« Invitation to Vernacular Architecture: A Guide to the Study of Ordinary Buildings and Landscapes is a manual for exploring and interpreting vernacular architecture, the common buildings of particular regions and time periods. Thomas Carter and Elizabeth Collins Cromley provide a comprehensive introduction to the field. » « Rich with illustrations and written in a clear and jargon-free style, Invitation to Vernacular Architecture is an ideal text for courses in architecture, material culture studies, historic preservation, American studies, and history, and a useful guide for anyone interested in the built environment. »--

Vernacular architecture in general and earthen architecture in particular, with their rich variety of forms worldwide, are custodians of the material culture and identity of the peoples who built them. In addition, they are widely recognized as ancestral examples of sustainability in all their variants and interpretations, and the architecture of the present ought to learn from these when designing the sustainable architecture of the future. The conservation of these architectures – seemingly simple yet full of wisdom – is to be undertaken now given their intrinsic value and their status as genuine examples of sustainability to be learnt from and interpreted in contemporary architecture. Vernacular and earthen architecture: Conservation and Sustainability will be a valuable source of information for academics and professionals in the fields of Environmental Science, Civil Engineering, Construction and Building Engineering and Architecture.

Vernacular Architecture in the Pre-Columbian Americas reveals the dynamism of the ancient past, where social relations and long-term history were created posthole by posthole, brick by brick. This collection shifts attention away from the elite and monumental architectural traditions of the region to instead investigate the creativity, subtlety and variability of common architecture and the people who built and dwelled in them. At the heart of this study of vernacular architecture is an emphasis on ordinary people and their built environments, and how these everyday spaces were pivotal in the making and meaning of social and cultural dynamics. Providing a deeper and more nuanced temporal perspective of common buildings in the Americas, the editors have deftly framed a study that highlights sociocultural diversity while at the same time facilitating broader comparative conversations around the theme of vernacular architecture. With diverse case studies covering a broad range of periods and regions, Vernacular Architecture in the Pre-Columbian Americas is an important addition to the growing body of scholarship on the indigenous architecture of the Americas and is a key contribution to our archaeological understandings of past built environments.

Using narratives of experiences with God as source material, Dyrness sets out to discover the framework, both explicit as well as implicit, that guides the lives of five different lay communities around the world.

Architecture, Islam, and Identity in West Africa shows you the relationship between architecture and Islamic identity in West Africa. The book looks broadly across Muslim West Africa and takes an in-depth study of the village of Larabanga, a small Muslim community in Northern Ghana, to help you see how the built environment encodes cultural history through form, material, and space, creating an architectural narrative that outlines the contours of this distinctive Muslim identity. Apotsos explores how modern technology, heritage, and tourism have increasingly affected the contemporary architectural character of this community, revealing the village’s current state of social, cultural, and spiritual flux. More than 60 black and white images illustrate how architectural components within this setting express the distinctive narratives, value systems, and realities that make up the unique composition of this Afro-Islamic community.

The Routledge Companion to Contemporary Architectural History offers a comprehensive and up-to-date knowledge report on recent developments in architectural production and research. Divided into three parts – Practices, Interrogations, and Innovations – this book charts diversity, criticality, and creativity in architectural interventions to meet challenges and enact changes in different parts of the world through featured exemplars and fresh theoretical orientations. The collection features 29 chapters written by leading architectural scholars and highlights the reciprocity between the historical and the contemporary, research and practice, and disciplinary and professional knowledge. Providing an essential map for navigating the complex currents of contemporary architecture, the Companion will interest students, academics, and practitioners who wish to bolster their understanding of built environments.

Architectures: Modernism and After surveys the history of the building from the advent of industrialization to the cultural imperatives of the present moment. Brings together international art and architectural historians to consider a range of topics that have influenced the shape, profile, and aesthetics of the built environment. Presents crucial "moments" in the history of the field when the architecture of the past is made to respond to new and changing cultural circumstances. Provides a view of architectural history as a part of a continuing dialogue between aesthetic criteria and social and cultural imperatives. Part of the New Interventions in Art History Series, which is published in conjunction with the Association of Art Historians.

Originally published in 1990, as part of the Ethnoscapes: Current Challenges in the Environmental Social Sciences series, reissued now with a new series introduction, Vernacular Architecture: Paradigms of Environmental Response was not meant to be collection to represent one view or approach. The only unifying element among the essays is the subject matter. It is clear that there are not only disagreements over the interpretation of objective facts, but more essentially there is a fundamental difference in the pursuit of scientific knowledge. However, regardless of these differences, if the present volume as an attempt to create a theoretical construct called into question the ideographic approaches which do not penetrate the surface, which persistently deal with formal qualities, and which are content with only simple deterministic relations, then it satisfies the major criterion that this collection of essays set for itself, namely to broaden the scope of discussion.

In her research Yulia Nurliani Lukito analyses modernity and the construction of culture by the authorities using the images of Indonesian vernacular architecture presented at three different sites and times. She argues that modernity is not solely constructed by the authorities, rather it is an ongoing process modified by visitors of exhibitions. Pasar Gambir was a laboratory of modernity for the colony, and an important stage in modernizing and negotiating cultural and social conditions in the colony. The Dutch Pavilion at the 1931 colonial exhibition became a moment when the Indies heritages played a role in marking colonial territory. Modern ethnographic park of Taman Mini gives a way to the making of an official ‘authentic’ culture and suppresses the previous Dutch construction of the Indies culture.