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Dwellings: The Vernacular House Worldwide. By Paul Oliver. Revised edition. (London and New York: Phaidon Press, 2003. Pp. 288. introduction, photographs, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $59.95 cloth.)
Vernacular architecture studies is a meeting-ground for many disciplines, combining the ethnological and cultural spirit of folklorists, anthropologists, geographers, sociologists, and historians with the technical and aesthetic inquiry of architects, engineers, and artists. After three decades, studies in this vigorous and eclectic field can now claim more than a shelf-it can boast scholarly landmarks, and the jewel in the crown is undoubtedly the Encyclopedia of Vernacular Architecture of the World (1997), a comprehensive and detailed reference for the world's building traditions edited in three thick volumes by Paul Oliver. Published in his seventieth year, the Encyclopedia could easily have been the culminating project of a long, illustrious career. Yet now, six years later, Oliver has produced a significant updated, revised and expanded edition of his ambitious and provocative 1987 work, Dwellings. In it, Oliver reasserts the value of the term vernacular as socially relevant for modern study and extends the Encyclopedia's description for vernacular houses: "Related to their environmental contexts and available resources, they are owner- or community-built, utilizing traditional technologies . . . , built to meet specific needs, accommodating the values, economies and ways of life of the cultures that produce them" (14).
Dwellings...