The Urban Vernacular in Southeast Asia

This book constructs a number of discourses, dialectics and analyses across the disciplines of urban form, architecture and urban experience, thus incorporating both conservation and design issues.

It bridges the gap between practice and theory by reconstructing the role of the “village” or “vernacular” in the discourses and trends of the twenty-first century post-Covid19 environment. Bringing together for the first time the confluences of theory and practice in the “urban vernacular” and the “urban village,” the contributors use vernacular concepts and settings as a common framework serving as cultural bridges, connecting traditional forms, ecologies and habitats to new global ideas, industrial economies and access to developing urban sustainability, design, planning and services in Asia's rising megacities. The book begins with concerns of urban layout and morphology, aiming to establish discourse, shared principles and terminology around conventional ideas of the “village” or traditional settlements' apparently organic and disordered nature. It then moves into architectural dimensions, capturing formal cases of how the “vernacular” or traditional “indigenous” local concepts have inspired new ideas in award-winning architecture and hence the importance of re-examining the vernacular in light of the ongoing need to produce a more sustainable and place-conscious fit in modern architecture and urban planning.

The book will be of interest to researchers in the fields of architecture, urban planning and design, urban geography, design studies, landscape architecture, history of architecture/urbanism and Asian Studies, in particular those concerning Southeast Asia.