Marie Stender's lecture Ethnography in the hands of architects will address the long standing overlappings between architecture and ethnography: ethnographers have studied local building techniques, and socio-spatial organisation of villages and longhouses around the world, and architects have sought inspiration in so-called vernacular architecture. Recently the two disciplines have however moved closer, experimenting with new ways of collaborating and combining approaches. Not just in places with ‘architecture without architects’, but also in cities, public spaces, institutions, workplaces and residential neighbourhoods that most architects are more familiar with. They have come together around ‘architecture with architects’, one could say. The focus of this keynote address is such new ways of combining approaches in these contexts.

Hilde Heynen will speak about The vernacular as counterimage. Why modernism needed ethnography. She will take a closer look at the ways modern architects of the postwar period engaged with ethnography in a time when it became increasingly clear that architectural modernism was not able to charm the masses and to become popularly adopted. Modern architects blamed commercialism, which embraced kitsch and pseudo-styles rather than the purity of avant-garde aesthetics. Searching for a way out of this dilemma, they became interested in vernacular architecture, which they saw as a more authentic version of an ‘architecture for the people’. Especially the vernacular of non-industrialised people was of interest to them, hence the need to study this folk culture through ethnography. 

Conference

The Jaap Bakema Study Centre conference The Observers Observed explores ethnography’s influence on architecture. Visit the conference page to see the two day programme, on 24 and 25 November.