Architecture and Planning
Edited by Dr. Barbara Kenda
The Prince's Foundation
For The Built Environment
Rizzoli New York (2010)
Many years ago, I sat on a bus engrossed in a conversation two women behind me. One of the women, either a grad student or a professor had returned from the Southwest where she studied indigenous houses and she was so excited about bringing vernacular housing to the conversation of sustainable design. Not long after hearing this conversation, I too began to wonder where anthropology, history, and archaeology intersected with green design architecture and engineering.
This topic has not strayed from my mind over the years, and since my background and training are of an interdisciplinary arts journalist, I was pleased to find Green Living, a collection of essays on bringing vernacular housing not only into the conversation of sustainable design, but also implement across the globe. Now, when these experts discuss the vernacular in their essays, they give mention to indigenous cultures, especially in the American Southwest, but they mostly stick with traditional housing in Europe with one essay, "Cultural Sustainability and the Renewal of Tradition" by Dr. Victor Deupi discussing the buildings of Renaissance architects in Italy (mainly Florence and Venice). Other essays, address climate change and returning to traditional architecture or at least revitalizing traditional housing that still exists because of the zero net possibilities.
The main argument presented is that people prefer historic looking cities (the older traditional buildings) as opposed to the more modern "green" design which often looks like an eyesore among historic centers or like a crazy quilt. Ancient architects built healthier environments (not just the homes, but the entire communities) when they treated buildings and towns as a reflection of the human body, using terms referring to circulation which referred to both the circulation of traffic through the town and air flow in the homes and buildings. Building from natural renewable materials was also practiced in the day and these materials came from close by, not shipped from some foreign city.
I enjoyed reading this collection of essays that brought up important topics of our time such as the Healthy urban environment, the natural home, livability of cities, as well as, addressing public health concerns of the rise in obesity and type 2 diabetes, in which poor diet and lack of exercise play contributing factors. With so many people sitting on their butts all day at work and then in cars as they fight their way through traffic jams caused by urban and suburban sprawl, these diseases will only grow into worst epidemics. Renovating vernacular houses and transforming districts with historic preservation such as with Pontiac, Michigan ("Sustainable Refurbishment" by Dr. Tim Yates) also presents a good case for melding the old with the new, and not tossing out the wisdom of the ancestors in favor of Big Science and green gadgets.
I highly recommend this worthwhile read.
http://www.rizzoliusa.com