vernacular architecture in modern era

To take vernacular architecture purely as it is and built vernacular architecture in this contemporary modern era, there are a few aspects that will no longer allow vernacular architecture to be fitted into the modern sustainable design.

The changing world

From the start of 21st century, the changing economy and globalization lead to the major challenge to house billions of people (Moos, 2010) in the same planet as it was before in the era of vernacular architecture. The need for a building to accommodate people in a city with lesser space resulting in high-rise buildings as the only method to cope. As Kengo Kuma describes ‘High rise buildings, to me they are symbols of the 20th century where people needed to expand cities.’ (Great Big Story, 2019) In this case instant and high capacities form of a dwelling is needed. Of course, this led to the loss of humility and sustainability but in reality cities are solely trying to manage.

However, vernacular architecture’s typical characteristics are small, keeping its geographical surrounding, tradition and culture (Senosiain, 2003) will no longer able to hold the current demand for housing. Depending on the region and specific site’s need, vernacular architectures simply no longer appropriate and relevant to the current fashion demand. For example, as widely recognized, vernacular architecture’s eccentricity that relates closely to sustainability with its use of locally sourced material.

Without a doubt, vernacular architecture are sustainable and humble as it not only has a low embodied carbon, it also includes a sense of local community and cultural heritage. In reality, the economy has changes, the availability of those materials may no longer accessible and plentiful as it was before (Mileto, 2014). Take timber in instance, there’s simply fewer trees or source of material that are available or as cheap as it was before in certain places, where the source of material might be replaced for agriculture purposes. Even if there are obtainable resources, they’ve commonly become too expensive to use (Asquith, 2006).

Technological bias

Not to be completely ignorant towards certain aspects that were mentioned before in this essay, but to be completely unbiased towards the reality of vernacular architecture in the 21st Century, might not all sustainable. For centuries, builders or architects who built and design dwelling for human have always been learning from their previous ancestors. The same thing in the contemporary architecture, where it can be said that modernism did not work in terms of sustainability and humility designs (Senosiain, 2003, Curtis, 1996, & Gehl, 2013). Therefore, architects learn to solve the problem and learn from their mistakes. The learning outcome from previous mistakes allows human to continue to develop towards a better living standard. In vernacular architecture, their standard of living only fits their certain era.

Most vernacular architectures that are still in use as dwellings or houses, which are usually found in developing countries, do not meet the modern health and safety, air quality or hygiene standard (Anderson, 2005). It might be still suitable to be called a sustainable dwelling in terms of its building’s performance, but does it what modern society and community want?

The building performance stereotypes of vernacular architecture are most of the time misleading and misinterpreted (Asquith, 2006 & Mileto, 2014). The studies and experiments of vernacular architecture often focus solely on the technological, environmental and its performance on the provided environmental condition. Which indeed lead to inhabitants to live comfortably and sustainably (Mileto, 2014) but another aspect of sustainability such as recent social and economic culture is not very easy to experiment on and to be classified as sustainable especially in the changing world. People’s trend and an image of a ‘successful’ life is most of the time modern and new, which an aspect that usually leads to the loss of local heritage and culture but humans and the modern community’s need it might not be vernacular architecture.

Maybe there are better options

Sustainability is not merely a new trend, for years architects and designers have realized the impact of climate change and the importance to change and improve our unsustainable lifestyle. As mentioned modern, buildings were built in the era where they were cheap and plenty of fossil fuel as energy resources and rely heavily on it but now it all need a change. Buildings need to be more sensitive of their impact towards environment in every stage of the design process, and in the 21st century many architects and designers that understand and applies sustainability and humility into their architectural projects.