Vernacular Structures Research Articles

Sustainable cooling solutions for application in Western Cape Province, South Africa

The energy demand in building sectors for summer air-conditioning is growing exponentially due to global warming, increased living standards and occupant comfort demands throughout the last decades. Concerns over these environmental changes have begun shifting the emphasis from current cooling methods, to ‘sustainable strategies’ of achieving equally comfortable conditions in building interiors. Study of ancient strategies applied by vernacular architecture shows how the indigenously clean energies to satisfy the cooling need were used. One of the most important influences on vernacular architecture is the macro-climate of the area in which the building is constructed. Not only vernacular structure but also the recent development in solar and geothermal cooling technologies could be used for environmental control needs. Intelligent coupling of these methods as alternative design strategies could help developing countries, such as South Africa, toward sustainable development in air-conditioning of buildings.

Preserving Collective Memory through Photography

The article focuses on the role of the “Survey on Regional Architecture in Portugal” in 1955 and its effects on contemporary Portuguese architecture. A photographic survey organizes and indexes a group of buildings with precise criteria, allowing a general panorama. In fact these built-environment, large-scale archives play an important role in heritage preservation. In the 1930s, an interesting phenomenon gathered architects who, although committed to the modern movement and enthusiasts of industrial progress, showed a growing interest in vernacular buildings and settlements. Some of these architects became photographers, attentive to a pre-industrial world that was endangered, to record timeless architecture and expose new aesthetic values. This interest generated several movements centered on an appreciation of regional architecture. Along with nostalgia, there stood out the feeling that there were still many lessons to be drawn from these threatened vernacular structures.

Rich Man Poor Man, Pioneer, Thief: Rethinking Earthfast Architecture in New Jersey

Recent archaeological excavations and documentary research have shed light on a once-vibrant and long-lasting tradition of earth fast architecture in New Jersey. This tradition persisted in the state from the period of initial settlement into the 19th century and was utilized by individuals of varied social, economic, ethnic, and occupational backgrounds. Earth fast architecture proved advantageous when masonry building materials were scarce, household economies were meager, skilled masons were expensive, and land tenure was questionable. The use of this architectural technique in New Jersey appears to have reflected a set of phenomena different than that previously identified in the Chesapeake region to the south, and was one of many options available to builders erecting vernacular structures from the 17th into the 19th century.

Changes of Quality in Javanese Houses

One of the most important issues arising from the 2006 Java earthquake is that many of the Javanese houses were easily collapsed or badly damaged due to the quake. The failure of the vernacular houses was also believed to be a principle factor in causing the casualties. As a replacement, the government built reconstruction houses which differ in form, size and structure to the earlier houses. Intensive campaigns were conducted to encourage and support the construction of compacted dwellings with brick walls and concrete frame systems. In view of the fact that the collapsed houses were comprised of many of the various types of Javanese vernacular structures in the area, including the recent well known reinforced concrete frame type, uncertainty in deciding which house is really fulfill the need of the people has emerged. Even though the new houses are thought to be more stable in respect of earthquake safety, the other values in housing should be examined and reassured. The comparative study presented in this paper, is based on a housing quality assessment method, which employs using an adaptation of Maslow's theory. Here, an interpretation related to the housing aspects in respect of the specific grading method is proposed. Following the earthquake, all Javanese house types were examined from the old traditional housing to the newly built houses. Aspects of evaluating the quality are considered according to local requirements and needs in respect of how the houses had been built according to the climate, needs, customs, safety, security, utility and comfort. This was done in order to compare the developments and changes in quality of the various types of housing. The result of the assessment applied to the houses shows that the Javanese housing quality is constantly changing over time for particular reasons. Unfortunately, according to this study, the overall quality of Javanese houses is currently, for some reason, in a downward trend.

New Orleans Architecture: Building Renewal

This essay on the architecture of New Orleans looks at certain features of the city? architectural icons, vernacular structures, and nature?and some conflicts they have provoked in the city's renewal of its built fabric. I have structured the essay as a sequence of vignettes, a composition that reflects the fragmentary nature of the city as it reshapes itself in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

A real-time window on 19th-century vernacular French: The Récits du français québécois d'autrefois

This article describes the construction of a corpus of spoken French with a timedepthofacenturyandahalf,theRecitsdufrancaisquebecoisd’autrefois (RFQ). The folktales, local legends, and interviews constituting the RFQ were produced by speakers born between 1846 and 1895. They spoke the French of 19th-century rural Quebec, a variety shown to be replete with the vernacular structures and inherent variability of contemporary dialects. The authors review the advantages and drawbacks associated with this type of diachronic material, and argue that, exploited judiciously, it effectively represents an earlier stage of spoken French. They show how systematic comparison of the RFQ with contemporary vernaculars can help pinpoint the existence,date,anddirectionoflanguagechange.(Apparent-timeconstruct, CanadianFrench,corpusconstruction,diachronicdata,languagechange,linguistic variability, ne deletion, real time analysis, vernacular)*

Thatching in the Outer Hebrides

PurposeThe purpose of this research is to report on the surveying of three vernacular thatched properties in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland, all run as Youth Hostels.Design/methodology/approachThe case study buildings are compared with 42 Arnol, the blackhouse on North Lewis cared for by Historic Scotland. The paper compares plan form, roof structure, thatching material and securing methods using data collected during extensive field investigations in 2004.FindingsThe paper concludes that the more northerly property Garenin most closely resembles 42 Arnol and can be classified as “Hebridean” in structure, while Howmore to the south is typical of the “Skye” pattern. Berneray, the central of the three properties, exhibits construction techniques of both types, indicating that it defines the boundary between the two types.Originality/valueThe findings of this research will be useful to surveyors, owners and maintenance managers responsible for these unique vernacular structures.

Integrated Function Systems and Organic Architecture from Wright to Mondrian

The development of an architectural form where the individual parts reflect the integrated whole has been a design goal from ancient architecture to the current explorations into self-organizational structures. Organic architecture, with this part-to-whole association as an element of its foundation, has been explored from its incidental use in vernacular structures to its conscious endorsement by Frank Lloyd Wright. Traditionally Piet Mondrian has not been associated with organic architecture but a closer examination of the artistic and philosophical underpinnings of his work reveals a conceptual connection with organic architecture.

Cultural Dialogics and Jazz: A White Historian Signifies

Free of the white person's gaze, black people created their own unique vernacular structures and relished in the double play that these forms bore to white forms. Repetition and revision are fundamental to black artistic forms, from painting and sculpture to music and language use. I decided to analyze the nature and function of precisely because it is repetition and revision, or repetition with a signal difference. Whatever is black about black American literature is to be found in this identifiable black difference. That, most succinctly if ambiguously, describes the premise of this book. Lest this theory of criticism, however, be thought of as only black, let me admit that the implicit premise of this study is that all texts Signify upon other texts.... Perhaps critics of other literatures will find this theory useful as they attempt to account for the configurations of the texts in their traditions. Anyone who analyzes black literature must do so as a comparativist, by definition, because our canonical texts have complex double formal antecedents, the Western and the black. (Signifying) is the figure of the double-voiced. The Signifying Monkey ... seems to dwell in [the] space between two linguistic domains. --Henry Louis Gates Jr. (1988, xxiv-xxv, 150) Signifyin(g) operates at three levels of increasing generalization and importance in The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism by Henry Louis Gates Jr. (1988). It is a theme in certain African-American literary works, a set of rhetorical strategies pervasively embodied in black American discourse, whether informal or formal, and an indigenous black metaphor for intertextuality all told (59), a trope by which to represent black literary culture's vernacular theorizing of itself. In setting out to Signify on Gates and other recent theorists of African-American literature, I certainly do not presume to have expertise in the thematics of that literary tradition; neither do I pretend to deep insight into indigenous black rhetorics. Rather I accept Gates's implicit invitation, in the first epigraph above, to gauge from a vernacular situation different from his the usefulness of his critical theory (and by extension that of other recent African-American theorizing). My and the theorizing that results from it will manifest my own vernacular as it intersects with other vernaculars. I make no presumptuous claim to blackness in my presentation, but at the same time I do not undervalue the potential dialogical richness of my interlocutions with African-American culture from a position outside it. The two most general aims of my will be (1) to outline the ways in which Gates's and other black observers' theorizing defines, with compelling clarity, issues crucial to the whole realm of postmodern theorizing in the human sciences and (2) to suggest the profits offered by theories such as Gates's to students of black musical traditions, specifically jazz. In informal black discourse connotes a variety of ways of speaking and interacting that are characterized by irony, indirection, needling, and trickery. It is not a particular subject matter but rather a group of related rhetorical practices that might be employed across many subjects. Similarly, the Signifying Monkey, the archetypal Signifier in African-American oral tradition, is not engaged in the game of information-giving, as Gates says, so much as he is involved in the manipulation and mediation of others' information. Thus is signified upon by the signifier; or again, does not signify something; rather, one signifies in some way (52-54). Gates's emphasis on as a mediating strategy for discourse implies its interaction with things signified, its position between or among texts. This in turn leads him to employ it generally as a trope of repetition and revision. …

Trabeations: Vernacular Structures Emerging From the Historical Past

Ideas from a pre-scientific era referred to as the Dark Age, emerged occasionally not only in the world of the arts and crafts. Among such products of special interest that have reached the present...

Wheel Estate: The Rise and Decline of Mobile Homes by Allan D. Wallis

452 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE from “technical and theoretical material,” assuring them that “the gist of the tale will not be lost by skimming over the minutiae” (p. 5), the minutiae are vast and often of great value. In fact, I would have appreciated having more of the 200 pages of appendixes and notes incorporated into the text. Converting some tables into charts would have presented material more effectively, but that is a small point. In contrast to its treatment of economics, the book has little credibility in areas where Olney relies on secondary sources to make judgments that are peripheral to her own, original contributions. Pamela Walker Laird Dr. Laird is completing a book on the transformation of American advertising, 1870-1920. She teaches part-time at the University of Colorado, Denver. Wheel Estate: The Rise and Decline of Mobile Homes. By Allan D. Wallis. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. Pp. x + 283; illustrations, notes, index. $24.95. Despite the fact that over 12.5 million Americans live in mobile homes, and that one dwelling out of ten is so characterized, very little scholarly attention has been devoted to this phenomenon. Part of this neglect is undoubtedly due to the fact that the mobile home is a hybrid, vernacular structure, straddling the ground (both literally and figuratively) between being a vehicle and a house. The relatively low status accorded such a dwelling, with its social, economic, and political dimensions, also has been a contributing factor. In Wheel Estate: The Rise and Decline ofMobile Homes, Allan D. Wallis firmly establishes the mobile home and its accompanying life-style as fitting subjects for scholarly research. Wallis offers a chronological account of the sixty-year development of such housing and its predecessors and a theoretical framework for understanding the use, form, and meaning of the mobile home in American society. In both respects, this pioneering study succeeds admirably. Wallis’s book, however, is not just a good history of a particular housing type. More important, it relates that history to a number of key themes in the development of the American character. As Wallis observes, “the paradoxical place of the mobile home in American housing—as both necessity and pariah—may be found in conflicts within our most fundamental beliefs about home and community, conflicts between conformity and individuality, between the placebound community and the expectation that individual freedom means freedom to move” (pp. 22—23). In the chronological chapters, approximately two-thirds of the book, Wallis does an excellentjob of tracing the transformation from travel trailers used primarily for vacationing (mid-1920s to 1939) to house trailers as mobile shelter for itinerant workers and salesmen TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 453 (1940—53) to the mobile home’s evolution as an alternate form of permanent housing (mid-1950s to mid-1970s). For each of these developmental periods, the author explores the interaction between two conflicting processes: (1) invention or innovation attributable to the owners, manufacturers, dealers, and park developers, and (2) regulation or categorization undertaken by public agencies and private institutions. Wallis’s basic thesis is that the interplay between those processes is responsible for the place of mobile homes and manufactured housing in American society today. According to Wallis, until the mid-1970s, the development of the mobile home and its precursors was of an ad hoc nature, the result of an unplanned set of historical and socioeconomic circumstances that worked to the advantage not only of the trailer or mobile home as a physical object, but to the system that supported it (manufacturer, dealer, and park owners). Such development allowed for the design innovations that proved so popular with owners and provided the flexibility needed to meet local zoning variations. However, during the past two decades, the development of the mobile home movement has undergone a radical change. With governmental recognition of the mobile home as a form of perma­ nent housing has come increased standardization, categorization, and regulation both of the physical dwelling itself and the setting in which it is placed. As a result, Wallis bemoans what he sees as the loss of what was the trailer or mobile home’s raison d’être: “The...

Collaborations: Artists and Architects on Public Sites

C ollaboration is a term that has been used frequently in the 1980s to describe various interactions among sculptors. architects. and landscape architects. What actually constitutes collaboration. however. is a complex matter; in practice. it has involved everything from the addition of a sculptor to already planned architectural project to the teamwork of artists and designers from the early planning stages of a public commission. Many artworks in public places have been completed using the first arrangement, but the second is still something of a novelty in contemporary public art.' The sculptor Nancy Holt defines three forms of collaboration. The first is the conceptual collaboration between artist and architect. working autonomously, to create complementary works. The second. called correlative. involves greater interaction in which the two professionals inform the works of each other. The third is cooperative collaboration. and involves a working team of architects. sculptors. landscape architects. fabricators. engineers. and community workers. Although all forms of collaboration are appropriate for public commissions. the third offers many fascinating possibilities for the transformation of a site.' Recent public sculpture, owing to the dedicated commitment to collaboration among artists, architects, and designers. has been a vast improvement over the confrontational works by such artists as Richard Serra. Since the 19605, when monumental abstract sculptures began to populate the urban landscape. the relationship of the work of to its site and audience has been debated. Could the abstract monoliths spawned in the era of minimalism satisfy the public predilection for figurative monuments evoking heroes of the past? Could these abstract objects compensate byenlivening outdoor spaces and creating dynamic interrelationships between spectator and site? Many artists have recently accepted the challenges of blighted urban areas by creating situations rather than monolithic abstractions. Such artists as Mary Miss. Nancy Holt, Athena Tacha,' and others were determined to raise the social consciousness of architects and to forge a new relationship between public site and viewer. (Women. though not the exclusive activists for this direction. have made a significant contribution.) They believed that their goals could be accomplished only by a more active collaborative effort with architects and landscape designers. As the monolithic object was abandoned. these artists moved beyond even the most avant-garde definitions of art to develop more accessible works. These new artworks fuse with their sites. rather than occupy them. eliciting subtle perceptual variables of time and place. For example. Mary Miss. who uses parks. quarries. and vernacular structures of various cultures as her sources. noted her concern that the viewer experience her work directly. without being intimidated by the notion that it is sculpture. Miss remarked, One of the things that I find most compelling is trying to make a strong visual. physical, and emotional experience accessible to people who aren't necessarill those who go into museums regularly. In recent years. a new maturity in the creation of public has developed. Some artists now participate in design groups, rather than passively accepting the positioning of their work on a predetermined site. The joining of architects and artists on a public site is certainly not a recent development. Throughout the ages architects have joined with painters and sculptors to create fUH~ developed programs for public sites. According to Paul Goldberger, however. modernism assured an attitude of respect for the notion of and architecture in tandem. attitude of sympathy for the idea of within works of architecture. but little patience for true collaboration.! But postmodern architecture seems to have revived notions of collaboration among artists and architects. Percent-for-art guidelines have also compelled architects to work out accommodations with artists in the public sector. I have selected for discussion here three projects that represent different collaborative processes. Nancy Holt's Dark Star Park is unusual example of a sculptor also assuming the role of landscape architect in the planning and execution of a sculpture park. Holt's collaboration was with architects. contractors. and engineers. and she assumed control of a major portion of the decision making. South Cove at Battery Park City is among the finest examples of a truly collaborative project: the sculptor Mary Miss worked with the architect Stanton Eckstut and the landscape architect Susan Child from the early planning stages of the work. Promenade Classique, at TransPotomac Canal Center. continues earlier form of collaboration, where the artists Anne and Patrick Poirier were selected for the sculpture park after the architectural complex had been designed. But the project did include a lively collaborative exchange between the sculptors and the landscape architect, M. Paul Friedberg. Each of these projects represents a possible model for future collaborations on public sites.

A theory of architectural design

A rudimentary theory to explain the design of vernacular structures is presented. Conceiving of architectural design as a social process, the theory focuses on the influence of utilitarian and symbolic functions as well as on the trade-offs between production and maintenance costs. A particular design is viewed as the outcome of a process of compromise among conflicting goals, influenced by factors of adaptation and social organization. The theory is used to generate an explanatory sketch for why the prehistoric Anasazi of the American Southwest went from being pithouse to pueblo dwellers.