment, culture and heritage. Hence, one can use the analysis of Genius Loci as one of the ways in implementing vernacular experiences in contemporary architecture. For this purpose, one needs a method and tool to analyse genius loci of a place. This research has developed a tool for analysing the experience of Genius Loci through grounded theory as a methodology. The tool is a questionnaire of 28 attributes that evaluates the experience of genius loci. This research tests the questionnaire on two case study sites to establish its robustness and reliability for universal applicability. Interpretation and discussion of the findings elaborate on the nuances of the tool, detailing of the attributes. It articulates how these attributes are evaluated. The questionnaire as a tool is available to any stakeholder interested in studying architectural experience or the Genius Loci of a place or effect of the experience of Genius Loci on a user. As a future prospect, researchers can develop design guideline of Genius Loci elements using this analysis tool.

Vernacular solutions for small houses in Ha Tinh City towards sustainable and adaptation to climate change

Geographically located on the central coastal plain of Vietnam, with low, flat topography, Ha Tinh City has an urban architecture which interwoven closely with very characteristic rural areas. In 2017-2021, we conducted a research project on building a system of green architecture criteria and proposed architectural design solutions for sustainable small-scale housing in Ha Tinh City in the context of climate change. The research project has conducted surveys, interviews and measurements of climate data at 195 representative houses in 4 typical urban areas of the city. Based on very detailed survey results, combined with the traditional vernacular experience gained from local experts and residents, we have gradually analyzed and assessed the effects of climate change on houses and human activities, from which to build a set of criteria to guide people to build or renovate their homes in the direction of green vernacular architecture which is more sustainable and better adapt to climate change in Ha Tinh.

Decolonizing African history: Authenticité, cosmopolitanism and knowledge production in Zaire, 1971–1975

ABSTRACT This article analyses the social and intellectual dynamisms of the Lubumbashi campus of the Université Nationale du Zaïre in the 1970s. It first highlights how Lubumbashi scholars participated in an early post-colonial attempt to radically transform the university’s teaching, research and operations, at the crossroads of intellectual decolonization and cosmopolitanism. These efforts both overlapped and clashed with the official Zairian policy of Authenticité, a politically tinged reappraisal of the country’s precolonial past. The article contributes to our limited knowledge of everyday life under Mobutu and of vernacular experiences of Authenticité, while highlighting Lubumbashi as an important node in the post-independence intellectual networks.

Who you gonna call? Theorising everyday security practices in urban spaces with multiple security actors – The case of Beirut's Southern Suburbs

Who do urban residents turn to in everyday security incidents? Why do some go to the police in certain locations, others to armed nonstate actors or kinship networks? We explore the ways in which residents and security actors – state and nonstate – negotiate everyday (in)security in contested urban spaces with multiple security actors. We consider how hybrid security assemblages are shaped by physical and social space and how everyday security practices shape space. We use Beirut's Southern Suburbs (Dahiyeh) as a site of theorisation, bringing local vernacular experiences into dialogue with Bourdieu's concepts of capital, habitus, doxa and field to develop a spatially dynamic analytical framework. Using this framework, we map security actors' different types and sizes of capital and how this capital is affected by residents' habitus and doxa within the everyday security field. We introduce the notion of ‘translocal habitus’ to capture the impact of families' origins outside Dahiyeh on everyday security dynamics. The framework we develop contributes to the spatialisation, vernacularisation and pluralisation of everyday security studies, furthers the spatialisation of Bourdieu and adds to the literature on hybrid forms of governance. Our analysis is based on extensive fieldwork, including over 150 interviews and ‘street chats’ with residents and security actors in and around Dahiyeh.

Naked in the Face of Contamination

While chemicals are often described and acted upon in technoscientific forums as isolated, discrete entities, vernacular experience points to possibilities of experiencing, speaking about, and imagining chemical exposures that have otherwise been rendered politically obsolete. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork in the Ecuadorian Amazon, this article invokes accounts of daily life in order to argue that vernacular experience is necessary for understanding what it means to live in a place of environmental hazard, and for building a more inclusive politics of knowledge production in models and assessments of toxicity. Descriptions such as “naked in the face of contamination,” “swimming in oil,” “smoke thick like marmalade,” or exclamations of pain re-lived “tsaac!” refuse hegemonic assumptions about how chemicals alter and enable life. To take these descriptions of life seriously is to recognize the ways that chemical concentrations often far exceed the ‘normal’ forms and quantities modeled in risk assessments of standard oil operations. The chemically saturated present demands a reconfiguration of toxicity – as a socio-material process, epistemic concept, and embodied experience – in order to work towards political and environmental, as well as epistemological, justice.

Presenting Diversity and Negotiating Identity: Narratives of the Chinese in Newfoundland

This article investigates the personal narratives and other supporting discourses of Chinese immigrants and their descendants in Newfoundland, Canada, in order to understand how individuals in this diasporic group use narratives to present their differing and sometimes conflicting senses of Chineseness. The diasporic identity is emergent in the interplay between "traditional" Chinese culture (there) and vernacular experience in Newfoundland (here). This diasporic identity is creolized, multiple, temporal, and fluid, and it is reinforced by new traditions and cultural traits developed in the diaspora.

Several Comments on Numerical Modeling of Shallow Foundations

Most of structures constructed before the twentieth century, were not a product of meticulous analysis, but were rather a fortuitous amalgamation of good structural instincts and vernacular experience in building technology and construction. The aim of the work is to study soil structure interaction for shallow foundations associated with ancient residential and sacral structures. The main goal of the study is to establish the width and depth of subsoil zone which must be taken into account and incorporated into numerical FEM modelling.

The New Interval

Research Article| May 01 2011 The New Interval Nicholas Muellner Nicholas Muellner NICHOLAS MUELLNER is a photographer and writer based in West Danby, New York. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Afterimage (2011) 38 (6): 9–11. https://doi.org/10.1525/aft.2011.38.6.9 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Nicholas Muellner; The New Interval. Afterimage 1 May 2011; 38 (6): 9–11. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/aft.2011.38.6.9 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAfterimage Search This content is only available via PDF. © 2011 Afterimage/Visual Studies Workshop, unless otherwise noted. Reprints require written permission and acknowledgement of previous publication in Afterimage.2011 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

The search for vernacular identity: Maratha temples in Maharashtra, India

The vernacular architectural tradition of Maratha temples in Maharashtra is an unexplored asset for cultural and heritage tourism. Based on a conceptual framework that is embedded in historical circumstances, this paper presents and analyses three major problems that have hampered the tourism potential of Maratha temples: viz. the lack of canonization from governments at various levels; the conflicts and contradictions of Hindu nationalism for promoting identifiable tourist attractions; and lack of infrastructure and investment to bolster the hybrid architectural identity and visual character of Maratha temples. It is suggested that the ambiguities intrinsic to Maratha temple architecture result out of disparate socio-cultural and architectural influences and create ideal circumstances for an authentic vernacular experience.

Understanding vernacular experiences of film in an academic environment

It is widely recognized that students' vernacular engagements with a subject such as films can interfere with their willingness to make them an object of academic study. This essay reports the findings of a small action research project, funded by the Art, Design and Communication LTSN (now known as ADMHEA subject centre), which sought to test the effectiveness of an intervention in which students' own personal responses became part of the process of study. Using the controversial film A Clockwork Orange (1971), students' responses to the film and to the issues involved in studying it were measured at the beginning and the end of a year-long module. The research revealed some complicated patterns and differences in how students responded to the film itself, which make problematic any simple account of the relationship between personal and social significance in the film. It also indicated some important relationships between kinds of personal response to the film, and the willingness to allow these responses to be the topic of critical evaluation.

Nativeness, Invasiveness, and Nation in Australian Plants

The conceptualization of alien invasive species conflates two axes of variability that have become unhelpfully blurred. The nativeness/alienness axis refers to the presumed belonging of a species in ecological or social space. Invasiveness refers to the behavior of the species in question, particularly in relation to other species. The overlay of nation introduces further variability. Teasing these axes apart is important for more effective environmental management. We examine these concepts using two influential forms of ecological knowledge: the biogeographical and ecological literature and the vernacular experiences of suburban backyarders. Three case studies, the invasive native Pittosporum undulatum and two invasive exotics, Lantana camara and Cinnamomum camphora, illustrate the complex and contingent nature of human interactions with such species and the potential for human interactions to increase and/or reduce the propagation of plant species.

The evolution of planning & urban theory from the perspective of vernacular design: MOMRA initiatives in improving Saudi Arabian neighbourhoods

The vernacular form and physical pattern of settlements in Saudi Arabia evolved under the influence of visible and non-visible forces. Climate, tradition, religion, economic base and political stability are forces behind the overall underlying structure of the vernacular settlements. This article discusses the evolution of planning and urban theory from the perspectives of vernacular design in Saudi Arabia settlements. The evolution of the planning and urban theory of community design in Saudi Arabia is a very controversial theme. The vernacular architectural style can be distinguished easily from the contemporary style. Also, the organic grid pattern can be distinguished from the gridiron pattern used in planning modern neighbourhoods. However, the success or failure of vernacular and contemporary styles and patterns have created recurring arguments among many scholars. On one side, it is quite apparent that the continuity of vernacular organic patterns and styles is an evidence of success in creating secure and safe environment and establishing sense of place. On the other side, the inconsistency of contemporary styles and gridiron patterns is considered as an evidence of failure in creating unsafe and unidentifiable environment. Such an imbalance may result in an influential role of planning and urban theory in the evolution of new form of urbanization in a country like Saudi Arabia. The planning and urban concepts implemented by Arriyadh Development Authority (ADA), the Royal Commission of Jubail and Yanbu (RCJY), and the Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs (MOMRA) are tangible evidences for establishing a new approach in planning new neighbourhood. The paper focuses on finding an appropriate urban and design approach for future neighbourhood development. Its main objective is to achieve a balance between the social and physical aspects based on vernacular experiences. Finally, the paper concludes with the notion that a successful planning and urban theory must be based on imperatives based on culture, climate, religion, tradition and technology.

History is Public or Nothing

My historical thinking and work in American culture are deeply intertwined. This piece explores how the desire for social commitment has moved my scholarly agenda, as it participated in the successful efforts of a generation of American scholars to alter the meaning of culture studies to reflect subjective and vernacular experience. For this generation, and for me, the intersection of politics with the life of the mind opened up a range of unusual perspectives. Fraught with illusions though it was, it enabled a broader view of culture, not tied to national frameworks and sensitive to the experiences of working-class people and of women.

Shading as a modulator for the design of urban layouts based on vernacular experiences

Older cities' urban configurations still constitute sources of inspiration for architects and urban designers. However, in most cases, instead of extracting ideas and processes, designers, under identitarian, environmental and economical pressures, tend to favour the imitation of the older configurations and end up with frozen copies from the past. This paper suggests an approach based on abstract concepts drawn from past experiences and filtered and refined through physical and environmental design variables. One of these variables is examined here and serves as a filtering technique; the shading control.