The VAF Legacy project team here in Utah recently visited the Muir-Poulsen house, built in 1897, which sits at the base of Bell and Little Cottonwood Canyons in the Salt Lake Valley. It is a one-story Victorian Eclectic house, a central block stone house with a projecting gable. The walls are composed of a rough hewn granite block over a similar foundation with a framed roof. Folklore abounds around this house but it is thought that the stone used to build the house was pulled out of the same quarry used for the famous Salt Lake Temple by the owner and builder, James A. Muir, a noted granite quarryman, farmer and early settler in this area of southeastern Salt Lake County. The house faces east and sits near the northeast corner of a large 68-acre farmstead which includes the farm and a historic orchard associated with the Muir residence and which still produces fruit. 

The team photographed the house and measured and documented the floor plans and elevations as groundwork is laid to begin renovating the house which has been vacant for a number of years.  The house sits within a large natural preserve, Dimple Dell, and the Dimple Dell Preservation Commission is the group supporting the project.

by XK Bromley

Using search engines or even a tangible Dictionary can leave someone more confused about what vernacular architecture is or is supposed to be when looking for answers. But what is the best way to summarize its meaning quickly? First, as far as a consensus of what Vernacular Architecture is, this may not be possible. Perspectives can change, and chances that everyone is at the same level of understanding for a concept isn't always feasible. But the following are some further thoughts beyond quick search definitions to help find its “gist”:

Building material culture creates matter and focal points that expand dialogues in our telling about space, place, and time. This telling, in part, is vernacular architecture. Some folks say that vernacular architecture's defining element is the design applied or everything but polite architecture (a theory to create a formal language for architecture to be universally enforced). Yet, vernacular architecture is not a set style or an opposite. See, vernacular architecture is an ongoing conversation (however rudimentary) about building. And what defines "building" is crucial to include when discussing Vernacular Architecture. 

Long before there were blue hard hats at construction sites carrying blueprints (also known as “The Polite”), buildings' planning and organization were done and continued to be done by a wide range of individuals and partnerships. This wide range of historical, anthropological, landscape, and traditional planning is part of vernacular architecture. Vernacular architecture is not everything but does mean it is a type of communication, a language, about the planning of a building.

This communication is a significant part, often the foundation, of building art, science, and business. The structure made from a building isn't just a house to skyscrapers. It is the building of just about anything one can imagine or already have done so. Therefore, discussing what vernacular architecture is may not be such a quick answer. But the discipline of vernacular architecture allows for windows of opportunity to show light in overlooked areas. It is a guide for the past and a pathway forward.

compiled by Travis Olson

Ahlstrom, Aaron A. “‘Wealth and Beauty in Trees’: State Forestry and the Revitalization of Massachusetts’s Rural Cultural Landscape, 1904–1919.” Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum 27, no. 2 (2020): 83. https://doi.org/10.5749/buildland.27.2.0083.

Andrzejewski, Anna Vemer, “‘Selling Sunshine’: The Mackle Company’s Marketing Campaign to Build Retirement and Vacation Communities in South Florida, 1945–1975.” Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum 27, no. 2 (2020): 59. https://doi.org/10.5749/buildland.27.2.0059.

Auji, Hala. “As the Dust (Un)Settles: Consuming Disaster in Beirut’s Reconstruction.” PLATFORM (blog), October 5, 2020. https://www.platformspace.net/home/as-the-dust-unsettles-consuming-disaster-in-beiruts-reconstruction.

Banerjee, Tridib. In the Images of Development: City Design in the Global South. Urban and Industrial Environments. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2021.

Barber, Daniel A. “Ventopenings: Conditioning in Pandemic Times. Part 1—Built In.” PLATFORM (blog), November 9, 2020. https://www.platformspace.net/home/ventopenings-conditioning-in-pandemic-times-part-1built-in.

———. “Ventopenings: Conditioning in Pandemic Times. Part 2—Air Change.” PLATFORM (blog), November 16, 2020. https://www.platformspace.net/home/ventopenings-conditioning-in-pandemic-times-part-2air-change.

Barber, Daniel A., Ahu Aydogan, Dorit Aviv, and Marta Gutman. “Ventopenings: Conditioning in Pandemic Times. Part 3—A Conversation about Air Quality.” PLATFORM (blog), December 14, 2020. https://www.platformspace.net/home/ventopenings-conditioning-in-pandemic-times-part-3a-conversation-about-air-quality.

Beaven, Brad. “‘One of the Toughest Streets in the World’: Exploring Male Violence, Class and Ethnicity in London’s Sailortown, c. 1850–1880.” Social History 46, no. 1 (January 2, 2021): 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/03071022.2021.1850052.

Berque, Augustin and Anne-Marie Feenberg-Dibon. Thinking through Landscape. London ; New York: Routledge, 2013.

Beyond the West: New Global Architecture. Berlin: Gestalten, 2020.

Biuk, Siara. “Shell Button-Making on the Delmarva Peninsula, ca. 1930s-1990s.” Northeast Historical Archaeology 47, no. 1 (January 29, 2021). https://orb.binghamton.edu/neha/vol47/iss1/3.

Bond, Carly. “Restoring a Cast-Iron Secret at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.” APT Bulletin: The Journal of Preservation Technology 51, no. 2/3 (2020): 5–12. https://doi.org/10.2307/26943422.

Brook, Richard. “The National Computing Centre: ‘White Heat,’ Modernization, and Postwar Manchester.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 79, no. 4 (December 1, 2020): 438–58. https://doi.org/10.1525/jsah.2020.79.4.438.

Brown, Jayna. Black Utopias: Speculative Life and the Music of Other Worlds. Durham: Duke University Press, 2021.

Brown, Thomas J., and Svea Larson. “Swedish Migration, Naval Militarism, and Industrial Modernity: The John Ericsson Memorial in Washington, DC.” Winterthur Portfolio 54, no. 2–3 (June 1, 2020): 117–48. https://doi.org/10.1086/711868.

Bryant, Chad Carl. Prague: Belonging in the Modern City. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2021.

Buttenwieser, Ann L. The Floating Pool Lady: A Quest to Bring a Public Pool to New York City’s Waterfront. Ithaca [New York]: Three Hills, an imprint of Cornell University Press, 2021.

Cannady, Lauren R. “Thought Patterns in the Space of an Eighteenth-Century French Curiosity Cabinet.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 79, no. 3 (September 1, 2020): 286–307. https://doi.org/10.1525/jsah.2020.79.3.286.

Carr, Sara Jensen. Topography of Wellness: How Health and Disease Shaped the American Landscape. Richmond: University of Virginia Press, 2021.

Carso, Kerry Dean. Follies in America: A History of Garden and Park Architecture. Ithaca [New York]: Cornell University Press, 2021.

Carter, Schuyler S. “The Lost Legacy of the Forgotten HBCU.” PLATFORM (blog), February 15, 2021. https://www.platformspace.net/home/the-lost-legacy-of-the-forgotten-hbcu.

Chiarappa, Michael J. “The Gyre Narrows, Again: Vernacular Buildings, Vernacular Landscapes, and Environmental History.” Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum 27, no. 2 (2020): 1. https://doi.org/10.5749/buildland.27.2.0001.

Chiu, Chen-Yu, Philip Goad, Peter Myers, and Cem Yılgın. “Ideas and Ideals in Jørn Utzon’s Courtyard Houses: Dwelling, Nature, and Chinese Architecture.” The Journal of Architecture 25, no. 5 (July 3, 2020): 513–57. https://doi.org/10.1080/13602365.2020.1788115.

Conklin, Emily. “Reclaiming the Red Hook Waterfront.” PLATFORM (blog), November 9, 2020. https://www.platformspace.net/home/reclaiming-the-red-hook-waterfront.

De Almeida, Décio Otoni. “A Building without Doors: Vilanova Artigas and the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism Building at the University of São Paulo.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 80, no. 1 (March 1, 2021): 85–101. https://doi.org/10.1525/jsah.2021.80.1.85.

Deutsch, Nathaniel, and Michael Casper. A Fortress in Brooklyn: Race, Real Estate, and the Making of Hasidic Williamsburg. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021.

Dodson, Michael S. “The Architectural Legacy of Kuldip Singh (1934-2020).” PLATFORM (blog), January 18, 2021. https://www.platformspace.net/home/the-architectural-legacy-of-kuldip-singh-1934-2020.

Engelberg, Isaac. “Salesforce Park’s Sleight of Hand.” PLATFORM (blog), October 19, 2020. https://www.platformspace.net/home/salesforce-parks-sleight-of-hand.

Fair, Alistair. Modern Playhouses: An Architectural History of Britain’s New Theatres, 1945-1985. London and New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.

Fowler, Jonathan, Andre Robichaud, and Colin Laroque. “Dating the Morris House: A Study of Heritage Value in Nova Scotia.” Northeast Historical Archaeology 47, no. 1 (January 29, 2021). https://orb.binghamton.edu/neha/vol47/iss1/11.

Frank, Stephanie. “Industrial Networks and Urban Development: Kansas City’s Film Row District and National Film Distribution.” Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum 27, no. 1 (2020): 46. https://doi.org/10.5749/buildland.27.1.0046.

Franklin, Alex, and Nora Schuurman. “Aging Animal Bodies: Horse Retirement Yards as Relational Spaces of Liminality, Dwelling and Negotiation.” Social & Cultural Geography 20, no. 7 (September 2, 2019): 918–37. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2017.1392592.

Gallagher, Sean. “The Prison of Public Works: Enslaved People and State Formation at Virginia’s Chiswell Lead Mines, 1775–1786.” Journal of Southern History 86, no. 4 (2020): 777–804. https://doi.org/10.1353/soh.2020.0239.

Giesen, James C. “The View from Rose Hill: Environmental, Architectural, and Cultural Recovery on a Piedmont Landscape.” Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum 27, no. 2 (2020): 19. https://doi.org/10.5749/buildland.27.2.0019.

Grama, Emanuela. “A Deconstruction Story: Property, Memory, and Temporality in a Transylvanian Village.” History and Anthropology 31, no. 5 (October 19, 2020): 618–42. https://doi.org/10.1080/02757206.2020.1830385.

Gutman, Marta, Matthew Gordon Lasner, and Kishwar Rizvi. “Voting in the Age of Pandemic.” PLATFORM (blog), November 2, 2020. https://www.platformspace.net/home/voting-in-the-age-of-pandemic.

Hall, Valerie. “‘Wild Neat Cattle…’:  Using Domesticated Livestock to Engineer Colonial Landscapes in Seventeenth-Century Maryland.” Northeast Historical Archaeology 47, no. 1 (January 29, 2021). https://orb.binghamton.edu/neha/vol47/iss1/8.

Hartley, Roger C. Monumental Harm: Reckoning with Jim Crow Era Confederate Monuments. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2021.

Headley, Gwyn ; Meulenkamp, Wim. The English Folly: The Edifice Complex. Oxford: Historic England Publishing, 2020.

Hein, Carola, and Dirk Schubert. “Resilience and Path Dependence: A Comparative Study of the Port Cities of London, Hamburg, and Philadelphia.” Journal of Urban History 47, no. 2 (March 2021): 389–419. https://doi.org/10.1177/0096144220925098.

Hemphill, C. Dallett, Rodney Hessinger, and Daniel K. Richter. Philadelphia Stories: People and Their Places in Early America. Early American Studies. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021.

Herscher, Andrew. “The Right to the Creative City in the Era of #blacklivesmatter.” PLATFORM (blog), February 8, 2021. https://www.platformspace.net/home/the-right-to-the-creative-city-in-the-era-of-blacklivesmatter.

Hubbard, Phil. “Enthusiasm, Craft and Authenticity on the High Street: Micropubs as ‘Community Fixers.’” Social & Cultural Geography 20, no. 6 (July 24, 2019): 763–84. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2017.1380221.

Hultzsch, Anne. “Sharing Knowledge, Promoting the Built: The Origins of the Architectural Magazine in Nineteenth-Century Europe.” The Journal of Architecture 25, no. 7 (October 2, 2020): 799–808. https://doi.org/10.1080/13602365.2020.1841940.

Ignaccolo, Carmelo. “How Past Epidemics Gave New Public Spaces to Cities.” PLATFORM (blog). Accessed March 21, 2021. https://www.platformspace.net/home/how-past-epidemics-gave-new-public-spaces-to-cities.

Janesko, Sarah. “Cultivating Historic Farms: A Study of Late-Nineteenth Century Maryland Farms.” Northeast Historical Archaeology 47, no. 1 (January 29, 2021). https://orb.binghamton.edu/neha/vol47/iss1/5.

Kezer, Zeynep. “The Projections of a Roof: An Ottoman Armenian Family Residence in Nineteenth-Century Eastern Turkey.” PLATFORM (blog), November 23, 2020. https://www.platformspace.net/home/the-projections-of-a-roof-an-ottoman-armenian-family-residence-in-nineteenth-century-eastern-turkey.

Khorshid, Reem. “Experiencing the Sounds and Silences of Cairo.” PLATFORM (blog), October 26, 2020. https://www.platformspace.net/home/experiencing-the-sounds-and-silences-of-cairo.

Kingwell, Mark. The Ethics of Architecture. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2020.

Kroessler, Jeffrey A. Sunnyside Gardens: Planning and Preservation in a Historic Garden Suburb. Empire state editions. New York, New York: Fordham University Press, 2021.

Kuutma, Kristin, and Aet Annist. “Home and Heritage out of Place: The Disjunction of Exile.” International Journal of Heritage Studies 26, no. 10 (October 2, 2020): 942–54. https://doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2020.1714695.

Lahiji, Nadir. Architecture or Revolution. New York: Routledge, 2020.

Littmann, William. “Viewpoint: Walk This Way: Reconsidering Walking for the Study of Cultural Landscapes.” Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum 27, no. 1 (2020): 3. https://doi.org/10.5749/buildland.27.1.0003.

Macaulay-Lewis, Elizabeth. Antiquity in Gotham: The Ancient Architecture of New York City. New York: Empire State Editions, 2021.

Margalith, Dana. “Memory Enabling Dwelling: Remembrance and Amnesia in Louis I. Kahn’s Design for the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California.” The Journal of Architecture 25, no. 5 (July 3, 2020): 602–27. https://doi.org/10.1080/13602365.2020.1791931.

Martin, Laura Renata. “Fighting for the Working-Class City.” Radical History Review 2021, no. 139 (January 1, 2021): 145-65. https://doi.org/10.1215/01636545-8822651.

McEvoy, Maura, Basha Burwell, and Kathleen Hackett. The Main House. New York: Vendome Press, 2021.

McMurry, Sally Ann. “The American Farm Pond.” Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum 27, no. 2 (2020): 39. https://doi.org/10.5749/buildland.27.2.0039.

Moran, Dominique, and Tom Disney. “‘It’s a Horrible, Horrible Feeling’: Ghosting and the Layered Geographies of Absent–Presence in the Prison Visiting Room.” Social & Cultural Geography 20, no. 5 (June 13, 2019): 692–709. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2017.1373303.

Moses, Kelema Lee. “Lessons from Hawai‘i.” PLATFORM (blog), October 19, 2020. https://www.platformspace.net/home/lessons-from-hawaii.

Nelson, Louis P. “Preserve (Some of) the Wreckage.” PLATFORM (blog), January 25, 2021. https://www.platformspace.net/home/preserve-some-of-the-wreckage.

Norwood, Bryan E. “Whiteness and the Architectural Profession in the United States.” PLATFORM (blog), September 21, 2020. https://www.platformspace.net/home/whiteness-and-the-architectural-profession-in-the-united-states.

Ore, Janet. “Viewpoint: Landscape Disputed: What Environmental History Can Show Us.” Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum 27, no. 2 (2020): 5. https://doi.org/10.5749/buildland.27.2.0005.

Ornelas-Higdon, Julia. “Agricultural Citizenship and the German Winemakers of Los Angeles County, 1853–1891.” Pacific Historical Review 89, no. 4 (September 29, 2020): 465–99. https://doi.org/10.1525/phr.2020.89.4.465.

O’Rourke, Kathryn E. “Houston Is Almost All Right: Postmodernism on the Texas Gulf Coast.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 79, no. 3 (September 1, 2020): 308–30. https://doi.org/10.1525/jsah.2020.79.3.308.

Pabón-Charneco, Arleen. Architecture History, Theory and Preservation: Prehistory to the Middle Ages, 2021. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9780429441356.

Pearson, Lynn F. England’s Co-Operative Movement: An Architectural History, 2020. http://public.eblib.com/choice/PublicFullRecord.aspx?p=6389793.

Pivo, Vyta. “‘PhDs among the Possums’: Paul Rudolph’s Burroughs Wellcome Headquarters and the Transformation of Laboratory Architecture.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 80, no. 1 (March 1, 2021): 68–84. https://doi.org/10.1525/jsah.2021.80.1.68.

Platt, Sarah E. “Urban Dialectics, Misrememberings, and Memory-Work: The Halsey Map of Charleston, South Carolina.” International Journal of Historical Archaeology 24, no. 4 (December 2020): 989–1014. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-019-00533-8.

Rault, Jasmine. “Window Walls and Other Tricks of Transparency: Digital, Colonial, and Architectural Modernity.” American Quarterly 72, no. 4 (2020): 937–60. https://doi.org/10.1353/aq.2020.0053.

Reinberger, Mark. “Research Notes: Using Dendrochronology to Date First-Period Houses in the Georgia Backcountry.” Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum 27, no. 1 (2020): 65. https://doi.org/10.5749/buildland.27.1.0065.

Rosen, Robert N. A Short History of Charleston. Revised and Expanded edition. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2021.

Rotramel, Ariella. “Discarding Homes: New York City Public Housing and Single Mother-Led Households (1963–2016).” Women’s History Review 30, no. 2 (February 23, 2021): 320–38. https://doi.org/10.1080/09612025.2020.1757884.

Rowen, Jonah. “Architecture and Slavery.” PLATFORM (blog), September 14, 2020. https://www.platformspace.net/home/architecture-and-slavery.

Ruberto, Laura E., and Joseph Sciorra. “‘Columbus might be dwarfed to obscurity’: Italian Americans’ Engagement with Columbus Monuments in a Time of Decolonization,” Public Memory in the Context of Transnational Migration and Displacement: Migrants and Monuments, Ed. Sabine Marschall. Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. p. 61-93.

Ruberto, Laura E., and Joseph Sciorra. “Toppling Columbus, Recasting Italian Americans,” Process History, the blog of the Organization of American Historians, The Journal of American History, and The American Historian: July 23, 2020. http://www.processhistory.org/rubertosciorra-toppling-columbus/ 

Sachs, Avagail. “The Garden in the Machine: Architecture and Landscape in the Tennessee Valley.” PLATFORM (blog), September 28, 2020. https://www.platformspace.net/home/the-garden-in-the-machine-architecture-and-landscape-in-the-tennessee-valley.

Saffarini, Hassan. “Rehabilitation of Exterior Stone Masonry at the Union Station Head House in Toronto.” APT Bulletin: The Journal of Preservation Technology 51, no. 2/3 (2020): 57–64. https://doi.org/10.2307/26943428.

Sandler, Maya C. “Negotiating Care.” Radical History Review 2021, no. 139 (January 1, 2021): 166–77. https://doi.org/10.1215/01636545-8822663.

Saumarez Smith, Otto. Boom Cities: Architect Planners and the Politics of Radical Urban Renewal in 1960s Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.

Schleuning, Sarah, Cindi Strauss, Sarah Horne, Martha MacLeod, and Berry Lowden Perkins. Electrifying Design: A Century of Lighting. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021.

Schmidt, Freek. Passion and Control: Dutch Architectural Culture of the Eighteenth Century. New York: Routledge, 2020.

Schreffler, Michael. “A Triumphal Arch for the Count of Moctezuma: Architectural Poetics and Artistic Competition at the Cathedral of Mexico City, ca. 1670–1700.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 79, no. 4 (December 1, 2020): 414–37. https://doi.org/10.1525/jsah.2020.79.4.414.

Scott, Darius. “Oral History and Emplacement in ‘Nowhere at All:’ The Role of Personal and Family Narratives in Rural Black Community-Building.” Social & Cultural Geography 20, no. 8 (October 13, 2019): 1094–1113. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2017.1413205.

Seggerman, Alex Dika. “Umrah in Atlantic City: The Representation of Muslim-American Space in Ramy.” PLATFORM (blog), December 7, 2020. https://www.platformspace.net/home/umrah-in-atlantic-city-the-representation-of-muslim-american-space-in-ramy.

Sen, Arijit. “Stories from the Flatlands.” PLATFORM (blog), September 28, 2020. https://www.platformspace.net/home/stories-from-the-flatlands.

Sharp. “Research Notes: New Discoveries in Old Sources: A Neglected Ledger Reveals the Persons and Processes of Building in Late-Colonial Virginia.” Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum 27, no. 1 (2020): 79. https://doi.org/10.5749/buildland.27.1.0079.

Smith, Ryan K. “Disappearing the Enslaved: The Destruction and Recovery of Richmond’s Second African Burial Ground.” Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum 27, no. 1 (2020): 17. https://doi.org/10.5749/buildland.27.1.0017.

Snyder, Robert W. “Looking for Cree Country, Finding Mushkegowuk.” PLATFORM (blog), February 1, 2021. https://www.platformspace.net/home/looking-for-cree-country-finding-mushkegowuk.

Spady, Matthew. The Neighborhood Manhattan Forgot: Audubon Park and the Families Who Shaped It. New York: Fordham University Press, 2020.

Sparke, Penny. Nature inside: Plants and Flowers in the Modern Interior. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020.

Speer, Jessie. “Urban Makeovers, Homeless Encampments, and the Aesthetics of Displacement.” Social & Cultural Geography 20, no. 4 (May 4, 2019): 575–95. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2018.1509115.

Stewart, Alec R. “Visible But Unseen: The Material Cultures of Los Angeles’s Indoor Swap Meets.” PLATFORM (blog), February 15, 2021. https://www.platformspace.net/home/visible-but-unseen-the-material-cultures-of-los-angeless-indoor-swap-meets.

Street, Sean. The Sound of a Room: Memory and the Auditory Presence of Place. New York: Routledge, 2020.

Strunk, Christopher, and Margaret Richardson. “Cultivating Belonging: Refugees, Urban Gardens, and Placemaking in the Midwest, U.S.A.” Social & Cultural Geography 20, no. 6 (July 24, 2019): 826–48. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2017.1386323.

Sugarman, Joe. “The House That Hutchinson Built: Preserving a Touchstone to Edisto Island’s Black History.” Preservation Magazine, Winter 2021. https://savingplaces.org/stories/the-house-that-hutchinson-built-preserving-a-touchstone-to-edisto-islands-black-history#.YFbAVGhKjIU.

Sullivan, Edward J. “Re-Thinking Roberto Burle Marx.” PLATFORM (blog), February 22, 2021. https://www.platformspace.net/home/re-thinking-roberto-burle-marx.

Thabet, Andrea. “‘From Sagebrush to Symphony.’” Pacific Historical Review 89, no. 4 (September 29, 2020): 557–99. https://doi.org/10.1525/phr.2020.89.4.557.

Tippey, Brett. “Richard Neutra in Spain: Consumerism, Competition, and U.S. Air Force Housing.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 80, no. 1 (March 1, 2021): 48–67. https://doi.org/10.1525/jsah.2021.80.1.48.

Tomich, Dale W., Rafael de Bivar Marquese, Reinaldo Funes Monzote, and Carlos Venegas Fornias. Reconstructing the Landscapes of Slavery: A Visual History of the Plantation in the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2021.

Trigg, Heather B. “Spanish-Pueblo Interactions in New Mexico’s Seventeenth-Century Spanish Households: Negotiations of Knowledge and Power in Practice.” International Journal of Historical Archaeology 24, no. 3 (September 2020): 618–41. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-019-00537-4.

Upton, Dell. “The Fortification of Washington, or, Two Weeks in the Red Zone.” PLATFORM (blog), February 8, 2021. https://www.platformspace.net/home/the-fortification-of-washington-or-two-weeks-in-the-red-zone.

Urban, Florian. “Bottom-Up Postmodernism: Unauthorized Church Architecture in Socialist Poland.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 79, no. 4 (December 1, 2020): 459–77. https://doi.org/10.1525/jsah.2020.79.4.459.

Verpoest, Luc, Leen Engelen, Jan Schmidt, and Pieter Uyttenhove, eds. Revival After the Great War Rebuild, Remember, Repair, Reform. Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press, 2021. https://muse.jhu.edu/book/80816/.

Vitale, Patrick. Nuclear Suburbs: Cold War Technoscience and the Pittsburgh Renaissance. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2020.

Vuic, Jason. The Swamp Peddlers: How Lot Sellers, Land Scammers, and Retirees Built Modern Florida and Transformed the American Dream. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2021.

Waits, Mira Rai. “The House the Prison Built.” PLATFORM (blog), October 12, 2020. https://www.platformspace.net/home/the-house-the-prison-built.

Walker, Nathaniel. Victorian Visions of Suburban Utopia. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.

Warren, Chris. “The Rich History of 5 Top Ski Towns.” Preservation Magazine, Winter 2021. https://savingplaces.org/stories/the-rich-history-of-5-top-ski-towns#.YFbATmhKjIU.

Watson, Sophie. “Liquid Passions: Bodies, Publics and City Waters.” Social & Cultural Geography 20, no. 7 (September 2, 2019): 960–80. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2017.1404121.

Yarker, Sophie. “Reconceptualising Comfort as Part of Local Belonging: The Use of Confidence, Commitment and Irony.” Social & Cultural Geography 20, no. 4 (May 4, 2019): 534–50. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2017.1373301.

In May 2021, UVA Press will publish the Buildings of Mississippi co-authored by VAF board member Jennifer V. O. Baughn, Michael W. Fazio, and Mary Warren Miller.

This guidebook surveys a range of such locations, from Native American mounds and villages to plantation outbuildings that bear witness to the lives of enslaved African Americans, from twentieth-century enclaves built for sawmill workers and oil tycoons to neighborhoods that bolstered black Mississippians during segregation, and from the vernacular streetscapes of small towns to modern architecture in Greenville, Meridian, Jackson, and Biloxi. In the pages of this latest volume in the celebrated Buildings of the United States series, newly redesigned in a more user-friendly format, readers will come to know the history of close to 600 sites, illustrated by 250 photographs (most in full color) and 29 maps, including such wide-ranging places as Longwood and the Museum of African American History and Culture in Natchez, Vicksburg National Military Park, Winterville Mounds, the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, the Neshoba County Jail and Courthouse, the University of Mississippi and William Faulkner’s Rowan Oak in Oxford, and the homes of Medgar and Myrlie Evers and Eudora Welty in Jackson.

This is a volume in the Buildings of the United States series of the Society of Architectural Historians

In May 2021, Andrew S. Dolkart will be presented with the New York Landmarks Conservancy's Lucy G. Moses Award for Preservation Leadership, the organization's highest honor for outstanding preservation efforts.

Maryland Public Television (MPT) recently posted a documentary "Tales of Belair at Bowie" (available for viewing on its website) about one of Maryland's first planned communities, and just a few minutes into the film features VAF member Jaime Jacobs leading the VAF tour of the community in 2010.  

Six watercolor vignettes of Rumford, Maine by Tom Leytham have been commissioned for a report “The River Valley” published by the American Roundtable, sponsored by the Architectural League of New York and funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Graham Foundation. The comprehensive report was edited by Aaron Cayer PhD Assistant Professor of Architectural History, University of New Mexico, and Kerri Arsenault, environmental writer and editor.

For more of Tom's work, see his website.

Myron Stachiw, Independent Scholar and historical consultant, contributed several entries on Ukrainian vernacular architecture, including "Ukraine-Cultures and Habitats," "Ukrainian Churches," "Ukrainian Carpathian Region-Cultures and Habitats," "Crimea and southern oblasts-Cultures and Habitats," Podilia-Cultures and Habitats," "Slobozhanshchyna-Cultures and Habitats," and "Ukrainian vernacular architecture of the northern Great Plains, North America- Cultures and Habitats" in the forthcoming  Encyclopedia of the Vernacular Architecture of the World, 2nd edition, ed. Marcel Vellinga (London, UK: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2021). Overall, the encyclopedia will feature 3,000 illustrated entries written by the world’s leading scholars of vernacular architecture and material culture.

On March 4th Amber gave an evening talk sponsored by the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation and the Center for the Preservation of Civil Rights Sites at the University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design. Her presentation re-examined the legacy and impact of the work of the Afro-American Bicentennial Corporation (ABC) in Washington, DC.

Amber was also one of the numerous contributors to the recently published Architectural Guide: Sub-Saharan Africa edited by Philipp Meuser and Adil Dalbai. Her essay, “Firmitas, Utilitas, Profectus: The Architecture of Exploitation in Ghana,” covers the history and evolution of Elmina and Cape Coast Castle in Ghana.