Making New Connections in Vernacular Architecture

Author: Paul Groth
Year: 1999 (Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 58(3))
Source type: article (review/essay)
Raw file: raw/articles/groth-1999-making-new-connections-vernacular.md

Summary

A review essay tracing the transformation of vernacular architecture studies from a marginal, "folkloristic" interest in preindustrial/ethnic building to a rich interdisciplinary field centered on the "everyday landscape" of the modern city and suburb. Introducing Dell Upton's definition — "vernacular building is ordinary building" — Groth surveys a range of work connecting vernacular to high-style architecture, urban and rural building, larger contexts, and people, and advocates for the study of the ordinary built environment.

Key Claims

• Vernacular as ordinary building: Upton's "most succinct" definition — "vernacular building is ordinary building" — "slices away" the old association of vernacular solely with "low-caste, low-income, or traditional groups." Upton and Vlach add "communally sanctioned" qualities and "intensity of social representation." Vernacular architecture "assumes an interest in the meanings of the everyday lives of ordinary people" and "can and does include professionally designed buildings."
• From marginal to central: previously a visit into the "Realm of the Diamond Queen" (Anna Tsing) at the edges of the discipline; today the study of ordinary buildings contributes to connections with the center of architectural history.
• High-style and vernacular together: "it is increasingly easy to see the ordinary and the official as parts of the same cultural landscape" (e.g. Banham's Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies; King's The Bungalow linking building image to "footprints of economic imperialism").
• The ordinary and its methods: Groth's own Living Downtown uses social-history/random-sampling methods; "for social analysis, facades proved not very useful, while interior details such as plumbing ratios ... proved to be highly important."
• Urban and rural, people and buildings: links farm to city (Jackson, Lanier & Herman, Warner's Streetcar Suburbs); puts people into place (Borchert's Alley Life in Washington, Williams's interviewing, Glassie's structuralism of folk housing); connects buildings to class, economy, ecology, and everyday life.
• Interdisciplinarity: "the study of vernacular architecture is highly interdisciplinary"; the field's "edges now have ... connections across heavily traveled bridges into the realms of nearby disciplines."

Connections

Concepts: Everyday Architecture · Flat Ontology · Authorship · Consumerism
Authors: Paul Groth
Debates: Genius vs. Bureaucracy
Related source notes: The 'Bread & Butter' of Architecture (Agarez & Mota) · What the Files Reveal (Boucsein)

Direct Quotes

"[V]ernacular building is ordinary building." (Dell Upton, as quoted)

"[A]ttention to vernacular architecture often assumes an interest in the meanings of the everyday lives of ordinary people."

"[I]t is increasingly easy to see the ordinary and the official as parts of the same cultural landscape."

"[T]he study of vernacular architecture is highly interdisciplinary."

Open Questions

• Does the shift to "ordinary building" (Upton/Groth) dissolve the distinction Groth himself relies on (vernacular vs. high-style), or is a (flat-ontological) refusal of the split precisely the point?