TAG Talk #26: New Vernacular Architecture. A talk by Jonathan Weatherill.

New Vernacular Architecture
Creating Identity of Place - Research and Practice - by Jonathan Weatherill
Vernacular architecture and urban design can be used as a tool to help heal damage done to urban, suburban and rural space in the past 100 years.
In badly planned places with little or no clear past identity, New Vernacular architecture can be created to become intrinsically representative of the identity of that place.
The case in point is Rozzano, a suburban dormitory town built in Milan’s green belt in the ‘60s and ’70s, to house immigrant workers from Southern Italy.
The basic principles behind the creation of Vernacular architecture are illustrated in a previous study that is the seed of ongoing research. These principles are then applied to the case of Rozzano.
The results of this research and the resulting project could represent a new direction for architecture and urban design; a small step to resist the proliferation of anonymous and uniform building that continues to erase the identities of places worldwide
Jonathan Weatherill is an Associate professor of the Rome Program of the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture. He is a practising architect who has lived in Italy since graduating from the Architectural Association in London over 25 years ago. He runs his own practice and has also collaborated with 2014 Driehaus laureate Pier Carlo Bontempi since they met in Milan thirty years ago. His professional experience has spanned the genres of Modernism and Classicism, in a wide range of fields from industrial design to restoration and urban planning.
He is inspired by the timelessness of the rural vernacular and the elegant equilibrium of architectural language of the past. His work is the result of an eclectic education informed by his varied experience and the comprehension of local reality through investigation and on-site and archival documentation.

[@kylejmarsh3988]

Thank you for the excellent presentation Mr. Weatherill - your approach to placemaking and deep respect for local vernacular architecture should be a model for others to aspire to. It seems so simple in principle - to simply look around at the existing patterns and use them to inform the design of the project, infusing them with a knowledge of placemaking to create a result to which nothing need be added, and nothing removed. It represents in one project the slow historical building up of a local Architecture which is not only Human in it's execution, but is logically defensible in it's detailing and grounded in the Tradition of the place. This is certainly not the short-attention-span slop which forms the core of the 'creeping crud' quickly destroying the countryside - this is long-attention-span Architecture which dignifies both the Architect, and those future residents with the mind to see and understand it. Kudos.

[@katiatrost3759]

Great presentation, I hope traditional architecture makes a big comeback. I hope never to live in a modernist architecture again. It feels soulless and looks ugly.

[@ppuzzello64]

This presentation should not be a critique about modernity, but about mediocrity. I see plenty of sameness with traditional architecture. The "traditionalists" do not own the idea of placemaking.

[@Slingsby_architecture]

We may not own the idea of placemaking but we are the ones that are consistently and inherently engage with it. And it is very evident that modernist (and they off shoots) have consistently disregarded it in favour of high concepts, abstraction, and the deconstruction of culture - which is the heart of placemaking.

[@verticalmatt]

Whatever your argument it would benefit from images. I can't imagine anything more monotonous than modern design.

[@ppuzzello64]

@@verticalmatt That is such an over generalized statement. First of all, it's a matter of taste. Second, there are plenty of examples of good contemporary public space: Bilbao museum in Spain, Millennium Park in Chicago, St. Louis Arch and park, Addition to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Pompidou Center in Paris, Eiffel Tower (it is modern design, rejected initially, now defines Paris), The Louvre Museum pyramid, Seagram's building and forecourt, Cranbrook Educational campus in Bloomfield Hills MI, Times Square New York, 911 site in Lower Manhattan, any public observation deck in any tall building around the world, Golden Gate bridge, The Getty Center Grounds in LA (both the one by Richard Meier and the one by Machado and Silvetti). Should I go on? Ok. Anything done by Frank Lloyd Wright, anything done by Louis Sullivan, Kahn's Salk Institute, all of the art modern buildings in Miami Beach, Kahn's Kimball Art Museum, Kahn's Exeter Library, Kahn's Parliament Building in Dhaka, Enric Miralles' Parliament building in Scotland, The Neues museum in Berlin, Libeskind's Jewish Museum in Berlin, The Wrapped Reichstag by Cristo...
Now, these works might not be to your taste or those that prefer Corinthian columns, metopes and triglyphs, but they are examples of contemporary design that are overwhelmingly endeared and in the public realm. I can provide images if you like.

[@verticalmatt]

@@ppuzzello64 sir if you kept up with modern science you would know that it is not a matter of taste, but an objective measurable parameter. Now cristo's wrapped reichstag is an art installation, but gehry s Guggenheim looks like an art sculpture. Do you think architecture should be sculptural? What about background buildings like 99% of offices and residences?

[@ppuzzello64]

@@verticalmatt What?? Modern science?? I would much prefer spending time at a space like Cristo's wrap in Berlin, or Pompidou museum than a space the traditionalists could conjure up and I am not alone sir. Does that make me mentally sick? Or in some twisted way against science? BTW yes, Cristo's wrap of the Reichstag is absolutely an architectural project in addition to being art and legitimate for the discussion here.