Marcel Vellinga

The noble vernacular

In recent years many publications have appeared that stress the sustainable character of vernacular architecture, emphasising its ecological friendliness and appropriateness. Commonly this literature represents vernacular architecture as a more sustainable alternative, or predecessor, to conventional contemporary forms of architecture and their associations with excessive energy consumption, pollution and wasteful use of resources. This article aims to identify what may be learned from this relatively recent work in terms of the way in which it conceptualises and represents vernacular architecture. It reveals a vibrant and growing discourse that makes an important contribution to the field of vernacular architectural studies. It also shows, however, that the relative isolation of the discourse results in a number of short-comings that make our current understanding of the sustainability of vernacular traditions only a partial one. Arguing that the recent discourse replaces the complexity, plurality and dynamics of both vernacular architecture and the concept of sustainability by reductionist, essentialist and romanticist representations, the article calls for a holistic, integrated and critical approach that complements the study of the environmental qualities and performance of vernacular architecture with an examination of its social, political and economic aspects. The lessons that are to be found there are not so casually learned. Paul Oliver1

Lessons from Bernard Rudofsky: Life as a Voyage

For someone who spends much of his time researching vernacular architecture and the nature and history of the vernacular concept, the name Bernard Rudofsky is a well-known, if not illustrious one. In 1964 Rudofsky organised the exhibition Architecture Without Architects at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, at the time a strong proponent of modernist architecture. Consisting of almost two hundred black-and-white photographs of a wide range of vernacular building traditions, including Chinese pit dwellings, New Guinean tree houses, Italian hill towns and the cliff-hanging villages of the Dogon in Mali, the exhibition proved to be something of a bombshell. Indeed it proved so successful that the museum had to produce a second, condensed version, which over the next eleven years travelled simultaneously with the original to more than eighty locations around the world. Drawing attention to building traditions hitherto neglected in architectural discourse, its impact was such that, until this day, vernacular architecture is still frequently referred to as ‘architecture without architects’ by practitioners, scholars and students alike. Although it was an unanticipated success, the exhibition, and, more particularly, the catalogue of the same title that accompanied it, have always been surrounded by ambiguity and obscurity. Lessons from Bernard Rudofsky suggests that, at the time it opened, it was ‘both hailed as a timely and insightful critique of the state of modern architecture and rejected as an exasperating and unwarranted attack on an already troubled discipline.’ (p. 172) Up until this day, such mixed responses to the book can be observed, with some praising its success in drawing attention to the importance of vernacular architecture, while others criticise its romanticist and primitivist nature. At the same time, the scholar Bernard Rudofsky remains somewhat of an enigma. Often mentioned in one breath with pioneering authors like Amos Rapoport, Paul Oliver and Henry Glassie, his involvement in the development of the field of vernacular studies has really been restricted to the Architecture Without Architects exhibition and catalogue, and his later book The Prodigious Builders (which in essence is nothing more than an extended version of Architecture Without Architects). Lessons from Bernard Rudofsky: Life as a Voyage is therefore a welcome publication. It is a wellproduced book that is the result of a symposium held in April, 2005, at the Architekturzentrum Wien, on the occasion of the one-hundredth anniversary of Rudofsky’s birth. Edited by staff at the Architekturzentrum, the book comprises a small number of essays that each deal with a particular aspect of Rudofsky’s work. Rudofsky, a man who professed to have eighteen different professions that he no longer pursued, was clearly more than an architect with an interest in both modernist and vernacular architecture. He was also a fashion designer, traveller, photographer, painter, exhibition 235

Adjusting the popular image: Diversity and dynamics in Minangkabau vernacular architecture

The popular image of vernacular Minangkabau architecture that has been consciously promoted in the last 30 years or so as the symbol of Minangkabau identity, most conspicuously embodied in the royal palace of the former ruler in Pagaruyung, misleadingly suggests a uniformity in architectural design, use, and meaning that contradicts past and present reality. Both old and contemporary studies of Minangkabau architecture show that a significant amount of architectural variation, both regional and typological, has always existed in the parts of Sumatra that constitute the Minangkabau homeland. To illustrate typological variation a case study compares and contrasts houses of differing design in one particular region. The creation of the popular image of Minangkabau architecture is related to a nation-wide process of standardization and folklorization of regional cultures. One result of this process is that architectural variation has been suppressed, or at best presented as being of minor importance. Keywords: folklorization; Minangkabau vernacular architecture; popular image diversity; regional variation; typological variation

A family affair: the construction of vernacular Minangkabau houses

The construction of vernacular houses that with regard to their design, choice of building materials and function conform to traditional patterns has become a rarity among the Minangkabau in west Sumatra. Nowadays, most houses that are built are the relatively small, ‘modern’ buildings made of brick, cement, or wattle and daub that have become common in so many parts of Indonesia in the course of the twentieth century. Such small houses are better suited to the wishes and expectations of their owners and inhabitants, as they allow for more privacy and, it is believed, better comfort. Although they are arguably also part of the vernacular building tradition, the modern houses differ from the older traditional ones with respect to their design, the choice of building materials, and, in some cases, their spatial layout. Because of the popularity of these modern houses, in some areas stretching back to at least the 1920s (Tillema, 1926:91), a lot of the traditional vernacular houses are left uninhabited these days, with a significant number now in a dilapidated state. In many west Sumatran villages it is not unusual to find compounds consisting of an old and ruined traditional house, surrounded by a large number of small, modern houses; nor is it uncommon to come across villages where traditional houses are hard to find at all, and new ones have not been built for at least sixty years. However, since the early 1970s, a relatively large number of houses have been built that combine modern building materials, construction methods and facilities with older, traditional forms. These modernised traditional houses, examples of which can be found in and around towns like Payakumbuh and Bukittinggi, have sometimes been regarded as the heralds of a true ‘revival’ of the vernacular Minangkabau building tradition (Persoon, 1986:188). More commonly, however, in both scholarly and popular opinion, they are seen as imitation or fake vernacular buildings, inauthentic replicas of the supposedly ‘real’ (asli) traditional ones. Most of the houses are built by wealthy emigrants and are only occasionally used for inhabitation purposes, exemplifying the fact that, rather than as actual dwellings, the houses serve to found claims to economic and ethnic status. Apart from the use of modern, non-traditional building materials and the (occasional) presence of facilities such as bathrooms or garages, the inauthentic nature of the houses is deduced from the social and ritual context of the construction process. In particular, the active involvement of ‘in-married’ husbands, men who have married into the matrilineal descent group (urang sumando), is regarded as a break with tradition. The construction of a traditional Minangkabau house is commonly considered the responsibility of the ‘in-born’ men (ninik mamak), those born into the matrilineal descent group that owns and builds it (Waterson, 1990:240; Capistrano, 1997:26 and 83–4). Therefore, the interference of husbands with the building of the modernised traditional houses is usually regarded as a manifestation of the increased involvement of husbands

Sustainable architecture in an age of gentle apocalypse

In the summer of 2003, I was asked to act as a judge on the International Ecohouse Student Design Competition run by Oxford Brookes University and the Architectural Press. The competition had attracted over 100 entries, sent in from some 30 countries around the world. Although impressed by the new and innovative designs and technologies proposed and the sometimes stunning computer-generated images used in the presentations, I was particularly struck by the fact that only a few of the competitors had critically engaged themselves with the cultural implications of their proposals, whilst hardly any of them had tried to relate their designs to the vernacular traditions of their countries of origin. As a cultural anthropologist, I am especially interested in how social and cultural values, customs and practices are dialectically and dynamically transmitted through architecture. Here, however, were many design proposals by young architects who, although taking into account local climates and site conditions, seemed to lack any sense of the crucial importance of social or cultural context. As a result, many of the proposed buildings in fact appeared exchangeable, in the sense that it was implicitly suggested that they might well be built anywhere in the world for people of whatever cultural or ethnic background, provided the climatic and site conditions were right. On the whole, the buildings mainly seemed designed to present cutting-edge technologies to peers and colleagues rather than to try and address the needs, problems and expectations of the people who supposedly were meant to live in them in an environmentally and culturally appropriate way.

The end of cities: Erwin Anton Gutkind and the inevitability of decentralisation and dispersal

ABSTRACT During a career that spanned six decades, the architect, planner and historian Erwin Anton Gutkind consistently argued for the abandonment of the concept of the city and for the emergence of a new form of environmental organization where communities lived in settlements that did not stand in a hierarchical relationship to one another. Such an ‘expanding environment’, to be achieved through the decentralization and dispersal of settlements and people, would allow for a rejuvenation of the relationship between individuals, communities and their environment and herald the beginning of a new post-urban era in human history. To Gutkind, this new era was not only desirable but inevitable, as it aligned with contemporary understandings of the nature of an expanding universe. This article aims to provide an overview of Gutkind’s little-known work in planning on decentralization, dispersal and the end of cities. It will argue that, even though many of Gutkind’s utopian ideas concurred with those of his contemporaries, the way in which he combined them into a complex argument, drawing on his practical experiences and various disciplinary perspectives, was truly his own and remains worthy of consideration in a time of continued interest in the growth, ‘liveability’ and sustainability of cities.

A Conversation with Architects: Paul Oliver and the Anthropology of Shelter

Throughout a career that spanned nearly 45 years, Paul Oliver consistently put forward his ideas on why an anthropological approach to architecture would be beneficial to the understanding of the design, use, and meaning of buildings. This article intends to explore Oliver’s views and writings on the relationship between architecture and anthropology. It aims to provide an overview of Oliver’s oeuvre and approach, to position it in the context of other contemporaneous writings on architecture and anthropology, and to assess the influence of his work on later discourses. It will argue that, first and foremost, Oliver wrote for an architectural audience, rather than an anthropological one. Instead of wanting to engage in a direct dialogue about architecture with anthropologists, Oliver’s main intention was to increase architects’ awareness of the cultural embodiment of architecture. A better realisation of the intricate relation between architecture, society, and culture would lead not just to a better understanding of why architecture takes the form it does, but ultimately also to more culturally appropriate contemporary design. Oliver’s main aim, then, was to make architects aware of the value and usefulness of anthropology, rather than to engage in a conversation with anthropology itself. The article concludes that Oliver’s work remains as relevant to architectural discourse today as it ever was during the 45 years of his career.