The vernacular's return to favour

In 1964, an exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) marked its era. Titled Architecture without architects, it featured a photographic compilation of vernacular buildings collected from all over the world, bearing witness to a collective know-how, localized and passed down through use. The exhibition, organized by Austrian-American writer and architect Bernard Rudofsky, fully rehabilitated architecture without an architect. The exhibition’s success is sufficient proof of the interest in this theme: Architecture without architects toured eighty museums around the world for eleven years. 

From the mud houses of the Dogons in Mali to the dry-stone constructions of Italy's Cinque Terre region, both UNESCO World Heritage sites; from Finnish wooden mökki to troglodyte houses, vernacular architecture is everywhere. This type of construction is renowned for the skill of its craftsmen, the simplicity of its means, its respect for the environment and the common sense of its genius. 

Rudofsky's contribution did not only put the spotlight on vernacular construction, it also fertilized architectural thought and creation worldwide. Architects such as Finland's Alvar Aalto, India's Charles Correa and Sri Lanka's Geoffrey Bawa drew inspiration from the traditions of their homelands.

A champion of architecture without architects, Hassan Fathy from Egypt made a name for himself worldwide with the publication of his book, Architecture for the Poor, An experiment in Rural Egypt (1969), a thrilling account of the construction of New Gourna, a model village on the west bank of Luxor. A fervent adept of his country's ancestral skills, he claimed to be a descendant of the female pharaoh Hatshepsut, a prolific builder, when he revived the use of mud bricks, a poor material that encouraged people to build their own homes in the villages of Upper Egypt. 

In a satirical play titled The Hell of Reinforced Concrete (1964), he describes the globalization of architecture and urban planning. In it, he also denounced the inappropriate use of reinforced concrete in the extreme climate of the Sahara, which turned the new town of Baris into an unlivable furnace. In contrast, he praises the old village of mud houses, clustered along narrow covered alleys, which protect the inhabitants from the heat and sandstorms. For Fathy, a return to the teachings of tradition is essential. 

Thick earth or stone walls provide better thermal insulation than thin reinforced concrete walls. The combination of the moucharabieh (projecting window with carved wooden latticework) and the malqaf (called badgir in Iran), literally “wind catcher”, makes it possible to cool and ventilate house interiors naturally, infinitely better and at lower energy cost than air conditioning.

Hassan Fathy was inspired by the very layout of the introverted Arab-Muslim house, structured around its interior courtyards and gardens, to create remarkable holiday homes along the Saqqara road south of Cairo, such as Mit Rihan, which illustrate his conception of appropriate architecture. In 1980, he was awarded the Aga Khan Prize for his life's work, and set an example for many other architects in the region, including Ramses Wissa Wassef, Abdel Wahid el-Wakil and Omar el Farouk. 

As of the 1960s, experiments in returning to raw earth technology spread from the Maghreb to the Mashreq. They culminated in the creation of associations such as The Nubian Vault, which provides the most destitute in sub-Saharan Africa with mud houses, giving people back the possibility of building their own homes. 

This enthusiasm for raw earth has spread far beyond the region's borders. Founded in 1979, CRATerre, a laboratory based in Grenoble (France), has demonstrated Western interest in this technology. It has contributed to its expansion worldwide. 

Today, there are many devotees of raw earth in its traditional forms, such as Anna Heringer, whose egg-shaped raw earth structure built for the 2016 Venice Biennale evokes the thatched mud huts found in Maharashtra, in central western India. Young firms, such as Terrabloc in Geneva, have developed stabilized earth blocks with a percentage of cement that allows them to comply with Swiss standards by improving earth's strength and durability. 

Other types of material, such as wood, have sparked a similar resurgence in interest. This is hardly surprising, given that a wooden building is able to capture carbon dioxide. Major firms are returning to this material, and even high-rise buildings are springing up. In 2019, Øystein Elgsaas erected an 18-storey wooden tower in Brumunddal, Norway.

Traditional bamboo frameworks from Asia and Latin America are also increasingly popular. Colombian designer Simón Vélez, who vaunts the merits of this “vegetal steel”, combines his bamboo constructions with contemporary principles to create lightweight, durable structures, such as the “nameless” church in Cartagena (Colombia). Others have followed suit.

The current shift in focus is making professionals take a more responsible approach to the question of architectural design and its materialization. All the lessons of the past are worth re-examining from a sustainability perspective: the science of siting and orientation to take advantage of sunlight and prevailing winds; the use of biosourced materials drawn from the local environment; recourse to low-tech and artisanal skills; common sense linked to careful observation of the genius loci and old buildings. 

Even more radical, though it may seem less creative, is the culture of re-use that needs to be relearned today. In order to avoid wasting resources, unthinkable in the past, it is not only materials but most of all existing buildings that must continue to be used, by adapting them to new purposes and new needs.