The handy Penguin Dictionary of Architecture defines vernacular architecture as”buildings in indigenous styles made from locally available materials following traditional building practice and patterns.” Architecture historian Paul Oliver, who specializes in vernacular architecture, further contends that anything made by an architect is out”the compass of their vernacular.”
Nevertheless architects, beginning last century, have been inspired by vernacular architecture, regarding both form (its absence of frivolous ornamentation appealed to early modern architects wishing to depart neoclassical architecture) and sustainability (many current practitioners contend that designing with the vernacular as a direct leads to accountable green buildings).
When architects have been inspired by vernacular architecture, especially in terms of houses, the gap between the contemporary and the vernacular could be fuzzy or sharp. Typically, it results in a hybrid condition that provides modern comforts within traditional types.
What follows are examples which can be regarded as a contemporary vernacular style. They are rather varied as a group, because they relate to local conditions instead of national or international trends.
David Churchill – Architectural Photographer
In some cases preservation codes direct fresh architecture towards vernacular types. This indoor pool Southern England is an improvement to a residence that is a Grade 2 Listed Building. This designation includes the majority of the protected buildings in the UK (roughly a half million of these ) and means extensions need consent from the local planning authority. Architect Kathryn Findlay chosen for a glassy extension surrounded by a thatch roof.
David Churchill – Architectural Photographer
Glass and thatch may not seem to move together, but as can be seen in the previous photograph, the blend of this large overhanging roof and indigenous grasses beneath reduces the extent of the glass wall that’s visible. This gives the thatch roof a prominence and permits the addition , as the architect asserts,”sit [in] the surrounding countryside.”
Paradoxically, Findlay says that the roof plantings are a version of an early Japanese planting system — suitable to an architect who was able to work in that nation — pointing into the globalization of this vernacular.
David Churchill – Architectural Photographer
Inside the pool house, the thatch roof is felt in the large overhang through the glass walls, but it’s the curved ceiling which draws the attention. Look up …
David Churchill – Architectural Photographer
The peak of the roof — what looked like tall grasses in the first photograph — is actually a skylight that runs the majority of the amount of the pool. This is clearly a contemporary element in the vernacular composition.
This country retreat made by CCS Architecture is divided into two components: a major house covered in reclaimed barn wood and a barn clad with Corten steel.
The principal house, visible here, is divided into two overlapping pieces: a living building and sleeping building. Their crash is similar to a surrealistic Western city.
CCS ARCHITECTURE
A lot of the project’s vernacular appearance stems from the barn timber and the corrugated Corten steel roof. Appropriately, the architects chosen for types that work well with these substances. This view of the living building shows that exterior wall openings follow the inside spaces; instead of punched openings we see sliding doors which open the living/dining area to the outside. From inside…
CCS ARCHITECTURE
… It’s easy to see why architects cut a large opening in the outside wall: The view is amazing. Outside the building is pastoral (and rusty!) But inside it’s smooth, clean and comfy; a contemporary core to a vernacular wrapper.
Beard + Riser Architects
This house in Spring Hill, Mississippi by architects John Beard and Dale Riser — featured within my ideabook on corrugated panels echoes the rural vernacular using its cheap materials and reaction to climate, considerations that produce the powerful formal announcement, not the other way around.
Beard + Riser Architects
As can be seen on the right, the turn-down of the roof shades the inside when allowing breezes to move from low to high out the cover of the wall, cooling the inside. Corrugated fiberglass, metal, and wood prevail atop concrete slabs. Inside the substances are unadorned, unlike the powerful colors out.
Nic Darling
Moving forward to Connecticut, this house, termed”Four Gables” from the architects in workshop/apd,”looks discreet and unassuming in the road, yet somehow distinct from the other residences within this secluded private community.” Part of this gap is evident in the bottom-left corner, in which flat wood slats and a flat roof stand out slightly from the timber shingles on the gable ends.
Nic Darling
This low volume is triggered by square feet which are cut into the timber slats, some of which are actually behind the pliers. While very unique and very contemporary, the wood slats allow this bit to fit with the remainder of the undertaking, which itself has an unassuming quality with minimal decoration in the windows and the roof lines.
David Vandervort Architects
This house in Washington state has, according to architect David Vandervort,”the little scale, casual, cottage heritage of… an existing small cottage [that] had occupied the website for years and held many fond memories to the homeowners.” Informality originates from the trellises along with the dormers that radically project in the roofline.
David Vandervort Architects
Further, Vandervort tried to give the impression that the house evolved over a number of years by composing the 3,200-square-foot house from four gabled pavilions. This created a romantic outdoor space people are able to go through to move between buildings. The tree-trunk posts encouraging the trellises certainly scream vernacular, in resistance to the standing-seam roofing.
David Vandervort Architects
Indoors , beams of reclaimed wood stand out in the walls, ceiling and floors milled from windfall website trees. Both synthesize into a contemporary-vernacular open space lit overhead in the dormers.
Comparable to the four pavilions of their previous residence are these four buildings also in Washington which are actually separate residences, what Rhodes Architecture + Light call”an alternative to the’Street of Dreams’.” The form and substances — even down to the gabions in the foreground, a rather industrial structure — seem vernacular.
But the addition of sunshading trellises on some of the elevations factors to the role of the architect in producing some green buildings which respond to climate and site.
The entrance of the fireplace into the outside wall in addition to inside…
… is just another signature surely made by an architect. The open space with simple detailing is strengthened by tie rods that span the distance, an alternative to the timber beams of the former case.
Phillips Garden
This previous job consists of a couple parts attributed to Geoff Warner of Alchemy Architects, who renovated an early 20th-century bungalow in St. Paul, Minn. for him and his loved ones. First is a bit on the existing house that’s visible through the gate in the back alley. The blue paint of this second floor signals it is fresh (or reconfigured), while its design is differently in keeping with the original.
But what’s between the gate and the house?
Phillips Garden
Warner tore down the garage and built two twin garages. Their forms are simple gable boxes with siding, standing-seam roofs, and little squarish openings. But that blue paint actually enriches their newness, making them abstract layouts of vernacular architecture.
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