Vernacular Transformations

Paul Oliver’s 1997 “Encyclopaedia of Vernacular Architecture of theWorld” (EVAW) was the first comprehensive compilation of Southeast Asia’s and Oceania’s vernacular houses, and work on the second edition (EVAW 2) has been under way since 2015 under the editorship of Marcel Vellinga at Oxford Brookes University. EVAW 2 will continue the outstanding scholarship on the region’s rich and diverse vernacular house architecture highlighting its distinctiveness and relationships with social and cultural structures. However, in the updating of entries, clear signs of transformation of traditions have emerged due to rapid social, cultural, economic and technological changes in Southeast Asia and Oceania’s vernacular houses (e.g. see Figure 1). These transformations could not be further explored in the brevity of the Encyclopaedia entries, and so this issue of Fabrications called for higher-level reflections and theorisations of these dynamic transformations and their relationships with modern worlds. It seeks to understand the tensions brought about by regional and sub-regional modernisation and cultural change, and the effect of these tensions on the historical morphologies and building typologies of vernacular house architectures. Methodologically, conservative architectural historiographies have often positioned vernacular (and non-western) architecture in opposition to modern architecture. In the late twentieth-century vernacular architecture was not considered dynamic, multi-faceted and progressive, but relatively static, resistant to change and lacking modern relevance. This position has sinced changed in the global field of vernacular architecture. Early 21 century theoretical advances in architectural history and theory have sought to close the gap between vernacular and modern architecture. Recent scholarship has questioned this binary opposition, and has begun to expand approaches to vernacular architecture. In addition, postcolonial methodologies are dispelling the myth that one dominant group can monopolise the processes of modernisation, and are arguing that contemporary and historical relationships between vernacular and modern may be a result of complex social, cultural and political negotiations between disparate stakeholders. In terms of vernacular architecture, this involves a process of decolonisation, and of using critical multidisciplinary methodologies to broaden and break down conservative FABRICATIONS 2020, VOL. 30, NO. 1, 1–10 https://doi.org/10.1080/10331867.2020.1724667