What we learn from vernacular construction

A variety of examples of vernacular architecture are used to illustrate the shift from an empirically based traditional knowledge handed down over centuries, to our own era in which that knowledge has been lost. The loss is due to the introduction of new materials and construction systems, changes in education, and increasingly disused construction systems and technologies forgotten through neglect. This time-honored empirically based knowledge has been replaced by some very sophisticated scientific research in the fields of materials science and structural engineering, but this is not often communicated or accessible to those who need it most: those on the construction site. While modern science has often confirmed the time-honored empirical knowledge, it has not and cannot entirely replace the kind of knowledge passed from generation to generation based on trial and error experiences over centuries and even millennia. This chapter investigates this shift from, and return to, the vernacular through a range of examples from Arg-e-Bam in Iran and Srinagar in Kashmir, India, to 19th-century industrial works and the impacts of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.