Why should we conserve relatively intact domains of Vernacular Architecture for future Generations?

There is a strange paradox around the phenomenon of vernacular architecture. Wherever it has been preserve relatively intact for whatever reasons, it creates some sort of attraction mainly in the touristic sector and, in fact, may prove to be very profitable (Zermatt, Switzerland). On the other hand it is considered as an anachronism and is consequently esthetically as well aseconomically devalued and exposed to processes destroying the necessary formal units by the intrusion of modern architecture and its rationalistic forms. What is vernacular architecture? What are its values? Why should we find means to preserve it for future generations?
In this framework the paper will first critically question the conventional definitions of vernacular architecture (European folklore studies, Encyclopedia of Vernacular Architecture of the World, etc.) and show that the modern rationalistic or functional retro projections do not do justice to the complexityand historical value of vernacular architecture.
Finally, in a positive approach the paper will develop the notion of "Structural Design". Using art (Kaspar David Friedrich), architectural high style (Romanic, Gothic, Classicism etc.) and vernacular architecture (European, Japanese etc.) it will be shown that in all these examples there are very ancient immanent or hidden structural principles which are not only of a fundamental aesthetic value, but which had impacts on man's world view throughout the world. Modernism, introducing the rational basics of the machine and the space concepts of the universe into the daily human domains, the concept of 'Structural Design' got lost.
This may be the great importance of vernacular architecture: its survival as a historic source, as a cognitiveand scientific contrapost against global homogeneisation and mechanisationof our vital environment.

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