sketch #3

vernacular architecture as inspiration

IS THE PAST PART OF THE FUTURE ?

Examples of indigenous or vernacular architecture have long intrigued me. I think it's because they represent the most fundamental way to build regionally- responsive structures that provide shelter and enhance survivability, but also because they indicate the resourcefulness of human beings and the ingenuity of builders who predate architecture as a profession.

Maybe some people will look at these examples and feel a sense of scenic romanticism, but I see building strategies employed to moderate the effects of the local climate and improve the lives of their occupants-- something for which modern architects should be envious.

As someone who grew up somewhere between the deep South and the Southwest, I was fortunate to have been exposed to vernacular architecture from an early age. Although an attorney by profession, my father was a student of history. Our summer vacations were spent traversing the country in a brown station wagon adorned with fake wood panelling, making frequent stops at just about every Historical Marker we could find along the way. Unknowingly perhaps, my father raised my awareness of indigenous architecture. While he may have been interested in the historical nature of the sites we visited, I was gradually growing fascinated by the structures themselves. First it was the thick stone walls of the Spanish missions of nearby San Antonio, and later, on a trip to Colorado, it was the cliff-sheltered Pueblo Indian ruins of Mesa Verde that captivated my imagination. Back then you could climb in and out of the masonry structures, scaling the ladders to move from floor to floor within the mud and stone structures built by people over 800 years ago... On other summer trips we headed east. I got to see a range of buildings from the shady porches on the sides of plantations in Louisiana, to a fortress along the Florida coast built from a fascinating local material called coquino, as we eventually travelled up the eastern coastline where the ubiquitous Salt Boxes of New England still stand. Buildings in the Deep South were characterized by porches facing the direction of cooling breezes, beneath wide roof overhangs that provided shade in what is an incredibly humid environment. Houses in the South tend to have a linear massing with the long sides oriented to the north and south to facilitate cross-ventilation and minimize exposure to low sun on the east and west sides. At home I grew up aware of the many examples of the classic Texas "Dog Trot" -- a low, single-story stone or log cabin with it's long axis oriented to the prevailing breezes with a single room at each end and a wide, shaded open space between them where most work was done outdoors. In the colder climate of the Northeast, traditional two story "Salt Box" houses were characterized by more compact, squarish shapes designed to limit the exposure of exterior walls. They also had little to no roof overhangs and a larger sloped roof on the windward side-- both effective strategies adopted to avoid bitterly cold winds while embracing the available sunshine. When I was in undergraduate architecture school, Post-Modernism was in full force and students were educated in the works of Robert Venturi and Charles Moore, among others. Published works from that era inevitably championed a playful adaptation of traditional architectural styles interspersed with fragments of classical antiquity, as an esoteric, academic exercise, more than as a practical response to, well, ...anything. Looking back, I now recognize that there was something in me yearning for examples of architecture that were more grounded in place and more lasting. I perused the book shelves in the vast UT architectural library, consumed at one point with a study of indigenous Afghan courtyard houses constructed from mud brick. After working as a carpenter the summer I graduated, I was determined to study these architectural examples in greater detail. I visited the Arizona State University campus, met several of the faculty there, rented a car, and drove off into the desert -- which is where all artists and madmen eventually go.... Captivated by the scenic emptiness of the Arizona landscape, I toured Paolo Soleri's mini-city, Arcosanti, then continued north to Indian Country, seeing as many of the sites as possible: National Parks by day; sleeping in my car at night. I was struck by the still-living history of this part of the Southwest, the presence of Native American communities that have been continuously occupied for over a thousand years, and the great many architectural sites that have survived for centuries in this brutal yet beautiful environment: Wupatki. Canjon de Chelly. Walnut Canyon. These were just a few. It was on this epic sojourn in a rented blue Hertz driving across Arizona that I decided to write my thesis on these indigenous architectural examples-- specifically the transition from early pueblos to cliff dwellings.

My premise was that these increasingly massive structures comprised a physical record of the transition from early pit houses, to pueblos, then to cliff dwellings, as their occupants began to better understand the benefits of high mass structures-- gradually modifying them to create more comfortable conditions in what is an undeniably severe climate. That seemed like a reasonable idea to me.

I didn't realize how difficult this decision would prove to be....