Alpha Tomasowa
Indonesia
Vernacular in Architecture is a borrowed term from English Linguistics but has neither the subtlety, purpose nor elegance of the latter in creating definition – what it refers to, basically, is every architectural style that is either created outside of the Western design spheres or from a time before said Western spheres reached their Enlightenment Period through the Renaissance.
By this categorically ignorant part of the Western Architect’s hubris and through the flawed Architectural Education it trickles down from, we are left with an intangible and unquantifiable vernacular, for lack of a better word, in the profession’s Metalanguage.
This, however, is not as bleak as it sounds as through the globalisation of the human living experience we have blurred the lines of what can be inferred as Vernacular and been given the opportunity to wipe the misconstrued slate clean to start fresh in forming the Vernacular of 21st Century Architecture.
To achieve this, Vernacular Architecture has to be approached contextually, specifically in the space-time of 2018 and the 21st Century in general, and past the Modern Globalisation that consumed the 19th and 20th Centuries. Through a Global Economy and Workforce Migration, living standards improved worldwide and with it, a uniformity of base infrastructure was established, including basic construction materials that conform to a worldwide building code. Through Mass Production and the Economy of Scale these aforementioned building code stipulations are the most cost-effective materials sold on the planet, making them the natural mother tongue of a universal architectural vernacular.
Modern Architecture is the mother tongue of 21st Century Vernacular.