It is Time for New Vernacular Buildings

Abstract

Technological advances over the past centuries have greatly improved our quality of life. However, when we look at historical centres with their vernacular buildings, we seem to prefer them to the modern ones. According to Amos Rapoport there are three types of societies; primitive, vernacular and the modern. Each of these societies operates in such a fundamentally different way that we cannot understand their architectural differences just by comparing their looks. We need to delve into the characteristics of these societies to understand the different appearances (Rapoport, 1969). Materials could suddenly come from everywhere and building components were standardised because of mass-production (Salingaros, 2014). The buildings became more anonymous and less an expression of the place (Golden, 2012). The relationship to nature changed, modern society went from a symbiosis to a dominating role in which it exhausts nature and creates waste and toxins. Gradually, society is discovering the negative sides of this industrial efficiency. With the upswing of sustainability awareness we recognise that our ‘throwaway society’ is no longer acceptable (Chapman, 2015). We demolish recent buildings that seem to be fine and there is a growing number of vacant office buildings (Gemeente Amsterdam, 2013). At the same time there is a shortage of housing, but demand and supply do not seem to match because there is a lack of flexibility and attractiveness. To prevent future vacancy we need to focus on transforming the office areas into mixed-use urban areas instead of mono-residential areas. In redevelopment, there are many considerations what to maintain and what to demolish. How few interventions can we do to achieve this intended quality? How can we reintroduce attractive vernacular qualities in existing office buildings to transform them into attractive, vibrant, multifunctional and resilient urban areas? Through the research, I discovered three issues with modern society's approach to building, resulting in three design objectives: AESTHETICS | Creating lively, local and personal facades. FUNCTION | Making change in function and preferences possible. TECHNOLOGY | Using biodegradable materials.