New Vernacular Architecture

Vernacular architecture is expressed as the original architecture, arché-techné. It is generated by all cultures, in all places and responds to the basic need of people to adapt to their own habitat. It is made with the available resources, to find shelter and to highlight their cultural representations. It is ancient and contemporary, urban and rural, rustic and sophisticated, large and small. The understanding and application of the values of vernacular architecture offers solutions to the contemporary discipline for the construction of an appropriate and sustainable built environment. Six principles of vernacular architecture are presented as tools for the studio exercise: 1. The specific creation. 2. The organic (fractal) production. 3. The participation of the user in the creative process. 4. The progressive development (incremental). 5. The egoless design. 6. The building as a tool for the empirical transmission of knowledge. The studio aims to generate a new vernacular architecture (NVA) appropriate project. With this in mind, the semester will be divided in three phases: 1.The analysis of vernacular architectures of the world, 2.The identification of a real, necessary program in the Indian territory and 3.The development of a NVA project.