Vernacularity as tactic and strategy: architecture and the politics of designation

Who essentialises the vernacular? Essentialising attributions of vernacularity within a nation-state, as also those of Orientalism at the international level, may represent both co-optation and marginalisation of the subaltern by political or expert authorities. It may also represent an act of resistance, resilience, or ‘subversive archaism’ against such forces. Essentialisation is always a social process – often a speech act (heritage designation offers a pertinent example) or its architectural equivalent. Using examples mostly from Greece and Thailand– both countries with an ambiguous relationship with European colonialism – we can connect the real dangers and potential benefits of designating specific buildings as vernacular with the similar ambiguities inherent in the concept of ‘local knowledge’. It is only by stripping vernacularity of its derogatory implications and by accepting the common human capacities realised in all architecture that we can confront the inequalities often generated by the selective attribution of vernacularity to rural and marginalised populations and trace these inequalities to their European colonial sources.