Course Syllabus

Vernacular_25.docx

GSAPP, Architecture

Columbia University

A4866

Fall 2025

Tuesday, 11–1

409 Avery Hall

Mary McLeod

 

Modernism and the Vernacular 1900–Present

Regionalism, Tradition, Identity, and Resistance

 

“The true basis for any serious study of the art of Architecture till lies in those indigenous, more humble buildings everywhere that art to architecture what folklore is to literature and folk song to music and which academic architects were seldom concerned. . . . These many folk structures are of the soil, natural.  Though often slight, their virtue is intimately related to the environment and to the heart-life of the people.  Functions are usually truthfully conceived and rendered invariably with natural feeling.  Results are often beautiful and always instructive.”

                                                                        —Frank Lloyd Wright, 1910 (Wasmuth Portfolio)

 

“Architecture is the result of the state of mind of its time. We are facing an event in contemporary thought: an international event, which we didn’t realize ten years ago; the techniques, the problems raised, like the scientific means to solve them, are universal. Nevertheless, there will be no confusion of regions: for climatic, geographic, topographical conditions, the currents of race and thousands of things still today unknown, will always guide solutions toward forms conditioned by them.”

                                                                        —Le Corbusier, Precis, 1930

 

“Stories of origin are far more telling of their time of telling than of the time they claim to tell.”

                                                                        —Robin Evans

 

This class explores the intersections between modern architecture and what is sometimes called  “vernacular” building from the early twentieth century to the present.  Broadly speaking, “vernacular architecture” refers to “the buildings of and by the people” (Paul Oliver, 2006)—that, is buildings in which architects or design professions were not involved.  Other adjectives that have been used to describe buildings erected by non-architects (though often with considerable qualification) are “indigenous,” “spontaneous,” “anonymous,” “informal,” “folk,” “popular,” “rural,” and “primitive.” This interest in vernacular forms also relates directly to concerns for “tradition” and “regionalism,” which modern architects have either embraced or dismissed with seemingly equal fervor.

 

The working hypothesis of the seminar is that modern architecture, despite its commitment to technology and modernization, was deeply involved with ideas about vernacular buildings, and that the nature and meaning of this fascination with indigenous structures changed in the course of the century.   In other words, the vernacular was a constituent part of modern architecture, and modernism more generally.  In the early twentieth century, architects such as Le Corbusier and Adolf Loos saw these “non-designed” buildings as models of functionalism and aesthetic simplicity: both traditional residences and industrial buildings represented a kind of “truth value” in contrast to the artifice and eclecticism of nineteenth-century academic architecture.  The interest in traditional domestic architecture gained even greater force during the Depression and political crises of the 1930s, when many saw rural and non-Western cultures as an alternative to and critique of European and North American materialism and technological modernization.  After World War II, the interest in indigenous buildings became even more widespread among Western architects and the general public, resulting in a series of books and exhibitions, which culminated in the 1960s with the publication of Bernard Rudofsky’s Architecture without Architects (1964) and Paul Oliver’s Shelter and Society (1969).  Shortly thereafter, however, an appreciation of what is sometimes called the “commercial vernacular” emerged, especially in the United States, spurred by the publication of Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour’s Learning from Las Vegas(1972).  The rise of postmodern architecture in the 1970s and 1980s also brought a new interest in regionalism and tradition, leading many architects to consider other qualities besides functionalism and volumetric simplicity in vernacular buildings, such as ornament and decoration, materials and craft techniques, and urban configurations.  In non-western and postcolonial societies, an interest in regionalism and tradition also led to a rediscovery and renewed appreciation of indigenous architecture, though often taking on a different meaning than it did in Europe and North America:  it became a symbol of both cultural identity and resistance.  In some cases, it also represented a more realistic way to build, one that was less expensive, that employed readily available materials, and that relied on local labor and existing construction practices.  The concluding section of the class will be devoted to the work of some contemporary architects working outside of Europe and North America, such as that Amateur Architecture Studio (Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu), Francis Kéré, and Marina Tabassum; these architects often use and adapt vernacular forms, materials, and building techniques while exploring distinctly modern approaches to design and construction.

 

The objective of this course is to examine these diverse interpretations and uses of the vernacular and to examine critically their role in modern architecture, whether as inspiration, validation, or critique.  To what extent are concepts of vernacular architecture the constructions of European and North American modernists?  What do their notions of the vernacular include and exclude?  How do they intersect with issues of race and class?  How is the use of vernacular forms by architects practicing in postcolonial societies similar or different from those used by European or North American architects?  Like notions of modern architecture itself, ideas about the role and value of vernacular buildings have changed significantly over the course of the twentieth century, and it will be important in this seminar to explore those changes, and how they are related to different historical and geographical contexts.

 

Guest lectures:  In the course of the semester there will also be two or three guest speakers who will discuss some of the topics in the class.  Students will be expected to submit questions for these speakers before their presentations and to actively participate in discussion after the talks. 

 

Class structure and requirements:  This seminar has two major components: (1) close readings and discussion of seminal texts raising issues relevant to vernacular architecture and its influence on modern architecture and (2) student presentations of design work that was inspired or in response to vernacular buildings or of seminal exhibitions or books.  The topics covered each week will depend in part on students’ research interests.  Besides leading the discussion of one reading, students are expected to make three presentations in the course of the semester: the first dealing with the period before 1950, the second concerning the period from 1950 to 1970, and the third with architecture and theory since 1970s.  In addition, students are required to write a research paper of approximately thirteen to fifteen pages, due at the end of the semester.  The paper topics can either be drawn from the subjects below or can be chosen by the student in consultation with the professor.  Students should select their paper topic by October 14 and meet with Mary McLeod at least once in the course of the semester to discuss it.  To receive distribution credit for “South/East” the topic that discusses work outside of Europe and North America (though it can be comparative or cross-cultural).   A preliminary synopsis and annotated bibliography should be submitted before October 20.  The final paper is due December 12.

 

Grading:

Participation and Attendance..........................................................................................15%

Class Presentations.........................................................................................................35%

Research Paper Proposal and Annotated Bibliography..................................................15%

Research Paper...............................................................................................................35%

 

Readings: The topics and readings for the different sections will vary somewhat, depending on student presentations, although some readings will be required each week.  Students should try to do the first week’s readings prior to the first class.  Most shorter readings (less than 40 pages) will be posted on Canvas (Courseworks 2), and assigned books will be placed on the seminar shelf in Avery.  Books marked with an * have been ordered for purchase at Book Culture at 112th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam.  However, cheaper copies of these books, as well as books that are out-of-print, can often be found online.  Besides sites such as Amazon and Abebooks, students may want to look at Bookfinder for used books.

 

 

 

Week 1.  Introduction: Theories of vernacular and early examples of “rediscovery”

 

Note:  If you have never read, Edward Said’s book Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1978; 25th anniversary edition, 2003), I would encourage you to read at least the introduction and the new preface to the 25th anniversary edition.

 

89. B. Jackson, “Vernacular,” Discovering the Vernacular Landscape (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), pp. 83–89. I also recommend, if you haven’t read it, his essay “The Word Itself,” although it is not directly related to the course, pp. 1–8.  Paul Oliver, Shelter and Society (New York: Praeger, 1969), part 1, pp. 7–29.

 

Alan Colquhoun, “The Concept of Regionalism,” in Postcolonial Space (s) (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1997), pp. 13–23; reprinted as “Regionalism 1,” in Colquhoun, Collected Essays in Architectural Criticism (London: Black Dog, 2009), pp. 280–86; also see  “Regionalism 2,” pp. 287–91.

 

Sibyl Moholy-Nagy, “Environment and Anonymous Architecture,” Perspecta 3 (1955), pp. 3–8.

 

Adrian Forty, “The Primitive: The Word and Concept,” in Jo Odgers, Flora Samuel and Adam Sharr, eds., Primitive—Original Matters in Architecture (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 3–14.

 

Mark Crinson, “Dynamic Vernacular—An Introduction,” ABE Journal, no. 9/10 (2016).

https://journals.openedition.org/abe/3002 

 

Recommended:

Nazar AlSayyad, “From Vernacularism to Globalism: The Temporal Reality of Traditional Settlements,” Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review 7, no. 1 (1995): 13–24.

 

Paul Oliver, Built to Meet Needs: Cultural Issues in Vernacular Architecture (Amsterdam: Elsevier / Oxford: Architectural Press, 2006), esp. 3–16, 27–43.

 

Simon Richards, “‘Vernacular’ Accommodations: Wordplay in Contemporary-Traditional Architecture Theory,” ARQ 16, no. 1 (March 2012): 37–48.

 

E[rnst] H[ans] Gombrich, The Preference for the Primitive (London: Phaidon Press, 2002).

 

Marc Treib, “The Measure of Wisdom: John Brinckerhoff Jackson,” JSAH 55, no. 4 (December 1996): 380–49; available on jstor and reprinted in Marc Treib, Settings and Stray Paths: Writings on Landscapes and Gardens (London: Routledge) , pp. 184–93.

 

 

Weeks 2 and 3.  Early twentieth-century explorations

 

1. Adolf Loos, Villa Karma (1903–06), Villa Khuner (1930)

 

1. Schultze-Naumberg, Tessenow, Muthesius, Hellerau, Heimat

 

1. Werkbund and industrial vernacular

 

1. Le Corbusier, Voyage d’orient (1912, 1966)

 

1. Le Corbusier, Une Maison - Un Palais (1928), Précisions (1930)

 

Adolf Loos, “Architecture” (1910), “Vernacular Art” (Heimatkunst, 1914), trans. Wilfried Wang, in The Architecture of Adolf Loos, Yahuda Safron, Wilfried Wang, and Mildred Bundy (London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1985), pp. 104–09; 110–13. 

 

*Adolf Loos, “Rules for Building in the Mountains” (1913), in Adolf Loos, On Architecture, ed. Adolf and Daniel Opel, trans. Michael Mitchell (Riverside, Calif.: Ariadne Press, 2002), 122–23.  This collection also includes “Architecture,” pp. 73–85 and “Heimatkunst,” pp. 110–18.

 

Heinrich Tessenow, “Housebuilding and Such Things,” (1916), in On Rigor, Richard Burdett and Wilfried Wang, eds. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990), pp. 9–33.  See also the introduction by Walter Jessen, pp. 6–8.

 

*Maiken Umbach, “The Deutscher Werkbund, Globalization, and the Invention of Modern Vernaculars,” in Vernacular Modernism: Heimat, Globalization, and the Built Environment, ed. Maiken Umbach and Bernd Hüppauf (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2005), pp. 114–40.

 

Kenny Cupers, “The Invention of Indigenous Architecture,” in Race and Modern Architecture, ed. Irene Cheng, Charles L. Davis, and Mabel O. Wilson (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020), pp. 187–99.

 

*Le Corbusier, Journey to the East, ed. and trans. Ivan Zaknic with Nicole Pertirist (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987).  Owing to copyright restrictions, the whole text is not on courseworks, a copy is on the seminar shelf and the book has been ordered for purchase at Book Culture.  Students are encouraged to read the whole book but should be sure to read the chapter “The Stamboul Disaster.”

 

Le Corbusier, “American Prologue,” in Precisions: On the Present State of Architecture and City Planning, trans. Edith S. Aujame (Cambridge, Mass. MIT Press, 1991), pp. 1–21.

 

*Francesco Passanti, “The Vernacular, Modernism, and Le Corbusier,” JSAH 56, no. 4 (December 1997): 438–51; available jstor and reprinted in Maiken Umbach and Bernd-Rüdiger Hüppaul, Vernacular Modernism: Heimat, Globalization and the Built Environment (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2005), chap. 5, pp. 141–56.

 

Recommended:

Kai Gutschow, “The Anti-Mediterranean in the Literature of Modern Architecture: Paul Schultze-Naumburg’s Kulturabeiten,” in Modern Architecture and the Mediterranean: Vernacular Dialogues, ed. Jean-François Lejeune and Michelangelo Sabatini (London: Routledge, 2012), pp. 148-73. 

 

_____, “Schultze-Naumberg’s Heimat: A Nationalist Conflict of Tradition and Modernity,” in Traditional Dwellings and Settlements: Working Papers 36, no. 1 (1992): 1–36.

 

Le Corbusier, Une Maison - Un Palais (Paris: Crès, 1928; Paris: Connivences, 1989).  Even for those who did not read French, you might want to look at the illustrations, esp. pp. 45 and 49.

 

Jacobé Huet, “Prospective and Retrospective: Le Corbusier’s Twofold Voyage d’Orient,” (Leiden, Koninklijke Brill, 2021).

 

 

Weeks 4 and 5.  The 1930s and the rediscovery of the vernacular

 

1. Le Corbusier: 5 Houses, Ghardaia; Perriand, folklore (Georges-Henri Rivière)

 

1. Pagano and Daniel, Architettura rurale, 1936

 

1. Taut, The Japanese House, Perriand, Japan (40s)

 

1. Eldem, The Turkish House (Esra Akcan)

 

1. Breuer, Gropius, Raymond, and American wood construction (Elizabeth Mock, Built in the U.S.A., talk by Barry Bergdoll)

 

Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, Oeuvre complète de 1929–1934, ed. Willy Boesiger (Zurich: Éditions d’Architecture, 1964), pp. 48–52, 58–62 (sections on the Maison de Errazuris and Villa de Mandrot)

 

_____, Oeuvre complète 1934–1938, ed. Max Bill (Zurich: Éditions d’Architecture, 1964), pp. 124–32, 134–39 (sections on Maison de week-end, “Ma maison,” and Maison aux Mathes).

 

Guiseppe Pagano, “Documenting Rural Architecture,” trans. Michelangelo Sabatino, Journal of Architectural Education(JAE) 63, no. 2 (March 29, 2010): 92–98.

 

*Michelangelo Sabatino, “Engineering versus Architecture: The Vernacular between New Objectivity and Lyricism,” Pride in Modesty:  Modernist Architecture and the Vernacular Tradition in Italy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010), chap. 4, pp. 128–64.

 

Yasushi Zenno, “Fortuitous Encounters: Charlotte Perriand in Japan, 1940–41,” in Charlotte Perriand: An Art of Living, ed. Mary McLeod (New York: Abrams, 2003), pp. 90–113.

 

Charlotte Perriand, “L’Habitation familiale: Son Développement économique et social, L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, yr. 6, ser.5, no. 1 (January 1935), 25.  See also the photographs of vernacular houses after her essay as well as contemporary designs by Marcel Breuer, Hans Scharoun, and Pol Abraham and Jacques Le Même.  Perriand’s essay is translated by John Goodman, as “The Family Dwelling,” 1935, in Charlotte Perriand: An Art of Living, pp. 255–57.

 

Marcel Breuer, “Wo Stehen Wir?”, translated as “Where Do We Stand?”, The Architectural Review 77, no. 461 (April 1935): 133–36, in Marcel Breuer: Buildings and Projects, 1921–1961, ed. Cranston Jones (New York: Praeger, 1962) and Form and Function: A Source Book for the History of Architecture and Design 1890–1939, ed. Tim and Charlotte Benton with Dennis Sharp (London: Crosby Lockwood Staples with The Open University Press, 1975), pp. 178–83.

 

Barry Bergdoll, “Encountering America: Marcel Breuer and the Discourses of the Vernacular from Budapest to Boston” in Marcel Breuer: Design and Architecture, ed. Alexander van Vegesack and Mathias Renmmele (Vitra Design Museum, 2003), pp. 260–307.

 

Kevin Murphy, “The Vernacular Moment,” JSAH 70, no. 3 (September 2011): 308–29.

 

Esra Akcan, “A Journey to the West,” and “The Birth of the ‘Modern Turkish House,’” in Architecture in Translation: Germany, Turkey, and the Modern House (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2012), pp. 119–43.

 

89. M. Richards, “The Condition of Architecture and the Principle of Anonymity,” Circle: International Survey of Constructive Art, ed. J. L. Martin, Ben Nicholson, and N. Gabo (London: Faber & Faber, 1937, rpt. New York: Praeger, 1971), pp. 184–89.

 

Recommended:

Bruno Taut, Houses and People of Japan (Tokyo: Sanseido, 1937; 2nd ed., 1958), esp. chap. 5.

 

Paolo Scrivano and Marco Capitano, “West of Japan/East of Europe: Translating Architectural Legacies and the Case of Bruno Taut’s Hyuga Villa,” Built Heritage, no. 2 (2018): 50–61. https://built-heritage.springeropen.com/track/pdf/10.1186/BF03545693.pdf

 

Brian L. McLaren, “The Italian Colonial Appropriation of Indigenous North African Architecture in the 1930s,” Muqarnas 19 (2002): 164–92.

 

Thordis Arrhenius, “The Vernacular on Display: Skansen Open-Air Museum in 1930s Stockholm,” Swedish Modernism: Architecture, Consumption and the Welfare State, ed. Helena Mattsson and Sven-Olov Wallenstein (London: Black Dog, 2010), pp. 134–49.

 

 

Weeks 6 and 7.  The 1940s (lecture Mara Eskinazi)

 

1. The war and scarcity: Refugee housing (Le Corbusier, Les Murondins)

 

1. Bay Area style: Mumford, H.H. Harris, William Wurster

 

1. Hassan Fathy, New Gourna

 

1. Costa and Brazilian colonial architecture

 

1. Englishness, the pub, Architectural Review

 

Lewis Mumford, “Status Quo (The Bay Regional Style),” New Yorker 23 (October 11, 1947); reprinted in Architectural Regionalism: Collected Writings on Place, Identity, Modernity, and Tradition, ed. Vincent B. Canizaro (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007), pp. 288–91.

 

Harwell Hamilton Harris, “Regionalism and Nationalism in Architecture” (1954), in Harwell Hamilton Harris: A Collection of His Writings and Buildings (Raleigh: University of North Carolina Press, 1965), pp. 25–33; reprinted in Canizaro, Architectural Regionalism, pp. 57–64

 

Fernando Diniz Moreira, “Lucio Costa: Tradition in the Architecture of Modern Brazil,” National Identities 8, no.3, Space, Time, Identity (2006): 259–75

Lucio Costa, “Necessary Documentation, trans. Marta Caldiera of “Documentação Necessária,” Revista do Serviço do Patrimônio Histórico e Artistico Nacional, 1937, trans. Marta Caldiera, in Future Anterior 6, no. 2 (Winter 2009): 49–58.

 

Lauro Cavalcanti, “The Role of Modernists in the Establishment of Brazilian Cultural Heritage,” trans. Marta Caldiera, in Future Anterior 6, no. 2 (Winter 2009): 15–31.

 

Hassan Fathy, Architecture for the Poor: An Experiment in Rural Egypt (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973).

 

“Inside the Pub,” Architectural Review 106, no. 634 (October 1949); see also the pub competition the following year that the magazine sponsored.

 

 

Recommended:

James Steele, An Architecture for People: The Complete Works of Hassan Fathy (New York: Whitney Library of Design; London: Thames and Hudson, 1997), pp. 60–89.

 

Marc Treib, An Everyday Modernism: The Houses of William Wurster (San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995).

 

Jessica Kelly, “Vulgar Modernism: J. M. Richards, Modernism, and the Vernacular in British Architecture,” Architectural History 58 (2015): 229–59.

 

Lewis Mumford, “The Regionalism of Richardson,” in The South in Architecture, The Darcy Lectures, Alabama College (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1941), pp. 79–110.

 

 

Weeks 8 and 9.  The 1950s

 

1. Scandinavian modernism/New Empiricism/Aalto

 

1. Cullen, de Wolfe, Townscape

 

1. Neo-realism, Tiburtino

 

1. Spontaneous architecture (Triennale, 1951), rediscovery of Italian Hill towns, Bastide towns

 

1. Ecochard, ATBAT, Morocco and Algeria

 

1. Aldo van Eyck, Herman Haan, Dogon

 

1. Kostantinidis, Old Athenian Houses; Dimitris Pikionis

 

1. Stirling, regionalism, Maisons Jaoul, Ham Common (with James Gowan)

 

1. Smithson’s, the ordinary, Sugden House

 

1. Sibyl Moholy-Nagy, Native Genius in Anonymous Architecture

 

1. Colin Rowe and John Hedjuk, “Lockhart, Texas”

 

1. Juan O’Gorman, “Cave” House

 

1. Erwin Anton Gutkind, “How Other Peoples Dwell and Build,” Architectural Design

 

1. Ludovici Quaroni, La Martella

 

1. Minnette De Silva

 

Ivor De Wolfe (pseudonym for Hubert de Chronin Hastings), “Townscape,” Architectural Review 106 (December 1949): 355–62; reprinted in Architecture Culture 1943–1968, ed. Joan Ockman with Edward Eigen (New York: Rizzoli, 1993), pp. 114–119.

 

Gordon Cullen, Townscape (London: Architectural Press, 1961; New York: Reinhold, 1961), passim.

 

Maristella Casciato, “Neorealism in Italian Architecture,” in Anxious Modernisms: Experimentation in Postwar Architectural Culture, ed. Sarah Williams Goldhagen and Réjean Legault (Montreal: Canadian Centre for Architecture and Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2000), pp. 25–52.

 

Mary Lou Lobsinger, “The Antinomies of Realism: Postwar Italian Housing Projects,” Scapegoat, no. 3, pp. 36-39.

 

S[igfried] Giedion, “Aesthetics and the Human Habitat,” 1953, in Architecture You and Me: The Diary of a Development(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1953), pp. 93–98, esp. p. 96. You may also want to look at Giedion’s essay “The New Regionalism,” pp. 138–51.

 

Sibyl Moholy-Nagy, “Environment and Anonymous Architecture,” Perspecta 3 (1955); reprinted in [Re]Perspective, ed. Peggy Deamer, Alan Plattus, and Robert A. M. Stern (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2004).

 

Sibyl Moholy-Nagy, Native Genius in Anonymous Architecture (New York: Horizon Press, 1957), part 1, pp. 1–48.

 

Hilde Heynen, “Anonymous Architecture as Counter Image: Sibyl Moholy-Nagy’s Perspective on American Vernacular Architecture,” Journal of Architecture 13, no. 4 ( September 2008), pp. 469–91.

 

Aldo van Eyck, “The Architecture of the Dogon,” Forum 115, no. 3 (September 1961), pp. 116–22.

 

Karin Jaschke, “Aldo van Eyck and the ‘Dogon Image’,” in Architects Journeys: Building, Traveling, Thinking, ed. Craig Buckley and Pollyanna Rhee (New York: GSAPP Books, 2011), pp. 73–102.

 

Francis Strauven, “Aldo van Eyck: Modern Architecture and Dogon Culture,” Lotus International (September 2002), pp. 1–6.

 

James Stirling, “From Garches to Jaoul: Le Corbusier’s Domestic Architecture in 1927 and 1953,” Architectural Review118 (September 1955), 145–51.

 

_____, “Regionalism and Modern Architecture,” Architects’ Year Book 7 (1957), pp. 62–68; reprinted in Architecture Culture, pp. 242–48.

 

Colin Rowe and John Hedjuk, “Lockhart, Texas,” Architectural Record 121, no. 3 (1957): 201–06.

 

Juan O’Gorman, “‘Artistic’ Art and Useful Art,” lecture presented at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Platicas [National School of Art] on June 9, 1933; published in Mexico DF, 1934, translated by Luis E. Carranza.

 

Diego Rivera, “The New Mexican Architecture: A House of Carlos Obregon,” Mexican Folk Ways, no. 9 (October–November 1926): 19–29.  This article is from the 1920s but is useful for considering the changing reception of the vernacular in Mexico.

 

*Ioanna Theocharopoulou, “Nature and the People: Search for a True Greek Architecture,” in Modern Architecture and the Mediterranean: Vernacular Dialogues, ed. Jean-François Lejeune and Michelangelo Sabatini (London: Routledge, 1910), 111–30; available online Research Gate.

 

Ken Tadashi Oshima, “Rediscovering Japanese Urban Space in a World Context,” Journal of Urban History 42 (March 2016): 1–11.

 

Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi, Minnette De Silva: Intersections (London: Mack Books, 2024).

 

Recommended:

Ernesto Rogers, “The Responsibilities Towards Tradition,” Casabella Continuità, no. 202 (August-September 1954), appendix pp. vii–viii (the original Italian with pictures is pp. 1–3 of the same issue).

 

Elise Dainese, “From the Charter of Athens to Habitat: CIAM 9 and the African Grids,” Journal of Architecture 24, no. 3 (June 2019): 301–24.

 

James Stirling, “The ‘Functional Tradition’ and Expressionism,” Perspecta 6 (1960): 88–97.

 

Ivor De Wolfe, The Italian Townscape (London: The Architectural Press, 1963).

 

Liane Lefaivre and Alexander Tzonas, “The Suppression and Rethinking of Regionalism and Tropicalism after 1945,” in Tropical Architecture: Critical Regionalism in the Age of Globalization, ed. Alexander Tzonas, Bruno Stagno, and Liane Lefaivre (Chichester, West Sussex, 2001), pp. 14–58.

 

_____, “The Grid and the Pathway,” Architecture in Greece 15 (1981): 164–78.

 

Bruno Reichlin, “Figures of Neorealism in Italian Architecture,” Parts 1 and 2, trans. Antony Shugaar and Branden W. Joseph, Grey Room, no. 5 (Autumn 2001): 78–101 and no.6 (Winter 2002): 110–33.

 

Marcel Vellinga, “How Other Peoples Dwell and Build”: Erwin Anton Gutkind and the Architecture of the Other,” JSAH78, no. 4 (December 2019): 498–21.

 

*Monique Eleb, “An Alternative to Functionalist Universalism: Ecochard, Candilis, and ATBAT-Afrique,” in Anxious Modernisms, ed. Sarah Williams Goldhagen and Réjean Legault (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2000), pp. 55–74.

 

Sheila Crane, “The Shanty-town in Algiers and the Colonization of Everyday Life,” Use Matters: An Alternative History of Architecture (London: Routledge, 2013), pp. 103–19.

 

 

Weeks 10 and 11.  The 1960s

 

1. Drexler (1950s), Gropius, Tange, Engel, rediscovery of Katsura and traditional Japanese architecture.

 

1. Rudofsky, Architecture without Architects, 1964

 

1. John Turner, barriadas, informal architecture, Previ competition

 

1969. Paul Oliver, Shelter and Society, 1969.

 

1. The return to the street, Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of the American City, 1961

 

1. Lina Bo Bardi and the Brazilian Northeast

 

1. Safdie, Habitat, Jerusalem

 

1. Corporate architecture, the New Vernacular” Architectural Review (1950s and ’60s)

 

1. Pancho Guedes, Mozambique, South Africa

 

1. Julian Beinart, South Africa

 

1. Myron Goldfinger, Villages in the Mediterranean Sun, 1969

 

1. Counter-culture and the Vernacular: “Funk Architecture”

 

Walter Gropius, Kenzo Tange et al., Katsura, Tradition and Creation in Japanese Architecture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960).

 

Bernard Rudofsky, Architecture without Architects: A Short Introduction to Non-Pedigreed Architecture (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1964).  Please read the introduction and look at all the images.

 

Felicity Scott, “Revisiting Architecture without Architects,” Harvard Design Magazine (Fall 1998), pp. 69–72.

 

Felicity Scott, “Bernard Rudofsky: Allegories of Nomadism and Dwelling,” in Anxious Modernisms: Experimentation in Postwar Architectural Culture, ed. Sarah Williams Goldhagen and Réjean Legault (Montreal: Canadian Centre for Architecture and Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2000), pp. 215–38.

 

Reyner Banham, “Nobly Savage Non Architects,” New Society 6, no. 153 (September 2, 1965).  Review of Bernard Rudofsky’s Architecture without Architects.

 

John Turner, “Squatter Settlement: An Architecture That Works,” Architectural Design (August 1968), pp. 355–61. Also recommended:  Freedom to Build (1972) and Housing by People (1976)

 

Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Vintage Books, 1992), pp. 29–54, passim. 

 

Styliane Phiippou, “Nothing Is Foreign: Strategies of Brazilianization in Brazilian Architecture,” in Architecture and Identity, ed. Peter Herrle and Erik Wegenhoff (Berlin: TU Berlin, Habitat-International and Münster: LIT Verlag), 2008, pp. 375–90.

 

*Joan Ockman, “Toward a Theory of Normative Architecture,” in Architecture of the Everyday, ed. Steven Harris and Deborah Berke (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1997), pp. 122–152.

 

Pancho Guedes, “Architects as Magicians, Conjurers, Dealers in Magic, Goods, Promises, Spells, Myself as Witch Doctor,” June 1, 1964, SAM: Swiss Architecture Museum, no. 3 (2007): 8–23.

 

Julien Beinart, “Western Native Township,” World Architecture 2 (1965): 184–93.

 

Recommended:

Lina Bo Bardi, “Three Essays on Design and the Folk Arts in Brazil,” trans. Zanna Gilbert, in West 86th 20, no. 1 ((Spring–Summer 2013): 111–24.

 

Ayala Levin, “Basic Design and the Semiotics of Citizenship: Julien Beinhart’s Educational Experiments and Research on Wall Decoration in Early 1960s Nigeria and South Africa,” ABE Journal, no. 9/10 (2016): 1–25.

 

Arthur Drexler, The Architecture of Japan (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1955).

 

Heinrich Engel, The Japanese House: A Tradition for Contemporary Architecture (Rutland, N.Y.: Charles E. Tuttle, 1964).

 

Alona Nitzan-Shiftan, “The Israeli ‘Place’ in East Jerusalem,” in Colonial Modern: Aesthetics of the Past, Rebellions of the Future, ed. Tom Avermaete, Serhat Karakayali, and Marion von Osten (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2010), pp. 89–97.

 

Styliane Phiippou, “The Radicalization of the Primitive in Brazilian Modernism,” in Jo Odgers, Flora Samuel and Adam Sharr, eds., Primitive—Original Matters in Architecture (London: Routledge, 2006), 108–120.

 

Pancho Guedes, “Recent Work,” AA Files, no. 1 (Winter 1981–82): 129–32.

 

Myron Goldfinger, Villages in the Mediterranean Sun (New York and Washington, D.C.: Praeger, 1969).

 

Joshua Mardell, “‘On how we ought to be anarchists’: Pat Crooke, John Turner, and Dweller-oriented Architecture,” The Journal of Architecture 24, no. 6 (2019): 829–45.

 

 

Week 12.  From the 1960s to the 1990s (postmodernism)

 

1. The Strip and commercial vernacular: J. B. Jackson; Peter Blake God’s Own Junkyard, 1964; Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas; Charles Moore and Disneyland, Banham and Los Angeles

 

1. Vincent Scully, Shingle Style Today, Charles Moore Sea Ranch, Venturi’s Mother’s House, Nantucket houses

 

1. Kenneth Frampton, “Critical Regionalism”

 

1. Liane Lefaivre, “Dirty Realism”

 

1. Architecture of the everyday, ordinariness, Henri Lefebvre

 

  *Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1972; rev. ed., 1977).

 

*Deborah Fausch, “Ugly and Ordinary: The Representative of the Everyday,” in Architecture of the Everyday, ed. Steven Harris and Deborah Berke (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1997), pp. 75–106.

 

J.B. Jackson, “The Westward Moving House,” Landscape 2, no. 3 (Spring 1953) and “Other-Directed Houses,” Landscape 6, no. 2 (Winter 1956–57): 29–35; reprinted in J.B. Jackson, Landscapes: Selected Writings, ed. Ervin H. Zube (Amherst, Mass.: University of Massachusetts Press, 1970): 10– xx, 55-72.

 

Vincent Scully, The Shingle Style Today: Or the Historians Revenge (New York: Braziller, 1974), pp. 1–42, passim.  (Please look at images which are not posted on courseworks.  The book is on the seminar shelf.)

 

Kenneth Frampton, “Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance,” in The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays in Post-Modern Culture, ed. Hal Foster (Seattle: Bay Press, 1983), pp. 16–30.

 

Liane Lefaivre, “Dirty Realism in European Architecture Today,” Design Book Review 17 (Winter 1989), pp. 17–20.

 

Recommended:

Steven A. Moore, “Technology, Place and the Non-Modern Thesis,” Journal of Architectural Education 54, no. 3 (February 2001): 130–39.  Available on academia.edu. 

 

Douglas Haskell, “Architecture and Popular Taste,” Architectural Forum 109, no. 2 (August 1958): 105–9; reprinted with an introduction by Gabrielle Esperdy in Places, May 2015, pp. 1–14.  (Note: even though Haskell’s essay was written much earlier, this essay might be seen as a precedent for some of the writings about popular taste in the 1970s.) 

 

Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, “J.B. Jackson as a Critic of Modern Architecture,” Geographical Review 88, no. 4 J. B. Jackson and Geography (October 1998): 465–73.

 

*Henri Lefebvre, “Everyday and Everydayness,” Harris and Berke, Architecture of the Everyday, pp. 32–37.

 

Mary McLeod, “Henri Lefebvre’s Critique of Everyday Life: An Introduction,” in Ibid., pp. 9–29.

 

Mary McLeod, “Everyday and ‘Other’ Spaces,” in Architecture and Feminism, ed. Debra Coleman, Elizabeth Danze, and Carol Henderson (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996), pp. 1–37.

 

 

Week 13.  From the 1980s (Postmodernism) to the Present

 

Note:  Case studies and readings will depend on student selections.

 

Mimar magazine

 

India:  Charles Correa, B. V. Doshi, Laurie Baker

 

Sri Lanka:  Geoffrey Bawa

 

New Guinea:  Renzo Piano, Tijbaou Cultural Center

 

China:  Amateur Architecture Studio (Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu)

 

Burkina Faso:  Francis Kéré

 

Bangladesh:  Marina Tabassum

 

Brazil:  Janete Costa

 

Iran (U.S. and elsewhere):  Nader Khalili

 

U.S.:  Nadir Khalili, Rural Studio

 

Lagos: Koolhaas

 

Charles Correa, “The Public, the Private and the Sacred,” Architecture + Design 8, no. 5 (1991): 91–99.

 

Vikramaditya Prakash, “Identity Production in Postcolonial Indian Architecture: Re-Covering What We Never Had,” in Nalbantoglu and Wong, Postcolonial Space (s), pp. 39-52.

 

Brian Brace Taylor, Geoffrey Bawa: Architect in Sri Lanka, rev. ed. (London: Thames and Hudson, 1995), prism.

 

Rem Koolhaas, Harvard Project of the City et al., “Lagos: Harvard Project of the City,” Mutations (Barcelona: ACTAR, 2001), pp. 651–751.

 

Recommended:

David Robson, Geoffrey Bawa: The Complete Works (London: Thames and Hudson, 2002).

 

Joan Ockman, “Bestride the World Like a Colossus: The Architect as Tourist,” ed. Joan Ockman et al., Architourism: Authentic, Escapist, Exotic, Spectacular (Munich and New York: Prestel, 2005), pp. 158–85. 

 

Elisa Dainese, “Investigating the African City: Rem Koolhaas, Jacques Herzog, Pierre de Meuron, and Others,” in Shaping New Knowledges, ed. R. Corser and S. Haar (New York: ACSA Press, 2016), pp. 210–17.

 

Raymond Lifchez, “Racing Alone by Nader Khalili [book review],” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 4 (1984), pp. 87–107.

 

Nader Khalili, Racing Alone: A Visionary Architect’s Quest for Houses Made with Earth and Fire (San Francisco: Harper and Rowe, 1983).

 

Adélia Borges et al., Janete Costa: Arquitetura, Design e Arte Popular (Recife, Brazil: Cepe, 2020).  Most texts are also in English.

 

Vicky Richardson, New Vernacular Architecture (New York: Watson-Guptill, 2001).

 

           

 

Selected Bibliography

 

Nezar AlSayyad, ed., The End of Tradition (London: Routledge, 2004).

 

Tom Avermaete, Serhat Karakayali, and Marion von Osten, eds., Colonial Modern: Aesthetics of the Past, Rebellions of the Future (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2010).

 

Jean-Louis Bourgeois, Spectacular Vernacular: A New Appreciation of Traditional Desert Architecture (Salt Lake City: Gibbs M. Smith and Reregrine Smith, 1983).

 

*Vincent B. Canizaro, ed., Architectural Regionalism: Collected Writings on Place, Identity, Modernity, and Tradition(New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007).

 

Irene Cheng, Charles L. Davis, and Mabel O. Wilson, eds. Race and Modern Architecture: A Critical History from the Enlightenment to the Present (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020), pp. 187–99.

 

Gordon Cullen, Townscape (London: Architectural Press, 1961; New York: Reinhold, 1961).

 

Ivor De Wolfe, The Italian Townscape (London: The Architectural Press, 1963).

 

Hassan Fathy, Architecture for the Poor: An Experiment in Rural Egypt (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973).

 

Heinrich Engel, The Japanese House: A Tradition for Contemporary Architecture (Rutland, N.Y.: Charles E. Tuttle, 1964).

 

Enrico V. Guidoni, Primitive Architecture, 1975, translated by Robert Erich Wolf (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1978).

 

*Sarah Williams Goldhagen and Réjean Legault, eds. Anxious Modernisms: Experimentation in Postwar Architectural Culture (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2000).

 

E[rnst] H[ans] Gombrich, The Preference for the Primitive (London: Phaidon Press, 2002).

 

Walter Gropius, Kenzo Tange et al., Katsura, Tradition and Creation in Japanese Architecture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960).

 

*Steven Harris and Deborah Berke, eds., Architecture of the Everyday (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1997).

 

Douglas Haskell, “Architecture and Popular Taste,” Architectural Forum 109, no. 2 (August 1958): 105–109.

 

Peter Herrle and Erik Wegenhoff, eds., Architecture and Identity (Berlin: TU Berlin, Habitat-International and Münster: LIT Verlag), 2008.

 

*J. B. Jackson, Discovering the Vernacular Landscape (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984).

 

_____, Landscapes: Selected Writings, ed. Ervin H. Zube (Amherst, Mass.: University of Massachusetts Press, 1970).

 

Jean La Marche, The Familiar and the Unfamiliar in Twentieth-century Architecture (Champaign, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 2003).

 

Jean-François Lejeune and Michelangelo Sabatini, eds., Modern Architecture and the Mediterranean: Vernacular Dialogues (London: Routledge, 2010).

 

Leen Meganck, Linda Van Santvoort and Jan De Maeyer, eds., Regionalism and Modernity: Architecture in Western Europe: 1914–1940 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2013).

 

Sibyl Moholy-Nagy, Native Genius in Anonymous Architecture (New York: Horizon Press, 1957), part 1, pp. 1–48.

 

Jo Odgers, Flora Samuel and Adam Sharr, eds., Primitive—Original Matters in Architecture (London: Routledge, 2006).

 

Paul Oliver, ed., Shelter and Society (New York: Praeger, 1969).

 

1. B. Nalbantoglu and C. T. Wong, eds, Postcolonial Space (s) (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1997).

 

Vicky Richardson, New Vernacular Architecture (New York: Watson-Guptill, 2001).

 

*Bernard Rudofsky, Architecture without Architects: A Short Introduction to Non-pedigreed Architecture (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1964; reprinted Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987).

 

*Michelangelo Sabatini, Pride in Modesty: Modernist Architecture and the Vernacular Tradition (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010).

 

_____, “The Primitive in Modern Architecture and Urbanism: Introduction,” Journal of Architecture 13, no. 4 (August 2008): 355–64.

 

_____, “Remoteness and Presentness: The Primitive in Modernist Architecture,” Perspecta, no. 43 Taboo (2010): 139–44.

 

Jessica Ellen Sewall, Exploring Gender in Vernacular Architecture, Vernacular Architecture Studies (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2025.

 

Bruno Taut, Houses and People of Japan (Tokyo: Sanseido, 1937; 2nd ed., 1958).

 

Marianna Torgonick, Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects, Modern Lives (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990). 

 

Alexander Tzonas, Bruno Stagno, and Liane Lefaivre, Tropical Architecture: Critical Regionalism in the Age of Globalization, ed. (Chichester, West Sussex, 2001).

 

*Maiken Umbach and Bernd Hüppauf, eds., Vernacular Modernism: Heimat, Globalization, and the Built Environment(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2005).

 

*Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas, rev. ed., (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1972; rev. ed., 1977).

 

Chris Wilson and Paul Groth, Everyday America: Cultural Landscape Studies After J. B. Jackson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).