An excellent document on PBS on visionary art made by people who do not call themselves artists, called off the map
Some of these “backyard paradises” are well known such as the Palais Ideal by le Facteur Cheval or the Watts Towers in LA. Others such as the Bottle Village are new to me.
One of my favourite books is called Architecture without architects by Bernard Rudolfsky on vernacular architecture. A book that looks at buildings embedded in their context. Another excellent book on building on indigeneous buildings is Shelter by Bob Easton and Lloyd Kahn.
I used to work for the Japanese architect Hiroshi Hara on the Kyoto Station and the Umeda Sky Building. Hara is a professor at Tokyo University and during the late 70’s early 80’s he and his team travelled around to world catalogue-ing the vernacular architecture and urban design of houses and villages in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin and South America. Hara identified 100 elements which he would use as the design elements in his buildings. Often he would use all the 100 elements in some way or another, which explains for the complexity of most of his buildings. Eventhough the approach itself is very interesting, I could never get the feeling that he really succeeded in implementing these elements in the way Hara had seen them in their context around the world. It all looks too artificial to me. The difference being that vernacular architecture or the art created by the artists above is being implemented on an (I lack vocabulary here) “unconscious” level.
As trained professionals, will we ever be able to reach this level? This might sound very pessimistic, but I am sceptical about the “unlearning” element that an architect would need to go through to reach the level that vernacular architecture demands.
To be continued.