Sustainable design requires that design practitioners respond to a particular set of social, cultural and environmental conditions. "Vernacular Architecture and Regional Design" defines a set of strategies for understanding the complexities of a regional setting. Through a series of international case studies, it examines how architects and designers have applied a variety of tactics to achieve culturally and environmentally appropriate design solutions.
This work: shows that architecture and design are inextricably linked to social and environmental processes, and are not just technical or aesthetic exercises; articulates a variety of methods to realise goals of socially responsible and environmentally responsive design; and, calls for a principled approach to design in an effort to preserve fragile environments and forge sustainable best practice.
"Vernacular Architecture and Regional Design" will appeal to educators and professional practitioners in the fields of architecture, heritage conservation and urban design.
Dr. Kingston Wm. Heath is Professor and Director of the Historic Preservation Program at the University of Oregon.Previously he was Professor of Architecture at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte where he taught seminars on vernacular architecture and regional design theory. He holds graduate degrees from the University of Chicago and Brown University. In addition to numerous articles in scholarly journals, he is the author of "Patina of Place", and winner of the Abbott Lowell Cummings Award from The Vernacular Architecture Forum for excellence in a scholarly work. He has earned an international reputation in the field of vernacular architecture and has directed field schools in Italy and Croatia.
A series of international case studies demonstrates the place of vernacular architecture in the design process for a wide selection of contemporary architects' work. This work offers a clear analysis of the vernacular building tradition, placing architecture in its social context. It introduces a new, socially and environmentally inspired approach to sustainable design.
Section One Exploring the Nature of Place
- An interpretive model for assessing regional identity amidst change
- Architecture as cultural production
Section Two From Regional Theory to a Situated Regional Response
- Introduction
- Finding patterns within the local building culture, and preserving the continuity of tradition through participatory housing
and community develoment
- Facing the challenge of a framework approach
- Rewriting history through architecture
- Embracing the urban contradictions of a border zone
- Overpainting sprawl as a sustainable landscape
- A poverty of resources/a richness of expression
- Celebrating and safeguarding the environment through residential design
- Architecture of response rather than imposition