Project MUSE®: Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/360
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum.daily12026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 14 (2007) through current issueLatest Articles: Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture ForumTWOProject MUSE®Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum1934-68321936-0886Latest articles in Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Editor's Note
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/972449
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This issue illustrates anew the wide variety of scholarship in vernacular architecture studies we publish in Buildings & Landscapes. Here, we gain insight on the Vernacular Architecture Forum's early years from an interview with Thomas Carter, the third oral history published in these pages from the Cooperstown Graduate Program at the State University of New York at Oneonta project, shepherded by former Buildings & Landscapes editor Cynthia Falk. Carter's career puts into focus how both folklore studies and fieldwork fruitfully inform the interpretation of vernacular architecture, particularly in his work in Utah and the American West. In his research article, Ryan Smith considers the American lighthouse
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/360/image/coversmallEditor's Note2025-10-28text/htmlen-USEditor's Note2025-10-282025TWOProject MUSE®97822026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-10-28An Interview with Thomas Carter
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/972450
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One of the strengths of the Vernacular Architecture Forum (VAF) is that it brings people together. Members, past and present, have come from different places and different disciplines and draw from different experiences. Thomas (Tom) Carter came to VAF from the western United States, where he has spent his career studying the built environment, especially that shaped and reshaped by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Utah. That geographic orientation made him unusual among the organization's early members. He also brought to VAF the methodologies of a folklorist, including a strong emphasis on fieldwork. Over decades he has championed the careful documentation of buildings and the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/360/image/coversmallAn Interview with Thomas Carter2025-10-28text/htmlen-USAn Interview with Thomas Carter2025-10-282025TWOProject MUSE®530612026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-10-28Beacons for a Troubled Age: The American Lighthouse Preservation Movement in St. Augustine, Florida
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/972451
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The historic lighthouse tower at St. Augustine, Florida, stands among the tallest in the United States (Figure 1). Located on Anastasia Island, just across the harbor from the nation's oldest city, the station traces its legacy back to previous watchtowers from the Spanish colonial era. Today's spiral-striped beacon has witnessed any number of heavy storms and shipwrecks since its construction in 1874. Its original first-order Fresnel lens, still in place and standing nine feet tall in the lantern room, represents advanced optic technology and artistry. Generations of hardy resident keepers and their families staffed the light station as it grew to encompass a brick two-story keeper's duplex and multiple
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/360/image/coversmallBeacons for a Troubled Age: The American Lighthouse Preservation Movement in St. Augustine, Florida2025-10-28text/htmlen-USBeacons for a Troubled Age: The American Lighthouse Preservation Movement in St. Augustine, Florida2025-10-282025TWOProject MUSE®2479952026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-10-28Adventures in Gracious Living: Grey Gables and the Architecture of the Third Age
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/972452
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According to the organization's lore, the founding of the American Association of Retired Persons, better known as AARP, is rooted in a story about housing. As director of welfare for the California Retired Teachers Association, Ethel Percy Andrus, who would later found AARP in 1958, was entrusted with making house calls to retired teachers. On a Saturday morning in 1946, Andrus received a tip about a former teacher who was ill and needed assistance. Yet, when Andrus tried the door of the bungalow at the address she was given, no one responded. A neighbor suggested that she might instead be looking for the old woman living in a chicken coop at the back of the property. For the remainder of her career, Andrus
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/360/image/coversmallAdventures in Gracious Living: Grey Gables and the Architecture of the Third Age2025-10-28text/htmlen-USAdventures in Gracious Living: Grey Gables and the Architecture of the Third Age2025-10-282025TWOProject MUSE®1594592026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-10-28Object Lesson: Shop + House: The Chinese Shophouse as a Transpacific Vernacular Form
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/972453
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On May 31, 2008, the Wing Luke Museum reopened its doors at its new location, the East Kong Yick Building (1909–10) in Seattle, Washington, commissioned by Chinese owners (Figure 1). This building was a derivative of the Chinese shop-house, a vernacular dwelling that served both commercial (shop) and residential (house) functions. As the only pan–Asian Pacific American museum in the United States, the Wing Luke Museum offers historic immersion tours inside the East Kong Yick Building, allowing visitors to travel back to the early twentieth century. Visitors can explore one of the eleven-by-thirteen-foot residential hotel rooms or watch pig feet being prepared in the communal kitchen.1 The East Kong Yick Building is
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/360/image/coversmallObject Lesson: Shop + House: The Chinese Shophouse as a Transpacific Vernacular Form2025-10-28text/htmlen-USObject Lesson: Shop + House: The Chinese Shophouse as a Transpacific Vernacular Form2025-10-282025TWOProject MUSE®1422522026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-10-28Research Note: Collective Clutter: Shaping Community in Four American Hackerspaces
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/972454
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Hackerspaces are volunteer-operated technology and craft nonprofits, housed in rented buildings and rooms, where users pay flexible membership fees to access workspace, attend classes, and participate in collective governance processes. This Research Note focuses on the hackerspaces called Double Union and Noisebridge in San Franciso, California, and i3Detroit and OmniCorpDetroit in the metropolitan area of Detroit, Michigan (Figure 1). Drawing on spatial ethnography conducted from 2018 to 2023, including interviews, photographs, and participant observation notes, I explore how these contemporary, digitally savvy, and craft-oriented cultures inhabit the built landscape and shape their spaces.1 I seek to demonstrate
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/360/image/coversmallResearch Note: Collective Clutter: Shaping Community in Four American Hackerspaces2025-10-28text/htmlen-USResearch Note: Collective Clutter: Shaping Community in Four American Hackerspaces2025-10-282025TWOProject MUSE®1697652026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-10-28Design Agendas: Modern Architecture in St. Louis, 1930s–1970s by Eric P. Mumford and Michael E. Willis (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/972455
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In Design Agendas: Modern Architecture in St. Louis: 1930s–1970s, curators Eric P. Mumford and Michael E. Willis crafted a rather progressive exhibition on regional modernist architecture, especially considering that this exhibition took place in a university art school museum housed in the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. While the exhibition's spacious galleries displayed many elegant photographs of architectural form including Minoru Yamasaki's Lambert International Airport Terminal (1956), poignant drawings by master designers such as Erich Mendelsohn and Eero Saarinen, and even rarely seen models, the curators also managed to emphasize lived experience
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/360/image/coversmallDesign Agendas: Modern Architecture in St. Louis, 1930s–1970s by Eric P. Mumford and Michael E. Willis (review)2025-10-28text/htmlen-USDesign Agendas: Modern Architecture in St. Louis, 1930s–1970s by Eric P. Mumford and Michael E. Willis (review)2025-10-282025TWOProject MUSE®334942026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-10-28The Material World of Eyre Hall: Four Centuries of Chesapeake History ed. by Carl R. Lounsbury (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/972456
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This volume, edited by longtime Vernacular Architecture Forum member Carl Lounsbury, is an exceptional and captivating exploration of Eyre Hall, a historic gem nestled in picturesque Northampton County, Virginia. Built in 1759 and expanded over the years, Eyre Hall remains one of the best-preserved colonial plantation seats in the region. Given the plantation's location along the Chesapeake Bay on Cherrystone Inlet, its material history illustrates a complex, centuries-long binding with the Atlantic World. The property, first settled in the 1680s, is still owned by descendants of the Eyre family. Today it is a National Historic Landmark that features gardens open to the public year-round. A masterpiece of
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/360/image/coversmallThe Material World of Eyre Hall: Four Centuries of Chesapeake History ed. by Carl R. Lounsbury (review)2025-10-28text/htmlen-USThe Material World of Eyre Hall: Four Centuries of Chesapeake History ed. by Carl R. Lounsbury (review)2025-10-282025TWOProject MUSE®333912026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-10-28The Row House in Washington, DC: A History by Alison K. Hoagland (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/972457
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As an architectural type, the row house is a worldwide phenomenon, appearing in different styles and forms in cities on all continents. The row house type yields buildings that are highly efficient in their basic spatial organization. With flexibility based on use, family size, and wealth, this form is also amenable to variety in stylistic expression. Since the character of a city is determined by its ordinary neighborhoods in addition to its civic and commercial buildings, the row house significantly shapes urban appearance and day-to-day experience.The contrast between ordinary neighborhoods and the monumental buildings at the city center is at its zenith in the context of Washington, DC. In this book focused on
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/360/image/coversmallThe Row House in Washington, DC: A History by Alison K. Hoagland (review)2025-10-28text/htmlen-USThe Row House in Washington, DC: A History by Alison K. Hoagland (review)2025-10-282025TWOProject MUSE®134722026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-10-28The Architecture of the Bight of Biafra: Spatial Entanglements by Joseph Godlewski (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/972458
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Sometimes the road takes a turn we do not expect. On his first visit to Nigeria in 2010, Joseph Godlewski assumed his research would engage the architectural and urban planning implications of a recently opened free-trade zone at Tinapa in coastal Nigeria. Curious about the architectural implications of global neoliberalism in an African context, expressed through luxury hotels, aquatic parks, video arcades, and nightclubs, Godlewski brought his training in architecture and urban development to a complex contemporary context. But when he arrived, he found an empty shell—a project begun but not completed, with lizards and a handful of security guards instead of crowds, lights, and dynamic energy. Puzzled, he turned
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/360/image/coversmallThe Architecture of the Bight of Biafra: Spatial Entanglements by Joseph Godlewski (review)2025-10-28text/htmlen-USThe Architecture of the Bight of Biafra: Spatial Entanglements by Joseph Godlewski (review)2025-10-282025TWOProject MUSE®110772026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-10-28The Shell Builders: Tabby Architecture of Beaufort, South Carolina, and the Sea Islands by Colin Brooker (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/972459
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Colin Brooker, principal of Brooker Architectural Design Consultants, has drawn on decades of experience with a construction material and method called "tabby" to detail its development and use based on surveys, conservation work, archival research, and even his own home ownership. While tabby is found throughout the southeastern United States, this book focuses primarily on the material's use in Beaufort, South Carolina, and the neighboring Sea Islands.Tabby refers to both material composition and a method of construction. A formed fabric is considered tabby if it was created through the use of movable or reusable formwork. Formwork is made of wooden boards approximately two inches thick and one to two feet high
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/360/image/coversmallThe Shell Builders: Tabby Architecture of Beaufort, South Carolina, and the Sea Islands by Colin Brooker (review)2025-10-28text/htmlen-USThe Shell Builders: Tabby Architecture of Beaufort, South Carolina, and the Sea Islands by Colin Brooker (review)2025-10-282025TWOProject MUSE®144562026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-10-28Design and the Vernacular: Interpretations for Contemporary Architectural Practice and Theory ed. by Paul Memmott et al. (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/972460
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At a time when architects and cultural historians are reexamining the role of the "vernacular" in design practice, Design and the Vernacular: Interpretations for Contemporary Architectural Practice and Theory is a welcome contribution. Bringing attention to the built environments and Indigenous knowledges of the often-overlooked regions of Australasia and Oceania, the sixteen essays in this volume narrate the ways in which vernacular architecture undermines persistent stereotypes of timeless and unchanging building traditions bound to a particular place. Instead, the authors collected here demonstrate, at a variety of scales, how vernacular architectures both adapt to and shape modern building practices and
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/360/image/coversmallDesign and the Vernacular: Interpretations for Contemporary Architectural Practice and Theory ed. by Paul Memmott et al. (review)2025-10-28text/htmlen-USDesign and the Vernacular: Interpretations for Contemporary Architectural Practice and Theory ed. by Paul Memmott et al. (review)2025-10-282025TWOProject MUSE®161952026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-10-28