Contemporary Vernacular Design

Lessons from the Rest of the World

Place and Landscape

In Bolivia, Papua New Guinea and China, the emphasis was on creating small groups of buildings in a settlement. In China’s Yan’an, these took the form of earth dwellings very similar to British terrace houses in arrangement; at Lahuachaca in Bolivia, the traditional functions of various outbuildings around a courtyard was easily retained.

In both of these situations, the emphasis was not so much on the houses themselves but on the settlement. In PNG, Western practices have influenced requests for a more self-contained house – with social gatherings happening less in ad hoc shelters and under trees, and more within or underneath new homes. Even so, a distinctive sense of place has been ...