From the Cultural to the Material Value of Vernacular Architecture

The paper analyses the development of the role assigned to the vernacular architecture in the Mediterranean over the last ten years. The evaluation of the events in Europe and throughout the world are juxtaposed with the Slovene example of the tradition-continuation process and the problems related to it in the period of transition. Since these events have influenced also the topic-selection at Alpe Adria conferences - these today rank among the most established and renowned conferences on the subject - and approaches to them, the paper proceeds with an analysis of the findings, conclusions and suggestions presented at previous conferences. The last decade has moved the role of vernacular architecture from the classification as the most important element and starting point for the common European cultural recollection and countryside-development campaigns to a demand that vernacular architecture be regarded as an economic category. In spite of the appeals of the Alpe Adria conferences and other groups of experts, however, common criteria for the evaluation and recognition of vernacular architecture have not been established (yet), which has led to a variety of attitudes. In Slovenia, these have, because of too wide a range of the objectives set, comprised the task of establishing the role of vernacular architecture as part of cultural landscape, attempts at countryside renovation, and solving the perennial problem of considering part of the national heritage more than merely individual examples of cultural heritage that have no connection with landscape. Sadly, the technological, methodological and organisational problems which have been thoroughly dealt with at Alpe Adria conferences, have not been given, either in Slovenia or elsewhere, the significance that could have led to a more appropriate consideration of vernacular architecture as part of quality living environment.

The development of vernacular architecture has thus reached the stage where, should the evaluation of vernacular architecture proceed merely through the magnifying lense of its economic value for activities such as tourism and preservation of fertile land, vernacular architecture may be deprived of its symbolic, identity-related, semantic and humane values. A misunderstood concept of globalisation could further encourage the decline which vernacular architecture has been experiencing since late 1940s. Should we fail to re-direct this process in favour of vernacular architecture, this will, in the future, be limited to museum pieces and uniform, impersonal fast-architecture.