Vernacular heritage for an underlying principle of unity in the architectural process

Abstract

How to learn from vernacular heritage and apply its lessons to contemporary architecture is not a recent concern. Admiration towards popular buildings can be traced back to key figures of the Modern Movement. Furthermore, later critical stances on the consequences of modernity drew even a closer, though rarely noticed link to this question. Aldo van Eyck's Configurative Discipline, Amos Rapoport's culturally specific design, John F. C. Turner's advocacy for self-construction, Sergio Ferro's Aesthetics of Separation, and Christopher Alexander's Pattern Language, all seemed to seek a sense of unity in the architectural process that could, indeed, be verified in the traditional ways of doing. The revision and comparison of their ideas, in light of the values of vernacular heritage, aims to identify general variables that influence the creation of the environment and whose integral consideration could lead to that underlying principle of unity. As a result, collective predispositions of cultural, political, and material order, or more personal reactions related to emotion, habitability, or economy are distilled to build a preliminary conceptual framework. This framework is coherent with recent findings and current trends in the field and may serve to identify possible paths of action for the future.

Headnote

KEYWORDS

Vernacular architecture; Aldo van Eyck; Amos Rapoport; John F. C. Turner; Sergio Ferro; Christopher Alexander

Abstract How to learn from vernacular heritage and apply its lessons to contemporary architecture is not a recent concern. Admiration towards popular buildings can be traced back to key figures of the Modern Movement. Furthermore, later critical stances on the consequences of modernity drew even a closer, though rarely noticed link to this question. Aldo van Eyck's Configurative Discipline, Amos Rapoport's culturally specific design, John F. C. Turner's advocacy for self-construction, Sergio Ferro's Aesthetics of Separation, and Christopher Alexander's Pattern Language, all seemed to seek a sense of unity in the architectural process that could, indeed, be verified in the traditional ways of doing. The revision and comparison of their ideas, in light of the values of vernacular heritage, aims to identify general variables that influence the creation of the environment and whose integral consideration could lead to that underlying principle of unity. As a result, collective predispositions of cultural, political, and material order, or more personal reactions related to emotion, habitability, or economy are distilled to build a preliminary conceptual framework. This framework is coherent with recent findings and current trends in the field and may serve to identify possible paths of action for the future.

© 2024 The Author(s). Publishing services by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Higher Education Press and KeAi. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

1. Introduction: Still learning from vernacular architecture

According to Norberg-Schulz, being in a place involves comprehending its environment as an interplay of qualities. As stated by the author, popular architecture, which integrates feeling and thought and is both functional and artistic, has achieved the most precise understanding of this interaction. It emerges from necessity and activity in a world where each action is essential-it is the union between heaven and earth, between divines and mortals (Norberg-Schulz, 1997). For the same author, this sense of unity is demonstrated through construction and is expressed by the building tradition, founded and revitalised by each new generation. However, what are the interacting qualities that vernacular architecture naturally combines in what seems to be an underlying principle of unity?

Vernacular architecture emerges from a process allowing a community to give a collective, adequate and integral response to the configuration of its habitat. The resulting sense of unity is perceptible, but not easy to define. The definition would require understanding this process and the variables or dimensions of the built environment that are brought into relation.

This question remains relevant because the gradual transformation of rural environments and their constructions affects these qualities. Hence, there is a global concern about the preservation of this heritage, assuming its natural sensitivity to social and cultural changes (ICOMOS, 1999). Conservation of vernacular architecture still requires a comprehensive understanding of its characteristics. Moreover, this knowledge should not only serve to preserve the existing heritage but also to ensure its continuation through the architecture to come. Therefore, the question would not only be which are the interacting qualities of vernacular environments, but also Which of these aspects are changing and which could be learned and retained for the future by the architectural profession.

Given that vernacular refers essentially to what is native to a place, the direct response to these reflections may be to base design and construction on local materials and know-how. The benefits of this link were largely demonstrated by the work of architects such as Hassan Fathy, Laurie Baker, and André Ravéreau, who were pioneers in adapting modern languages to local conditions (Fathy, 1973, 1981; Ravéreau, 1981; Ravéreau et al., 2007). The path they opened has been increasingly followed, also considering the need for more sustainable ways of building. However, it is worth asking whether the sense of unity behind vernacular heritage can be solely achieved in the constructive realm. The relevance of this questioning is evident in environments where the use of traditional materials or solutions has become restrictive. In these cases, the relationship between traditional heritage and contemporary architecture could maybe stem from other factors also involved in the process beyond material issues.

Calls to learn from vernacular architecture are not recent. The quiet resistance against the disappearance of local building cultures is longstanding. Yet the ways to widely apply this knowledge to contemporary design and construction remain a current line of work.

Arguably, Paul Oliver initiated this quest in 1969 when he wondered whether the vernacular experience could reveal an alternative approach to architectural practice and help discern true individual needs in modern consumer societies. Oliver stressed the importance of preserving the factors that made vernacular architecture possible, namely the knowledge passed down through generations. What was valuable for him was not so much the object itself, but the customs that imbued it with meaning in the process whereby a community built and inhabited a place (Oliver, 1972).

Recent publications have emphasised the importance of a practical and critical perspective in research. The line of activist-oriented studies was highlighted by Nezar AlSayyad in 2006 as indispensable in the 21st century (AlSayyad, 2006). Marcel Vellinga also called for an integrated and critical approach to the studies of vernacular architecture in 2013 (Vellinga, 2013). This path subsequently received a significant boost in 2014 with the European project VerSus: Vernacular Heritage Sustainable Architecture, led by the Escola Superior Gallaecia (ESG).

This project proposed a method to analyse vernacular architecture based on sustainability parameters. The aim was to extract applicable principles and strategies for a more environmentally friendly contemporary architecture. Cases of traditional habitats in France, Italy, Portugal, and Spain were studied from a holistic perspective of sustainability including environmental, socio-cultural, and socio-economic aspects. The analysis also considered both the physical solutions observed in the buildings and the processes behind their construction (Correia et al., 2014; Guillaud et al., 2014). This project involved CRAterre,1 an international centre which had been promoting knowledge about earthen-building cultures and implementing these same ideas since its foundation in 1979.

A second part of this project, led by the Universitat Politécnica de Valencia (UPV), has recently focused on the tools and means to make vernacular learning accessible to the general public (Dipasquale et al., 2023; Rakotomamonjy et al., 2022).

The research is therefore framed within a context of studies on the vernacular-built environments and the application of their lessons in the contemporary architectural profession. Wondering whether learning could be established also beyond the constructive realm, the overall intention is to deduce other levels of the architectural process in which to consider possible paths of relationship, i.e., those interacting domains combined by an underlying principle of unity.

Asinterest in vernacular environments grew in the 1960s, so did opposition to certain trends in modern architecture (Oliver, 1972). Precisely these alternative theories, rather alien and parallel to the specific field of study of vernacular architecture, revealed a direct relationship with its processes, even beyond construction and sustainability parameters.

The writings of Aldo van Eyck, Amos Rapoport, John F. C. Turner, Sergio Ferro, and Christopher Alexander denounced something lost in the architectural profession that instead remained present in traditional ways of building. Their ideas for orienting the work of architects towards solutions that better serve society were often validated by considering, as examples, vernacular configurations and the know-how of builders. Conversely, their critique and proposals revealed what each author considered beneficial from traditional processes. They all stood in an intermediate position-frontier and link-between modern profession and traditional construction. Given the current challenges in the field of vernacular architecture, it may be worth revisiting and comparing these positions.

The article aims to relate, compare and synthesise the main works of these authors in order to approach the inherent variables or dimensions of the built environment through the themes addressed by each of them. Therefore, the specific objectives of the article are:

* To trace the explicit or implicit interest in vernacular architecture in the theories of Aldo van Eyck, Amos Rapoport, John F. C. Turner, Sergio Ferro, and Christopher Alexander.

* To regroup, contrast and summarise their alternative proposals, identifying commonalities and general concerns that may still be relevant.

* To decode the complexity of the built environment from the themes addressed by each author in a preliminary conceptual framework considering recent research in the field.

* To identify, within this overall conception, possible paths of action for the future.

The article reveals how a cultural dimension of housing, advocated especially by Rapoport, combines with the political and economic aspects of the environment, demonstrated by Turner and Ferro, and how all is traversed by the material issue and, arguably, by a psychological order, explained by all authors as the emotional effect that buildings produce on the people who inhabit and build them. Above all, there is an aspiration for a profound synthesis in a kind of architecture as complex as the human being, without being hopelessly fragmented, but rather dominated by a unity arising from the balanced relationship between its elements.

2. Background: Early attitudes of modern design towards the vernacular

Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier referred to vernacular architecture with expressions such as innate principles or fundamental truth. They both believed that deep learning was necessary about this type of architecture for the profession to return to a primary and more harmonious relationship between humans and nature (Wright, 1941; Le Corbusier, 1947). Paul Oliver included some of these appreciations in an introductory chapter to Shelter and Society, in which he reviewed the attitudes of the Modern Movement towards popular constructions (Oliver, 1972).

Attention was initially directed towards American folk buildings, thanks to Richard Neutra and Frank Lloyd Wright, as well as European ones, especially concerning English and Dutch domestic architecture. The work of Wright or the writings of Bruno Taut later brought Oriental cultures to the forefront of modern academic and professional spheres. On this, Oliver stated that Western architects analysed Japanese traditional construction to draw applicable lessons for their designs. The admiration for the vernacular constructions of African cultures subsequently appeared through the influence of avant-garde plastic arts.

A general interest in traditional environments was thus awakening in the late 1950s, which coincided with the call for a more humanised version of the modern movement (Frampton, 2009). Le Corbusier's recommendation to train students in vernacular architecture began to be adopted. The architecture course at the New Bauhaus in Chicago, led by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, started with the design of a primitive house to rediscover fundamental principles (Moholy-Nagy, 1956). Thanks to Hilberseimer's analytical work, which was influenced by Leo Frobenius's anthropological studies, the consideration of the lessons to be learned from vernacular solutions also reached urban planning (Oliver, 1972).

The studies on this type of architecture seemed to be definitively established by the publication of Native Genius in Anonymous Architecture by Sibyl Moholy Nagy in 1957, and the exhibition Architecture Without Architects by Bernard Rudofsky, inaugurated in 1964 (Rudofsky, 1964). Moholy Nagy distilled key concepts from popular solutions, which were also recognisable in some modern buildings and which, being general, could be applied to any contemporary design (Moholy Nagy, 1957). Regarding Rudofsky's exhibition, it is worth noting that its realisation was supported by architects Pietro Belluschi, Walter Gropius, Richard Neutra, Gio Ponti, José Luis Sert, and Kenzo Tange.

Differently from what is commonly assumed, the key figures of the Modern Movement appeared to share certain attitudes of reverence, humility, and a desire to learn about vernacular architecture. Failure to attach sufficient importance to this influence may have caused the heirs of modernity, however, to forget this source of knowledge. Following the developmentalist model, confident in the benefits of technological progress, architecture continued its progressive distancing from the natural and cultural context. As a result, traditional construction has not entirely been given the place it was expected to occupy in the curricula of architectural schools.

3. Materials and methods

There were, nonetheless, exceptions to the aforementioned trend. Among others, Aldo van Eyck's Configurative Discipline, Amos Rapoport's culturally specific design,2 John F. C. Turner's advocacy for self-construction, Sergio Ferro's Aesthetics of Separation, and Christopher Alexander's Pattern Language stood out as alternative ways of conceiving design and construction that revisited certain aspects of traditional processes. Taken together, they offer a broad vision that could be useful for future research and action. The selection of these authors and their ideas responded to several additional factors:

* As the publications were almost consecutive, they were placed in an intelligible timeframe that made it possible to identify a common concern about the profession at a given historical moment and to distinguish particular or similar solutions to that concern.

* These were key authors and texts in architectural theory Which, in their respective contexts, influenced the formation of certain schools or centres of study. Although they shared significant characteristics, they have not been previously connected.

* Except for Amos Rapoport's, the essays did not have vernacular architecture as a specific object of study. However, while not playing a leading role, vernacular architecture was present at least in a veiled form in all the texts. This type of architecture was the example that initially gave rise to or later served to demonstrate their ideas. In this way, it was possible to identify qualities of traditional habitats that may not have been considered in specific studies on the subject, or that were explained from the perspective of the modern profession.

* They all constituted a reaction to a way of understanding architecture that, aspiring to be international, had been applied to the modernisation of environments worldwide (Whyte, 2010). The reactions of the five authors were also general and, by not dealing with specific cases, their conclusions could be translated into global answers to the questions posed.

* Although with different approaches, all the authors considered, to a greater or lesser extent, the potential psychological or emotional impact on the inhabitants or builders dependent on how the building had been designed and constructed. In other words, they all acknowledged collective/individual and tangible/intangible dimensions in the creation of the environment, as Will be further developed in the discussion section.

The research methodology was based on a textual and thematic analysis of the selected works by each author, as shown in Table 1. This figure also displays the works" time frame, its domain, main issue and approach, the proposed method by the author, the presence of explicit or implicit reference to vernacular architecture, as well as the influence of the authors. The following is a brief description of the methods proposed by each author and the references used in the article for their comparison:

* The Configurative Discipline by Aldo van Eyck was a design method intended to create places connected by intermediate spaces in much the same way as traditional habitat configurations. This method was explained in the article The Medicine of Reciprocity tentatively Illustrated, published in Forum in 1961, with his design for the Amsterdam Orphanage as an example (Van Eyck, 1961). The article is exceptional because it demonstrates how the architect tested his intuitions in the project. Additional texts by Van Eyck in the compilation Writings (2008) were also consulted to further elaborate on his ideas.

* Design based on environmental and behavioural studies, as proposed by Amos Rapoport, was intended to subject the configuration of the habitat to the cultural and physical conditions of a place, just as it happened in vernacular settings. Although his written production is rich and extensive, this research is primarily based on his most well-known work: House, Form and Culture (1969). Other writings, such as Culture, Architecture and Design (2003), were also considered.

* Self-building was shown as a tool for efficiency and sustainability in the writings of John F.C. Turner. His most significant work was Freedom to Build, published with Robert Fichter in 1972. However, most of his ideas were synthesised in a recent valuable compilation of texts translated into Spanish as Autoconstrucción: Por una autonomia del habitar (2018).

* The Aesthetics of Separation was the name given by the students of Sergio Ferro to his proposals for recovering the link between design and construction as a unitary process. His work was first published in Brazil in 1976 as O Canteiro e o Desenho. The section Le Chantier was later published in French in 1983 in the journal of the Laboratoire Dessin/ Chantier of the Ecole Nationale d'Architecture de Grenoble. A revised edition, published in 2005, included the completed work with comments by the author.

* Finally, the systemic design and construction process proposed by Alexander was intended to restore the qualities identified in certain traditional constructions and settings through their translation into patterns and their learning as a language. Although this author continued to develop his ideas in later works, the first description of his proposal is found in The Timeless Way of Building originally published in 1979 (2019). An earlier work, Notes on the Synthesis of Form (1964) has also served to identify similarities with the ideas of other authors.

4. Results: The vernacular in the architectural critique of the 1960s and 1970s

The ideas of Aldo van Eyck, Amos Rapoport, John F. C. Turner, Sergio Ferro, and Christopher Alexander are below related in the light of the qualities of traditional heritage, to reveal the attributes identified by these authors about vernacular architecture. The following sections summarise the ideas of each author in the chronological order of their main writings. The role of these qualities in each case and the similarities and differences between the authors' ideas are highlighted. Finally, the themes are brought together and synthesised to build a preliminary framework on the dimensions of the built environment in the discussion section.

4.1. The Configurative Discipline (1961-1962)

Aldo van Eyck proposed an alternative design process aimed at recovering the essential values of architecture, as he outlined in his lecture at the Otterlo conference in 1959. This method consisted of articulating suitable places in successive scales linked to each other through intermediate spaces. The city would emerge from this articulation as a gradation of places from the smallest to the largest scale. This would replicate the configuration of traditional settlements. Different scales of privacy naturally intertwined in them, and village, neighbourhood, and house formed a unitary whole. The references by Van Eyck to the kasbah are well-known, as is the resemblance of his projects and those of his disciple Piet Bloom to these vernacular forms of grouping (Van Eyck, 2008a; Folkers and Van Buiten, 2019).

Van Eyck considered that this configuration would enhance feelings of identity and belonging. These positive reactions to the habitat would stem from the most basic unit and expand throughout all scales thanks to the design of transitions. To achieve this, boundaries between spaces With contrasting qualities were to be extended to create inbetween places where these qualities interrelated. Thus, the concept of home would be transferred at each scale, acquiring new meanings, until a similar perception would emerge for the entire city.

Alison and Peter Smithson had previously explained the concept of doorstep as the physical transition between different levels of association (Ligtelijn and Strauven, 2008; Risselada, 2011; Allison and Peter Smithson, 2016). However, Aldo van Eyck expanded on this concept, influenced by Martin Buber's philosophy of dialogue.3

The in-between represented for Buber the essence of human nature. Being the third reality between the "I" and the "Thou", it linked the individual and the collective realms and expressed our dual essence. For this author, encounter and dialogue were the basis of true life as the present moment only existed in dynamic interaction and relationship (Buber, 1984). From these ideas, Van Eyck (2008b) suggested that the in-between in architecture also would serve to connect different realities and that this link would contribute to creating truly human and living spaces. This conception also seemed to be rooted in paradoxical logic. The in-between places would be instinctively appreciated for reconciling inner contradictions and providing solutions that relate opposing phenomena, because they would reflect, in a certain way, the natural mechanisms of the human mind (Fromm, 1991). We would identify with spaces that reflect the ambiguity of our own nature (Tuan, 2007).

These ideas were reminiscent of psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott's theories in Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena, published in 1953. Winnicott called areas of transitional experience those places where boundaries were blurred and which constituted intermediate places where the inner personal world and the outer material world could be connected (Winnicott, 1953).

For Van Eyck, the in-between concept not only responded to the link between physical conditions but also to the level of relationship of any dimension in architecture. The pairs unity-diversity, simple-complex, movement-repose, centralised-dispersed, as well as interior-exterior or public-private, were related in the design process and reflected in the final solution, just as he explained in his article about the Orphanage in Amsterdam (Van Eyck, 2008c).

However, the reconciliation of opposites in intermediate places and solutions already existed where people traditionally participated in the construction of their own homes. During his travels to New Mexico and Mali, Van Eyck discovered that the qualities he had aspired to achieve in his projects were naturally present in the traditional architecture of these places. Confirming his intuitions in vernacular habitats prompted him to refer to essential values and propose to recover them. These values would have existed and been lost in modern planning. Ultimately, his Configurative Discipline (Van Eyck, 2008e) aimed, therefore, to restore this complex innate capacity to create liveable places (Van Eyck, 2008d,f,g).

4.2. The culturally specific design (1969)

Amos Rapoport argued that the inherent complexity in the relationships between settlements, environments, and cultures was disappearing in the simple classifications to Which contemporary design had habituated in its rupture With the past. He suggested reconsidering accepted models in an attempt to preserve the richness of these links (Rapoport, 1969). Similar observations had been made a few years earlier by Robert Venturi, albeit with a different approach, in Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (Venturi, 1977). Sergio Ferro also discussed how design had been simplified to conform to the norms of its representation in Dessin/Chantier (2005).

To contribute to this revision of established models and discover lessons for modern design, Rapoport focused his work on identifying the factors involved in the creation of buildings, beginning with the study of vernacular architecture. This type of architecture constituted the major component of the built environment, arose from popular tradition, and was subject to strong physical constraints. These conditions would enable the main forces determining the form of housing to be more clearly discerned (Rapoport, 1969).

Popular dwellings had been originally built by their inhabitants. In a subsequent transition to a pre-industrial phase, the intervention of artisans allowed for a certain degree of variation. While maintaining traditional types, forms, and materials, dwellings were adapted to the site or family's specific requirements. At this stage, owners were still active participants rather than mere consumers. The result was a model of housing that was perfectly adapted to cultural and physical conditions, in a coherent environment created by the individual variations on a common pattern. Rapoport's analysis revealed that socio-cultural factors played a major role in these patterns of vernacular configurations. Material resources and climatic conditions could limit certain solutions, but, even in the most restrictive environments, choices determined by culture existed (Rapoport, 1969).

The transformation of vernacular environments was triggered by certain trends, including the abandonment of tradition and the specialisation of craftsmanship, combined with increasing individual differentiation. This change resulted in the disappearance of informal cooperation and, in its absence, the need to introduce control mechanisms, such as codes and regulations, instead of the previous constraints based on consensus. Alexander and Ferro also identified this shift (Alexander, 2019; Ferro, 2005). Another cause of change was the long-term inclusion of architects and, thus, the emergence of mediators with own intentions where previously a collective aim predominated, a theme already addressed by Alexander (1964).

In modern design, the absence of restrictions due to traditional systems, availability of materials, and adaptation to the environment had greatly expanded the possible relationships between housing, environment, and behaviour. However, this freedom had paradoxically diluted the importance of socio-cultural factors and could even be counterproductive by emptying the form of its meaning. Without fixed variables, how to discern the optimal solutions for designing the most appropriate environment (Rapoport, 1969).

According to Rapoport, contemporary society had misunderstood the role of constraints in design, assuming that usage was the only essential limitation. Nevertheless, he argued, it was precisely the unspecific nature of vernacular constructions that would have ensured their success over time. This represented for him one of their great lessons: they demonstrated the value of constraints in establishing generalized "loose" frameworks where the interplay of the constant and changeable aspects of humans can find expression (Rapoport, 1969).4

For Rapoport, the construction of the environment was indeed subject to physical, ideological, and social limitations. Within these constraints, the flexibility of the spaces would allow adaptation to the infinite variety of individual situations. In the course of his studies, Rapoport emphasised the importance of valuing the culture of the users and basing design on a profound knowledge of human behaviour and the environment (Rapoport, 2003).

4.3. The value of self-construction (1972)

From his experience in the spontaneous neighbourhoods of Lima and Arequipa (Peru), John F. C. Turner defended the initiative of the inhabitants for a more efficient use of resources. His ideas were based on the need for local control over local life as a means of strengthening individual and collective capacities in a truly ecological system. The socalled informal settlements of increasingly populated cities were the natural response of people and, self-building, a demonstration of their potential to guarantee their shelter when the housing deficit could not be officially assumed (Turner, 2018a,b,d).

Although his writings described specific cases, they also recognised certain general themes. Turner saw in selfbuilding the development of housing as a process, the result of a real synthesis that confirmed the thinking of Patrick Geddes (Zimmermann, 2018).5

Geddes' Notation of Life diagram revealed an expression of life as a pattern of relationships. These relationships between individuals and their environment were the basis of existence, just as expressed by Martin Buber, who was also present in Turner's references. Modern residential architecture, however, neglected this conception of housing as a dynamic process. The usual solution of meeting the demand for housing with as few resources as possible and in a centralised manner completely denied this conception and its enriching aspects: identity, freedom of action, and sense of belonging (Turner, 2018c).

The complexity of architecture as a process was difficult to reproduce with the tools and training available to technicians. The difficulty of administrations and designers to take into account the diversity of life situations led to the simplification of standardised solutions.6 In addition, the distancing of the population from decision-making, deprived people of the satisfaction of their basic needs.7 As a result, housing ceased to be a vital function and became an object resulting from the analysis of isolated factors.

As an alternative, Turner proposed relying on the principles of subsidiarity and autonomy to restore social participation in the creation of habitat.8 Such local control, which already existed in rural communities, could improve well-being and efficiency also in urban settlements. Instead, if users were not involved in the key issues of the housing process, this would remain an obstacle to personal fulfilment and a burden on the economy (Turner and Fichter, 1972; Turner, 1976).

Turner identified vernacular-that is, activities produced for local use-as one of the emerging dimensions of development, as opposed to corporative-that is, activities beyond local control. Housing was an example of the former. However, there had been an increasing absorption of traditional personal and local responsibilities by corporate powers, resulting in a fragile and vulnerable urbanindustrial society (Turner, 2018e).

Ultimately, the recovery of popular action and responsibility should restore the ability to conceive architecture synthetically, linking all local and cultural conditioning factors in a single process that would be inherently more sustainable. In this development, architects would act as mediators of the process, a role also claimed by Amos Rapoport and Christopher Alexander and defended in particular by Sergio Ferro.

4.4. The Aesthetics of Separation (1976)

Sergio Ferro addressed the relationship between design and work on the construction site. The design and its execution were usually separated into distinct actions in the modern profession. The construction itself had also become a series of isolated tasks, as the trades, which were traditionally divided into coherent fields of homogeneous techniques, had become fragmented. As a result, there was a gap between knowledge (how the building should be) and knowhow (how the building should be made) and, without reciprocity, both suffered a progressive weakening (Ferro, 2005).

This dissociation which, according to Ferro, began in the Renaissance and intensified during the Modern Movement, had served the conception of the building as an object of consumption resulting from alienated labour.9 The reason for this was, for him, the almost complete subordination of practical knowledge to an external design. Architect and design assumed the function of anticipating and assembling the fragmented tasks of labour into a finished object. However, this mediation was often simulated because the link between tasks still kept them separate. From the perspective of construction, the final unity of the building was based on a foreign authority (the design) which, through such a hierarchical position, produced only an appearance of synthesis (Ferro, 2005).

The absence of real unity led to a production of space in Which rupture, discontinuity, and the dissolution of identity seemed to prevail. The authority of practical knowledge was denied in the closed design and there was a constant opposition between the rootedness and subjective entrenchment of craftspeople and the division into work moments imposed by the organisation of the work. Programmed and non-internalised actions translated into dependent and acephalous actions that could hardly harbour meaning, be art and result in human space. 10

Nevertheless, according to Ferro, an alternative practice was possible.11 The proposal was to provide each parcel of knowledge and know-how with autonomy. The trades involved would participate in the ideation phase in order to offer the most rational solutions based on their experience. The architect would be both a true mediator and another further link in the chain of succession of works. Paradoxically, this radical separation would lead to a true synthesis Within the unified whole of the building. This would be possible because the autonomy of each actor would be directed towards a common goal. Ferro compared this way of making architecture to a jazz concert: there was a central theme and a series of leading solos, free variations on that theme (Ferro, 2005).

Knowledge and know-how would be mutually enriching, giving the building a better chance of becoming the best work possible, with the best use of technology and the most efficient use of materials, just as vernacular architecture has often been described. The benefits would not only be resource savings and a good working environment on site. The building, designed and constructed in interwoven moments, would become an act of cooperation in which the traces of free work (free for being autonomous) would be visible (Ferro, 2005). It would emerge as a unity of different elements while preserving their identity in the sense of Hegel's Aufhebung.

Referring to Vitruvius' fundamental virtues, Ferro explained that, in this way, venustas would emerge, unifying firmitas and utilitas in that which is in coherence, in balance with its inner forces, and free from inner contradictions, arguably, something with the nameless quality described by Alexander. This was, for Ferro, the alternative practice that could create truly human, beautiful, and welcoming spaces (Ferro, 2005).

4.5. The pattern language (1979)

Christopher Alexander observed that a common understanding of the most appropriate constructive solutions enabled traditional rural societies to create a coherent and adequate environment. In this way, vernacular architecture managed to remain very close to a timeless way of building, characterised by its spontaneity and by following laws of creation similar to those of nature. This timeless way responded to an innate ability to generate living places with which people could identify, recalling the conclusions also reached by Aldo van Eyck.

However, the specialisation and complexity of industrial societies seemed to have alienated society and, especially, professionals from their intuition and fundamental capacities. According to Alexander, this estrangement made it almost impossible to create living places, similar to those usually admired in vernacular settings (Alexander, 2019).12 Intending to recover this timeless way of building, Alexander realised that there was a common spontaneous process behind all the places he perceived as alive and that it was possible to decode the origin of this process to relearn it (Alexander, 2019).

The sense of life he perceived was conveyed by a difficult-to-name quality. Places, objects, and people with this quality were in harmony with themselves and free from internal contradictions. According to Alexander, it was nameless because it encompassed and transcended the living, honest, comfortable, free, exact, egoless, eternal, common, adequate, beautiful, spiritual, simple, ordinary, sincere, faithful, recognisable, and stable. Related to life, this quality was also somewhat bitter and, above all, real (Alexander, 2019).

Furthermore, any place could be seen as a structure of spatial patterns, intimately intertwined with patterns of events. As Rapoport also noted, these patterns were culturally specific, constituted the essence of a place, and determined its experience. For Alexander, this experience would be enriching to the extent to which the patterns harboured the nameless quality. They would then transmit that quality to those who inhabited them and would be perceived as alive. Conversely, if the nameless quality was present in the people who built or inhabited the place, they would pass it on.

Alexander proposed to identify the patterns that could give rise to the nameless quality. This identification would begin individually but would be extended and shared to create a pattern language for collective action at all levels of architecture. This language, shared by a community, would naturally allow the unnamed quality to emerge at all scales, just as it happened in traditional settlements. It would then be possible to regain a sense of unity and coherence within the built environment.13

However, this language would be a transitory moment, aimed only at liberating something inherent in human beings and, once internalised, leaving room for spontaneity. The system would be similar to the development of an organism, created from the cooperation of small elements according to the genetic code implicit in each of them, something that Was also reminiscent of Ferro's positions on the collaboration between parts. The method proposed by Alexander was the theorisation of a natural process through a discipline which, once assumed or remembered, would cease to be conscious planning to become free action stemming from each individual and supported by a collective agreement on the best way of building (Alexander, 2019).

4.6. Comparison and synthesis

Out of the five authors, only Ferro did not explicitly mention vernacular architecture. However, his essay holds its usual definition: the best building for the culture, the site, the techniques developed and the materials available. Traditional architecture precisely followed the process of creation that he advocated as a necessary alternative: workers (orinhabitants) were autonomous, knew the purpose of their work and freely put their experience into practice. A shared heritage, which determined the form and layout of buildings, guided the process and provided the final unity. Tradition would be the fictive mediator that Alexander sought to restore with a common language of living patterns, and which for others, such as Rapoport, Turner and Ferro, would correspond to the figure of the architect as a guide to the process. This mediation was to be constantly permeable to the contributions of the other participants and dependent on a collective agreement on the best way to build.

As a synthesis, certain features of vernacular architecture could be deduced from the comparison between authors. These features, also summarised in Table 2, reflect some general dimensions of the built environment that will be discussed in the following section.

* A common understanding of the appropriate configuration of buildings. Rapoport, Alexander and Turner suggested that in rural or traditional societies a common language was generated through the cooperation of successive generations and the collaboration between users and builders, which is also reminiscent of the ideas of Ferro. Architecture resulted from the direct participation of inhabitants and craftspeople in the conception and construction process, as particularly expressed by Turner. The active, responsible, and autonomous decision-making of inhabitants was linked to a conception of the habitat as a fundamental need. Satisfying this need would contribute to personal fulfilment and a sense of identity, belonging and appropriation. All the authors aimed to recover the capacity of architecture to produce these sensations through its design and construction. Two dimensions of the environment can be identified in this feature: a more collective one, related to governance and agency; and a more personal one, related to the internal, emotional or psychological impact that architecture could have on individuals.

* Comprehension and communication facilitated by familiar architectural languages. Individual expression was subject to shared models and environmental conditions (Rapoport, 1969; Alexander, 2019). Aesthetic considerations were subordinated to rational constructive solutions according to usage-usage being understood as behavioural habits or patterns determined by culture according to Rapoport and Alexander. It was precisely that sense of adequacy between function and resistance, achieved through autonomous decisions, which provided the appreciation for the final object or the classical "venustas", as stated by Ferro. This aspect relates to the cultural component of architecture, resulting from the ways of life, customs and knowledge of a particular community. It would also relate to the essential component of matter, i.e. the physical conditions to which the building must be adapted to function properly. In the ways of personal use and the individual management of resources, both habitability and economic aspects of habitat creation become apparent.

* Flexibility and spontaneity. Thanks to the existence of common models, more operational than specific, the conception of buildings could be open-ended and assume changes, expressing the particularity of each inhabitant without altering its appropriateness. Hence the ability to adapt to a great variety of different individual situations and to create suitable places at each scale of the environment, as enunciated by Van Eyck and Alexander. This characteristic emphasises the abovementioned, more individual dimension of habitability or living conditions for a specific situation.

* Importance and meaning of the relationship between elements. Ultimately, the qualities highlighted by the authors related to the design and construction process rather than to the resulting object. They emphasised the importance of the relationships between elements, rather than the nature of the elements themselves. The proposed alternative methods aimed to recover a real synthesis between elements. This synthesis seemed to be a natural given in vernacular environments and the source of its unity.

5. Discussion: Approximation to the collective and individual, tangible and intangible dimensions of the built environment

From the synthesis made in the previous section, two planes of reality could be discerned: a collective plane consisting of general dimensions or predispositions shared by a community, and an individual plane bringing together the variety of personal reactions to these predispositions. As with any aspect of human existence, the habitat would consist of both collective planes of social life and individual planes of personal life (Fromm, 1991). Simultaneously, the habitat would also comprise both tangible and intangible aspects.

The collective dimensions of the built environment, from a tangible to an intangible level, would be those of matter, meaning the physical conditions to which the building must adapt to function properly; culture, meaning the ways of life of a given community; and politics or governance, meaning the capacity to act and govern collective needs or agency.14 The decisions on these collective predispositions would have an economic effect related to the self-management of resources; a habitability effect related to personal comfort and usage; and a psychological effect related to the emotional impact that architecture would be able to generate in individuals (Fig. 1).15

Arguably, the choices made in each dimension would enable certain attributes of the built environment to be achieved. The classic attributes of architecture have been beauty, utility, and resistance, as remembered by Ferro. Following the proposals to actualise them in terms of appropriateness, quality of use, and sustainability (Joffroy, 1988), and also considering the principles of the New European Bauhaus initiative (aesthetics, inclusion and sustainability), these main contemporary attributes could be seen as consequences of the work in the governance, culture, and matter dimensions. However, the consideration of internal and external planes of reality, and thus of individual reactions to the environment, would suggest another nature of attributes which, in the light of the qualities of the vernacular, could be rootedness, well-being, and efficiency. Environmental, sociocultural, and socio-economic sustainability qualities would be the implicit natural outcome of sensible individual and collective decision-making in each domain (Ferro, 2005).

The proposed framework in Table 3 is just one possible way of representing the complexity of the variables and the effects of human choices on the built environment. As has already been expressed concerning the usefulness of this sort of thinking tools, their imperfection lies in the establishment of fictitious boundaries between naturally interconnected dimensions. Nevertheless, their virtue may lie in enabling the synthesis and underlying unity that any project should aspire to (Joffroy, 1988).

6. Conclusion

The above theories expressed the notion that Aldo van Eyck, Amos Rapoport, John F. C. Turner, Sergio Ferro, and Christopher Alexander had on the built environment. For all of them, the usual practice of the modern profession had distanced architecture from its original qualities, which were still observable, instead, in traditional rural settlements. This was not an isolated concern. Returning to the reference that opened this article, according to NorbergSchulz, as well, popular architecture would suggest how to regain what has been lost.

In the first decades of the 21st century, vernacular environments have been considered an undeniable source of knowledge for achieving a more sustainable architecture. However, contemporary contexts may differ from the original conditions of those vernacular environments due to social, economic, cultural, and natural changes. Adapting the lessons learned from the vernacular to the modern profession faces challenges that go beyond the field of architecture. Translating this knowledge into practice thus remains a central issue.

The five authors shared the conception of architecture as a synthesis of elements interlinked in a process of creation that should achieve final unity and coherence, as demonstrated by most traditional settlements. However, they varied in their approaches to the interacting factors involved in this process. Taken together, their texts provide a comprehensive perspective on vernacular architecture from the point of view of five relevant modern professionals. In doing so, they offer insights into different dimensions of the environment that can still inform our capacity for action and propose five alternative ways to learn from vernacular heritage:

* Recovering the natural way of continuity between scales in architecture through the relationship of apparently opposing realities.

* Consider the physical, social and cultural constraints of habitat as opportunities to create flexible and open designs, easily adaptable to individual situations.

* Restore local responsibility for local life through greater public participation in habitat decision-making.

* Re-establish the link between conception and construction by restoring the latter's importance in the design process.

* Collectively identify and relearn appropriate design patterns to share a common architectural language.

Ultimately, the described theories proposed a revision of the established processes in building design and construction to regain a more human architecture in the 1960s and 1970s. In this critical consideration, vernacular architecture served, with greater or lesser intensity, to reflect relevant inherent aspects of the habitat configuration which had been neglected, forgotten, or altered With modernisation. Their conclusions included proposals that have been progressively implemented since then, such as, for example, the role that architects should assume in the building process to achieve those former original attributes. For almost all the authors, this role included a mediating position that is increasingly being claimed and adopted nowadays (Tapie, 2018; Mazel, 2019). This demonstrates the relevance and appropriateness of their ideas. Although these theories may seem outdated, the current challenges of habitat design and the preservation of traditional environments suggest that there is still a need for study and research. By reviewing, comparing and re-learning what others have already concluded, from a historical point of view, valuable clues may be found for the future. Further research could help discern which dimensions and aspects of the built environment have been largely addressed and which still offer a horizon to explore in the contemporary architectural profession.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgments

This research was funded by MEC (Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport), under grant FPU 17/02428; 2018-2022, as part of the research carried out for a doctoral thesis defended on December 19, 2022 at the Universitat Politécnica de Valéncia (UPV).

Sidebar

Received 10 April 2024; received in revised form 29 June 2024; accepted 31 July 2024

Peer review under the responsibility of Southeast University.

Footnote

* Corresponding author

E-mail address: [email protected] (M. Lidon de Miguel).

1 CRAterre (Centre international de la construction en terre) is currently one of the two teams of the AE&CC (Architecture, Environnement & Cultures constructive) Research Unit at ENSAG (Ecole nationale supérieure d'architecture de Grenoble) of Université Grenoble Alpes in Grenoble (France).

2 The article has given this title to the ideas of Amos Rapoport, as a resource for expression and organisation. It is not a title that the author has used to qualify his proposals.

3 Martin Buber (1878-1965) was a philosopher influenced by Gustav Landauer and his communitarian anarchism. The work cited by Van Eyck is Martin Buber, / and You [Ich und Du], 1923.

4 Open design does not mean "free form". The form should respond precisely to cultural, social, and environmental constraints. Also following Alexander, A building that has a "free" form-a form without roots in the forces or materials that compose it-is like a man whose gestures are not rooted in his nature. Its form is blurred, artificial, forced, planned, made to copy external images and not generated by internal forces (1979/ 2019, p. 48).

5 Patrick Geddes (1854-1932) was a sociologist, urban planner, and biologist. His work influenced the thinking of John F. C. Turner, who defended the importance of Geddes's diagrams in the development of a holistic way of reasoning that would recover the underlying principle of unity of every situation under study (Turner and Keating Clay, 1949/2018, p. 27).

6 As long as the individual retains control of the main assets of life, he will be able to establish his place in the cultural heritage of his people ... Edward Sapir, "Culture, genuine and suspicious", American Journal of Sociology 29 (1924), quoted by Turner (1978/2018, p. 151). Realisation requires reabsorption of government into the body of the community. How? By cultivating the habit of direct action rather than relying on representative agencies. Patrick Geddes, What to Do, 1912, quoted by Turner (1978/2018, p. 163).

7 This was explained by Ashby's Law of the Requisite Variety: "If stability (of a system) is to be achieved, the variety of the control system must be at least as great as the variety of the system to be controlled." W. К. Ashby, "Self-regulation and requisite variety", in Introduction to Cybernetics (New York: Wiley, 1965), quoted by Turner (1978/2018, p. 160).

8 According to Turner, the principle of subsidiarity (i.e., the notion of individual responsibilities and agency) was necessary to restore a sustainable system based on a local economy and a strengthened community (2002/2018, pp. 175-177). The importance of autonomy was also key for Sergio Ferro, who referred to it as the necessary condition to break with the heteronomy of the work and achieve the most possible rational result within each decision and action (more rational and meaningful for arising from each intervening agent).

9 See Ferro (1976/2005, pp. 121-127), for a brief explanation of the history of architecture from the point of view of the conditions of building works. The directive function of the architect could contribute to turning the building into a commodity no longer of interest for its usage value but for its fictitious sale value. See Fromm (1991/1989, pp. 145-146), for a similar explanation of the changing value of an object according to the nature of the process of its production.

10 Ferro's ideas were based on Hegel's conception of labour. Also quoting William Morris, Ferro defined art as the expression of free labour, independent of any heteronomy (1976/2005, pp. 146-147).

11 'Aesthetics of Separation' was the name given by the students of Sergio Ferro to this alternative practice (Ferro, 1976/2005, p.140).

12 On the general importance of restoring intuition in contemporary society, see the interview with the writer Mohammed Taleb: "Mohammed Taleb: "Oser les indisciplines de Vintuition"."

13 According to Alexander, the importance of language lies in the fact that it is the process by which human beings make their image of the world solid and real (1979/2019, pp.428-429). For Sergio Ferro too, language, like work, when free, was the basis of all that was human (1976/2005, p. 132).

14 On the political dimension of architecture, see Frampton (1980/2009, pp. 165, 273). Also, regarding the vernacular architecture of some African cultures, where the relationship between construction, culture, society and environment is clear, see Masudi Alabi Fassassi (1978/1997, p. 11).

15 Attention to psychological issues was one of the reasons behind the mid-twentieth-century reactions to modern theories, not only in the texts analysed. The formation of Team X was precisely due to the search for a more precise relationship between physical form and socio-psychological needs (Frampton, 1980/2009, p. 275). The social and psychological aspects of the built environment were explicitly mentioned in the work of Rapoport (1969, p.13). See also on this topic the work of Tuan (1974/2007, p.33).

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