The Society Of Architectural Historians of Great Britain

in partnership with the Vernacular Architecture Group

Introduction

The SAHGB symposium will be an opportunity to explore ways of thinking about relationships between vernacular studies and architectural history in British contexts.  

The organising premise is that the term vernacular need not be understood as referring only to a distinct category of objects – certain building types from certain periods. Analyses of hybrid architectural practice and traditions across a great continuum have been hobbled by this understanding of the word, and British architectural history and vernacular studies remain largely un-communicating fields.

 

To remedy this, the vernacular might be conceived simply as a perspective – one that sees the local, indigenous, ordinary, everyday, popular or nostalgic. Such traditions can be traced in the design or adaptive alteration of any buildings. Thus, all architecture is vernacular, more or less. Even the greatest ‘polite’ buildings can be better understood through heightened awareness of local or indigenous forces, by emphasising use and underlying shifts in architecture’s social meaning, and by understanding all architectural design as emerging from social relationships tempered by individual creativity. In this way, architectural history could engage with canonical or elite architecture through new and more ethnographic approaches.

 

Programme

Full abstracts of all papers are available here as a PDF.