what is vernacular architecture

Mud-walled houses, however, were still encouraged by some planters both for quarters and other service buildings. Robert Carter of Virginia, for example, in 1772 asked his slave dealer to find him an artisan who "understood building mud walls Nevertheless, mud continued to be used in the building of chimneys into the early twentieth century when bricks could not be obtained and when small outbuildings intended as animal shelters, particularly in the Sea Island areas of By 1860, 2.6 million blacks were living on plantations all across These were black places that were not merely left to the slaves, but were also, as repeated testimony confirms, places claimed by black people. One instance will serve as an example of the merger of cultures in the saga of African-American vernacular architecture. These houses, meant to provide shelter for four slave families, resembled a building type known as the I-house, the dwelling form used as residences by the majority of planters. Sometime around 1910 an unknown black farmer living near Darien, Georgia, built what appeared to be nothing more than a slightly larger-than-usual single-pen house with a mud-and-stick chimney at one end. Definition of Vernacular architecture in the Definitions.net dictionary.

In Mooney, Barbara B. All forms of vernacular architecture are built to meet specific needs, accommodating the values, economies and ways of life of the cultures that produce them.

It tends to evolve over time to reflect the environmental, cultural, technological, and historical context in which it exists. "The Comfortable, Tasty, Framed Cottage: The Emergence of an African-American Iconography." ‘Vernacular architecture’ describes buildings than are strongly identifiable with what the ‘common people’ of a specific region and culture typically built for themselves.’ It is to architecture what ‘slang’ is to language. Woolman, John Sustainability and Vernacular Architecture: Rethinking What Identity is Dr. Maha Salman, PhD, M.Sc., B.Sc. One Mississippi planter reported with a discernible measure of dismay that his slaves took pride in crops and livestock produced on his estate as theirs. Occasionally, two-story houses were provided; these buildings were basically double-pen cabins stacked one on top of another. Published in 1994 Vernacular Architecture Vernacular architecture is defined as the ordinary buildings and spaces constructed, shaped, or inhabited by a particular group of people. When some of them were able to acquire their own land after 1865, they usually chose a standard plantation building, such as the double-pen or dogtrot house, as the model for their new homes.

The Gullah are a community of African Americans who have lived along the Atlantic coastal plain and on the Sea Islands off the coast of South… Vernadsky, Vladímir Ivanovich (1862 – 1945) Russian Mineralogist, Geochemist, and Biochemist Larger slave quarters were sometimes created by linking smaller cabins into a single structure; four- and six-pen barracks were built in this way.

The definition of “vernacular architecture” can vary from “indigenous architecture” to “primitive architecture” to “ethnic architecture” and even to “anonymous architecture”.

AMIRI BARAKA 1967 Edwards, Jay D. "The Origins of Creole Architecture."

One sees in slave housing the extensive efforts by slave owners to impose their willBy the mid-nineteenth century, blacks were thoroughly familiarized with Euro-American building forms and construction techniques. What does Vernacular architecture mean?

Th… Woolman, John A single pen could stand alone as a one-room cabin or could be combined with other pen units to form larger houses.

Out in the quarters, the fields, the work spaces, and in the woods at the margins of the plantation, too, some slaves reappropriated themselves.

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Further, they appended all manner of sheds and porches to their dwellingsThroughout the nineteenth century, white and black vernacular traditions merged into a single regional entity, so that differences along racial lines were manifested more as a function of relative wealth than as a matter of design choice. Where Europeans saw only a small house built by people of little consequence, the enslaved Africans saw a good house constructed according to an appropriate and familiar plan.

"The Shotgun House: An African Architectural Legacy." This house owes its origins to the free black people of Since almost all houses that come from European-derived traditions have their doorways on the long side, the shotgun, with its primary entrance located on the narrow gable end, was an immediately distinguishable building form.