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Article 7 of the Paris Agreement acknowledges that the adaptation of indigenous technologies to modern use is key in achieving long-term climate-change solutions and that this adaptation should be based on a combination of the best available methods and techniques with traditional knowledge systems (Piesik 2017: 23). This course provides students with an understanding of vernacular traditions as lively, fluid and creative processes that survive inasmuch as they respond and react to ecological, technological and cultural changes (Asquith 2006: 3), and emphasises the inextricable relationship these traditions have with the materials found on the landscape they evolved on.

Through a series of seminars and lectures, this course offers a critical lens through which to dissect and interrogate relevant case studies from a variety of building traditions, scattered in time and space; as well as learn about the relevant gamut of manufacturing techniques that, through mis- and re-appropriation, could form the basis of new vernacular intelligences.

Students will be equipped to critically examine local building technologies with regards to their ingenuity, environmental impact, and effect on community resilience; as well as the defects and limitations that provide opportunities for technological innovation. They will be invited to propose innovative material systems based on these traditions' low-impact adaptation to the land and the materials that can be sourced directly from it, deploying digital tools in novel ways that broaden the spectrum of material finishes and applications; whilst improving the previously identified limitations of each system and facilitating implementation by the community, in tandem with their existing know-how.

Weekly session breakdown:
Lecture 1: Course and Brief Presentation – A theoretical framework, urgency of sustainable practices, and recent developments: Monday 11th January 2021
Lecture 2: Building craftsmanship across climate zones I – Hot: Arid and Tropical: Monday 18th January 2021
Lecture 3: Building craftsmanship across climate zones II – Temperate and Continental: Monday 25th January 2021
Lecture 4: Building craftsmanship across climate zones III – Arctic and Informal Settlements of the Urban Vernacular: Monday 1st February 2021 OPEN WEEK (Monday 8th February – Friday 12th February 2021)
Lecture 5: High-Tech meets Low-Tech: Frontier of Material Fabrication: Monday 15th February 2021
Lecture 6: Climatic zones – Resilience challenges in the twenty-first century: Monday 22nd February 2021
Session 7: Student Pin-Up/Presentation: Monday 1st March 2021