Narratives of Vernacular: Time, Space & Knowledge
معماری بومی؛ زمان, فضا و دانش
Untold Narratives
Through a story that I carefully navigate to find deep inside,
a trace of the past,
a past that is perhaps not only mine but of many
The story that is othered
Through the mind of the other and dismantling the otherness, we all become one again
I navigate this path not to find ‘new’ neither to invent
It is the rediscovering,
unearthing deep time
To dig, and carry above,
the embodied knowledge
The stratum of experience
Layer by layer
Pull and resurface,
Embody as an act of political and cultural labour
A story,
that of Vernacular.
Prologue
For me, to begin a story built upon the idea of Vernacular space making, is beyond the discourse of architectural canon of my education, beyond what I have encountered and what I have desired to learn from the discourse of space making. I must turn to my existence to find the strings of my own experiences and stitch them together, to reshape a narrative of space making that in many parts of the world still have only one way to tell. This is a story of being in the world. It is a story of the social, the cultural, the political and the everyday. It is the only way of being in one side of the world, which exists in parallel to a thousand of other ways of being on other sides, harmoniously existing, where the centre and periphery, the local and the regional does not exist. I, them, and you are all an embodiment of the specific socio-political order that I, them, and you non-hierarchically live and function within. To construct this narrative, neither new nor inventory, this thesis steps into the path of my own experience, recollecting memories and articulating self-perception through language and words, producing a critical positioning towards vernacular practices of space making.
Abstract
The disciplinary framework of modern capitalist society and its subsequent use of instrumental thinking has constructed objective identification of time, space and knowledge, notions that are integral to the practices of space making. With the rise of technical thinking, and combined with the goals of efficiency and capitalist progress, modern society forms universalised extractive socio-economic structures that supersedes all traditional value systems. This is indeed true for the architectural canon. The dichotomic outlook used in describing vernacular practices of space making, as traditional, archaic, low-tech, thus pre-supposes static objectifications for vernacular practices that belong to the past. With this, the canon rejects the state of flux and hybridity embodied and embedded in vernacular practices of space making.
By close look into the vernacular landscape and built environment, specifically, but not limited to, Iran and India, this thesis redefines a hybrid definition for vernacular practices of space making. Careful consideration and study into the indigeneity, embedded into their temporal, spatial, and environmental organizations, will assist this inquiry to establish an active definition for time, space and knowledge, notions that are deeply contextualised and manifested into the everyday of social and cultural activities. In the search of yet another canon, this inquiry offers a critical reflection on contemporary practices of space making and architectural discourse, and aims to establish an egalitarian and hybrid identification for practices of space making, in which all social and cultural binaries are dismantled.
Narratives of Vernacular: Time, Space & Knowledge