Vernacular Architecture Society
Publishers in Cape Town

We aim to promote and encourage the study of South African vernacular architecture and its associated material culture, publishing original work, organising lectures, arranging excursions and study tours, by fostering research, and by any other means.

The Society was founded in 1964 as a result in folk buildings stimulated by a course at the University of Cape Town Summer School, led by Dr James Walton. In the same year Bernard Rudofsky put on the exhibition Architecture without Architects at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. He was the first to make use of the term vernacular in an architectural context, and brought the concept into the eye of the public and of mainstream architecture. Before then, little was known of the existence and characteristics of such buildings in the Western Cape adn hardly any published information was available. Since then, the Vernacs have promoted and encouraged the study of local vernacular architecture and its associated material culture, by fostering research, arranging excursions and study tours, organising lectures, publishing original work, and by any other means. They had come to claim the land which had been allocated to them in the new settlement. They found shelter by digging a trench and roofing it with a discarded sheet of corrugated iron. Using the skills they had learned on the battle fields of Flanders, they made themselves snug until they could build a home. We are quite extraordinarily lucky in South Africa in having evidence of man’s progress in home-making over a very long time available to the inquisitive twenty first century man. Stone Age man lived in our mountain rock shelters till a very short time ago. The nomadic herdsmen still live in the North West Cape, still able to make comfortable, portable, prefabricated, beehive huts. Their herds and grazing lands are diminished but their vernacular skills just survive. African traditional building made of clay, thatch, cattle manure and small trees no longer exist in all their variety and glory, as machine made building materials penetrate the whole world. We have many examples of this ancient and prized vernacular building but much more needs to be done. Not in our area, but could we spread our encouragement to a new generation of architect? The incomers of the 17th century and later brought their traditions and skills from Europe, North Africa and the Far East. They left their marks on their early simple buildings. Clay and thatch, minimal timber and limited stone were available building materials. In the dry, stormy places where clay was not available, ancient corbelled round homes were reproduced. Tracing the origin of builders from the N.W Scottish Isles to the West Indian Islands has been fascinating. Flat roofed clay bricked buildings seem to have come from around the Mediterranean. Given the mixture of slaves and servants of the Dutch East India Company and later sailors, soldiers and adventurers who turned up at the Cape, building skills and traditions have come from almost everywhere. A world wide interest in old buildings has been part of the gentrification of small homes in towns and villages away from big cities. Destruction of much of the old fabric is inevitable. We cannot grudge the gentle people their mod cons and good drains, but without being too judgmental, can we not slow down the philistines?