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    103 views23 pages

    Glassievarch PDF

    Uploaded by

    Verma Tarun

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE BurLnincs, uke rors and rituals, realize culture. Their designer rationalize thei actions differently: Some say they design and build as they do because itis the ancient way oftheir people and place. Others claim that their practice correctly manifests the un ence. But all of them create out ofthe Versally valid laws of s smallness of their own experience All architects are bor into architectural environment condition their notions of beauty and bodily comfort and propriety: Before they have boen burdened with knowledge architecture, their eyes have seen, their fingers have touched, their minds have inquired into the wholeness of their scenes ing crap to the segregation of facts by logical class. Released from the hig of pleasure and nurture, they have toddled into space, learning They have begun colle ‘of experience without regar to dwel, to feel at home. Those first acts of occupation deposit a Were it me, were I the one who would come to build, ther would be red clay and pale curs of wood. There would be an brchard outside and shotguns in the hallway. Thick white pain fon rough pine boards would connote home and call to mind the Sot sounds of dogs and old men on the porch, the cool fe! of linoleum on the kitchen floor, the smells of bacon frying. A rl ander through it, accompanied by the brisk whisks ofa broom Aswe grow, memory runs wild, undirected by future projects Culture accumulates into an inner resource of association and gathers order aesthetically. This feels good, that bad, while ex: VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE perience widens, memories deepen, and culture complicates through leaming When the builder's attention is narrowed by training, whether inthe dusty shop of a master carpenter or the sleek classroom of, 2 university, past experience is not obliterated. It endures in the Strange caves ofthe brain and inthe old habits ofthe muscle they seek smooth routes through the air. Education adds layer. In precept and admonition, in pedagogical technique, if not in content, the teacher brings cultural values into the process of transmission, Students obey or rebel. Inwardly, new ideas mix and coexist with old ones, and the mind, fed by the senses, con- tinues to bounce about, unfettered by consistency. Resolution will ‘come in performance, in dedicated, situated instants of concen tration, while planning meets accidents and leaening continues Despite the rigors of training, the architect remains a fll per son, at once competent and confused. The building shares i its builder's confusions. It seems right as a result, ecause it incor Porates the experience that thearchitect shares — not completely ‘ofcourse, but completely enough — with those who do not build, but who lookat buildings and go into them. The building works because it integrates the tight routines of professional practice withthe loose expanse of cultural association, The overtly archi tectural contrivance covertly absorbs the norms of beauty and social exchange and political onder with which the architect, asa member of society, has come to feel at ease. Architecture slike any realization of potential, ke any projec tion of thought. The things ofthe world —this sentence, that pal- ace — preceded themselves in the mind as plans. Plans blend memories witha reading of the immediate situation. They are real ized in things. They can be reversed in analysis. Things become plans, plans disaggregate into sets of decisions, decisions become intentions. All creations bespeak ther creators. They stand before uusasimages of wll and wit In this, architecture slike other things, and there are no differences among kinds of building. All are cul- tural creations, orderings of experience like poems and rituals 18 Agaakarahan, Turkey. 182 ‘Vale, Guernsey, Channel Islands. 1982 VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE every building isa cultural fact, the consequence of acoli- sion between intentions and conditions if differences of cultu and circumstance adequately account for differences among, buildings the question s why we persist in calling some of them vernacular. There are answers Few kinds of building have been accorded full study. When ‘we isolate from the world a neglected architectural variety and zname it vernacular, we have prepared it for analysis. The term ‘marks the transition from the unknown tothe known. Thestudy ‘of vernacular architecture isa way that we expand the record, Dit by bit. At work, moving toward a complete view of the builder's art, we bring buildings into scrutiny and toward ut ity in the comprehensive study of humankind Buildings are neglected for diferent reasons. Some are the ‘exotic products of indigenous people in places unknown to us ‘But others ae familiar, maybe too familiar. The architectural his- torian who lavishes attention yet again on somecananical momu- ‘ment probably lives ina house ofa kind that has wholly eluded setious study: Pondering why some buildings get studied and others do not, we are likely to argue that some buildings are {important and others are not. Then pondering the emptiness of that answer, we find that important buildings canbe interpreted as displays ofthe values we value— grandeur, perhaps, or orig nality — while unimportant builelings display values that we ‘have not yet leamed toappreciate. Neglect isa sign of ignorance, ‘The term, I repeat, marks the transition from the unknown tothe known: we eal buildings “vernacular” because they embody v ‘ues sien to those cherished in the academy: When we called ‘buildings “folk,” the implication was that they countered in com ‘monness and tradition the pretense and progress that dominate ‘simple academic schemes, Folk buildings contained a different virtue. The study of vernacular architecture, through its urge toward the comprehensive, accommodates cultural diversity. It ‘welcomes the neglected into study in onder to acknowledge the reality of difference and conflict. » MATERIALIZATION Should we wonder why architectural study has aped the study of actin its erection of a canon of important buildings, we ‘ill find, on reflection, a host of causes. One of them has to do ‘with the ease of procedure, Selecting a few buildings, a few ar- Chitects, and then linking them up chronologically, we can bor- tow the facile techniques ofthe historian of great men and events. ‘But taking the comprehensive view and recognizing diversity, the study of Vernacular architecture drives toward better historical procedures, ones that focus exstentially on action and ead to the onstruction of a multiplex idea of time. Weeall buildings vernacu- Jar to highlight the cultural and contingent nature of al building, Proposing distinctions and labeling buildings along the way, the study of Vernacular architecture isan approach tothe whole ‘of the built world. It favors completeness, recognizes diversity, land seeks way’ to use buildings as evidence in order to tell bet- ‘er versions of the human story. Inthe future, it will be obso {unow the term “vernacular” is one ofthe tools we use when face architectural objects with a wish to crack them open and their meanings zation tecture works in space as history work in time. History time's ceaseless flow, segmenting and reordering it half the human nee for meaning, Architecture intrces the limitless expanse of space. dividing tito useful, compre- pieces. Converting space into places through diseup- aachitecture brings meaning to the spatial dimension. With astronomy as the extreme insance, the architectural begins im exploration and naming. Thebaby crawls upon that matures in meaning, as time passes and names supe softness isa rug, it isa red rg it isa mediore late th-entury eagle Kavak. The explore vente nto wn: terior parcel and claim it with names tha comero~ his heroism. Through time, names accumulate onthe land a VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE and combine to reall ts history: the sequence of settlement, the conflict between the invader and the native The name i a fleeting means for bringing history into space and marking the land as meaningful, Marking becomes firmer ‘with physical alteration, when a trail is blazed through a forest, fr one stone is piled on another to seta limit. Mote stones con- firm the limit and rise into walls: the wall the Chinese built that tumed the mounted warriors westward toward Europe, the wall the Romans struck across Britain to cede the heathy highlands to the wild men of the north, the walls of forts along, the borders, the walls. of prisons and gated communities the walls ofthe cot tage where the bold thresherman, his day’s work dane, dandles the baby on his knee With the act of physical alteration that cals time into space implying pastanda future, and with the walls that divide space at once including and excluding, architecture has happened. Architecture gives physical form to claims and names, 10 memories and hopes. Asa conceptual activity, architecture is a matter of forming ideas into plans, plans into things that other people can see. Architecture shapes relations between people It is a kind of communication. The made of its thinking connects architecture to all of culture, but its mode of realization distin- {uishes it from other varieties of communication, To be architec- ture, it must be realized in materials The decision to create a building is the decision to destroy some part of the material universe. Things are wrocked — tees are toppled, stone is broken, old houses are razed — to makelite better. The desire is for improvement. The process ofthe desite fs technological Technology is corollary of human existence. Is the means ‘of our extension into space, as natural to people as swimming is tofish. As life unfolds, every technological act brings changes in two great relations: the one that alway’ connects the human and nonhuman spheres, the ther that is built to connect people with ‘one another 2 Framed house tuner consiruction Hig, Japan 18 Log house under construction. Lima Parish, Dalara, Sweden. 1989 Timber, brick, stone Halle Soa, ‘Germany 199 Bick, ing Wiliam County Virgina ‘Stone, Burton Badstock, Dorset, England. 1972 ARCHITECTURAL TECHNOLOGY Architectural Technology ‘The relation ofthe human and nonhuman begins its ransforma- tion inthe first step of technology, the selection of materials. A distinction betwen local and imported materials wasamong the first criteria that writers, in England particularly used to define ‘vernacular architecture. Vernacular buildings are composed of local materials, they argued. During travel, they enjoyed watch- ing the substrate ofthe earth rise and form into buildings, cross- ing the land in bands of sandstone, limestone, and granite, and they deplored the rash of red brick buildings that spread along, the railways, oblivious to geological differences. Their taste was built on conventional dichotomies: natural and artificial, native and alien, old and new, local and national, handmade and in- dustrial. The contemporary cynic would find thei view easy to deconstruct as elitist and dismiss as sentimental. But they were fon to something During architectural fieldwork, Ihave taught myself to con- ‘entrate on form, but everywhere Igo the people whose houses Tstudy classify buildings by materials, and especially by oofing found in Turkey that the local historians separated old houses ‘with fat roofs from new houses with pitched roots covered by ppurchasec materials. In Bangladesh, village people, thinking less bout history than social class divide buildings by the materials. fof their walls — stuccoed brick versus pudled mud or bamboo. lashed in tension — and by their roofs of thatch or tin. In Africa and Latin America, thatch is comparably yielding to tn, and in the rural United States one age gave way to another when ‘wooden shingles were replaced by shiny sheets of metal Tearned the lesson of this change first in Ireland, In Ballymenone, a farming community where I drew a plan of ev- ley house and classified them into four distinct types, the people slassified them into two groups by materials, separating houses that were thatched from those that were roofed with slate oF metal. VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE Joe Murphy, Johnny Drumm, and Tommy Love, masters of thatching, taught me the logic tha lay beneath their distinction. Thatch makes good insulation. Its warm in the winter, cool in the summer. Environmentally effcient, thatch is also beautiful Looking dowshillata house he had recently roofed, Tommy Love said, “When itis new with strait shines like gold, The sun glints off it, and itis lovely. Itis lovely, enough Efficient and beautiful thatching is also economical. Its main ‘demand is time, and in Ballymenone they say thatthe man sho made time made plenty. Thatch requires a knowledge of ‘growing things the understandingof seeds and soil and weather 2. The m ‘grows from the ground. It isan endlessly renewable resource that farmers develop during time passed in pl and it is processed and applied by hand, with no need for ex job for the man called handy, butts technology that requine hinery. Thatching takes knowledge and skil it isa The problem is that thatch demands regular maintenance and frequent replacement. The metal roof obviates the need for con holder onnected — as they d— with neighbo isnot obliged to be a craftsman of to be ‘were in Ballymenone through trades of a who are skilled. He manages alone without effort or knowled ‘mate. It works litte better in cool, humid Ireland than it does in hot, humid Bangladesh, where the tin roof ro ‘met. And metal is not beautiful. Ellen Cutler said it broke her heart when she used the royalties she receive! from my first book fn Ballymenone to strip the thatch from her home and roof it with metal. Her house, she said, had turned ugly. But she made the change because of “the times that ace init Those times, in Ellen Cutler's mind, were characterized by the melting away of intimate social orders in the heat of Ulster’s political troubles, and they were marked by shifts in fashion. Mrs. Tommy Love Joe Murphy Balymenone John Gillece’shouse, which he thatches himself Tallymenone, Fermanagh, Northern lend 1972 VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE Catler belonged toa small rural community where it was satis- fying to live in the largest, loveliest thatched house, Dick, her on; lived in the same place, but he belonged toa vast rural pro- letariat. He worked for wages paid by an agricultural enteepre- nneur-She knew he would never move intoa thatched house — so ‘old and cranky so very Irish — so she ruined its looks, turning it it him. She was successful. When Mes. Cutler died in 1981, Dick moved his family up the hill, and, as she had hoped, Cutler blood kept flowing on Cutler land, Her change brought continuity, ‘Themetal roof fits the times. The times demand money. Manu factured in a mill beyond the horizon, moved by rail and road, sheet metal roofing obliges people to collect specimens of their They are drawn into paying jobs, becoming in the big machine that gathers wealth for dis- Cut ofthe house for most of the day and beat at its end, people have no time to build through cordial conver tions the friendships that once brought a thatcher tothe hous ‘exchange for agricultural produce ‘The connections shapecl by thatching — between people and nature, between people and people — were direct and intensely local. The change from thatch to tin signals the surrender of lo «al autonomy. In Ireland, a in Bangladesh, people have chosen to adjust to the times. They have chosen permanence, reliance ‘ondistant producers, and participation inthe international cash ‘economy: [Not from the perspective ofa privileged observer, whether cynical or sentimental, but from the perspective of the people ‘who lve the life, we can stim things up. Inthe shift from local to {imported materials, there is a loss in environmental efficiency and a loss in beauty. There is a gain in permanence, which is compensation for a loss of skill and social connection. The loss ‘ofthe pleasure taken froma job well dane, and the burden of the ARCHITECTURAL TECHNOLOGY noe for cash, must be set against the prestige that is supposed foaccrueto the one who purchases expensive objects: Become a consumer. one reorient. Breaking away from the neighbors with their delicate sense of local hierarchy; people come into compart son vith others who, they sayin Ballymenone, have money like hay. What is lost is security. What i gained isthe hope that com ‘modites wil somehow balance the account “The meanings that ie inthe selection of materials are socal and economic 3s well as environmental. But the environment Sets the stakes Living wisely in a tight place, people learn the feironment. They know how to select from it the right mater Als for the ob. The prime virtue in materials is their ability to ter the climate, shaping a ite environment within which ar tare canbe forgotten and life can goon. It is a mater on cultures dfer but when people seek separation from na- ‘which al of them do in bad weather, their actions often ‘out of the pragmatic and into the aesthetic ‘One of he frst to write on Irish vernacular architecture, the ish ethnologist Ake Campbell spoke glowingly ofthe ft the thatched rsh house to the green rsh land. The house, ‘belonged ikea natural “To Campbel, to me, ancl — this s what actually matters — the people who labor to make the houses look like they do, houses are things of beauty on the landscape. But the goa their builders i not to have them melt int nature. in brilliant the house cracks oftsscttng of geen anal boven and Ellen Cutie told me how they picked the humps fom the ‘ofthe Limekiln and burs them in boiling water to ge the brightest whitewash. A widow in er seventies, Mrs whitewashed the walls regularly to hide the natural tones stones and to make her house stand proud in the environ The weather is wet, The lanes are muddy and rutted absorbs light into darkness. In Ballymenone, they ARCHITECTURAL TECHNOLOGY describe the world around them as rough and dull. Smooth and its white walls sparkling, the sun glinting ofits roof, the house is victory over conditions. Itis reasonable fr the observer in retrea from the artificial {ty of industrial environments to see something natural in ver nacular architecture. It is equally reasonable for people in daily contention with nature to seek its conquest through processes that smooth the rou into the artificial Local materials ae their resources, ther tech and brighten the dul nologies are powered by theie own muscles, but their aim is to Kreate emblems of cultural presence. The bright white house claims the land and names it human, If vernacular technologies involve local materials and the touch of the hand, their contrast is with industrial systems of production, Vernacular technology depends on direct cannec tions: direct access to materials and direct connections among supplies, producers, and consumers who simultaneously shape Tandscapes, social orders, and economic arrangements, while th circulates in the vicinity. Industrial production employs imported materials and complex machinery. It depends on ex Pansive political powers that mai fof transportation and communication, while supporting through Taw the right of ‘al “The distinction is real and important to preserve, fr it helps mall minority to amass great reserves of capi lusassure complexity in historical study. While te globe abounds With instances of the shift to industrial production, technologies based on local skills and materials continue, and they are domi: ions. Its important not to lose the distinction in our thinking. And its important not to exag: Rant in many of the world’ re BeFate its clarity: Vernacular and industrial technologies differ in Fesources and social organization, but they da not necessarily difter inthe attitude toward nature a VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE Industral production erases nature. In sheets of metal and slick plastic surfaces, there is no memory of natural origi People must get up and go outside to remember, Vacationing folks escape to the woods to forget the city, relax, to get bummed by the sun, bitten by bugs, perhaps to find something like a god in nature, Rolling up logs to build a fancy ‘camp, the city sport leaves them round and brown, They still resemble tres, each distinct inthe wall and knobby with knots, and he lets them weather tosilver to fit his notion ofthe natural A part of nature, his vacation home also alludes to history, to the log cabin that stands firmly in the American consciousness as a mythic sign of the time of the beginning, But the log cabins builder went into the woods to establish civilization, The wildemess howled around him, sublime and vast and threatening. He chopped into itbravely felling tees, hewing their faces fat, lifting them into plumb alignment, and trimming their tends lush atthe comer. Chinking the gaps between the logs with shingles or rocks, packed with clay and coated with fine lime plaster, he combined natural substances into smooth, true walls The tres of the forest were attacked, hacked, split, and made to submit to the plan in his head. They were dropped and raised wey were wrenched from the vertical to the horizontal. They ‘were flattened to realize his design in a unified agony of straight, lines that sharply marked his disjunction from nature. And then he confirmed his move to artificiality with a consolidating coat of whitewash or a cladding of elapboards. Restoraionists tend, to strip away these outer layers, kaving the house naked, vul- erable tort, and creating an image of rusticty to reinforce pre conceptions about progress. But the builder intended them from, the beginning. Whitewash and clapboarding called up memo- riesof order, of houses the cities back east, of homes across the water on the tamed landscapes of Ireland and England, and they “expressed hishope for improvement. He built to make the world better, to secure a place of control and reason within the mad- 2 ‘Dovetsiled comer-tmbering of a log house built onthe frontier. ‘Shenandoah County, Virginia, 1969 VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE ‘ness of the wilderness. A man of culture, he built a farmhouse that stood out of the woods in splendid artifice. Long before the industrial revolution, technologies had elabo- rated in the West. The towering oak was brought down and. ‘dressed into a timber, straight and square, Then the timber was joined into frame. If wood was tobe the cover, tees were sawed ‘and split into slices, regular in size and shape, that were applied in series to make floors and walls and roofs. Or, clay was dug, ‘soured ina pit, and molded into geometric units that were hard= ‘ened by fie. Then these interchangeable parts were aid by ine into walls. Traditional technologies of framing and masonry in-

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