Thinking re-vernacular building

Design Issues

Volumn 21, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 32-40

  Mitcham, Carl ^a  

^a NONE

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DESIGN;

EID: 21644448444     PISSN: 07479360     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/0747936053103039     Document Type: Review

References (20)

1. Christopher Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), xv, 552.
2. A major attempt to think the unconscious principles of good vernacular design, this is the first of a three-volume series that was published in reverse order. The other two volumes: A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977); and
3. The Oregon Experiment (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975).
4. Roger Scruton in The Classical Vernacular: Architectural Principles in an Age of Nihilims (New York St. Martin's Press, 1994) nevertheless finds Alexander's project excessively rationalist.
5. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), xx, 350. This is remarkable in its slighting of architecture.
6. Stewart Brand, How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built (New York: Viking, 1994), viii, 243. This explains how buildings tend to become vernacular even when they were not supposed to be.
7. Martin Heidegger, "Bauen Wohnen Denken" in Vorträge und Aufsätze vol. II (Pfullingen: Neske, 1967), 19-36. (Vorträge und Aufsätze appeared originally as one volume in 1954; the three-volume edition of 1967 is labeled the 3rd edition.) English translation:
8. "Building Dwelling Thinking" in Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), 150-170;
9. which is reprinted in Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings, David Farrell Krell, ed. (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), 323-339.
10. Ivan Illich, "Dwelling" in In the Mirror of the Past: Lectures and Addresses, 1978-1990 (New York: Marion Boyars, 1992), 55-64. Also important: Illich's Gender (New York: Pantheon, 1982), which was first titled Vernacular Gender.
11. Ken Kern, The Owner-Built Home (New York: Scribners, 1975, new rev. ed.), x, 374. This is the single most influential "how-to-think-it" do-it-yourself book.
12. Bernard Rudofsky, Architecture without Architects: A Short Introduction to Non-Pedigreed Architecture (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1964), 158. This is a catalog of a photography exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in the mid-1960s. For follow-up, see
13. Rudofsky's The Prodigious Builders: Notes toward a Natural History of Architecture with Special Regard to Those Species that Are Traditionally Neglected or Downright Ignored (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977).
14. David Seamon, ed., Dwelling, Seeing, and Designing: Toward a Phenomenological Ecology (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1993), xviii, 363. Fourteen papers, many of which strongly reflect the influence of Heidegger and Alexander.
15. See also Seamon and Robert Mugerauer, eds., Dwelling, Place, and Environment: Toward a Phenomenology of Person and World (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985).
16. Jesse S. Tatum, Energy Possibilities: Rethinking Alternatives and the Choice-Making Process (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1995), xiii, 159.
17. John F. C. Turner, Housing By People: Towards Autonomy in Building Environments (New York: Pantheon, 1977), xxxvii, 169. This is a manifesto for turning over public housing to the people who live there.
18. Shelter (Bolinas, CA: Shelter Publications, 1973). This is an anonymous, hippie-heritage collection on alternative shelters; from caves, huts, and tents to barns and domes.
19. Gary Snyder, "Reinhabitation" in A Place in Space: New and Selected Prose (Washington, DC: Counterpoint, 1995), 183-191. This was derived from a talk given at the Reinhabitation Conference, August 1976. It was first included in
20. Snyder's The Old Ways (San Francisco: City Lights, 1977), 57-66.