Vernacular Architecture and Landscape Architecture Resource Guide: Surveys

Below are selected examples of additional materials useful for the study of vernacular architecture, divided into 3 subcategories:General Surveys, Traditional Building Techniques and Materials, and Surveys by Geographic Region. These surveys provide more specific overviews and information than dictionaries or encyclopedias, or the books listed in the Methodology section.

• Architecture without architects: a short introduction to non-pedigreed architecture / Bernard Rudofsky. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987. 
• Atlas of vernacular architecture of the world / Marcel Vellinga, Paul Oliver and Alexander Bridge. Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge, 2007. 
• Buildings without architects : a global guide to everyday architecture / John May, New York : Rizzoli, ©2010. 
• Dwellings, settlements, and tradition, cross-cultural perspectives / edited by Jean-Paul Bourdier, Nezar AlSayyad. Lanham: University Press of America; Berkeley: International Association for the Study of Traditional Environments, 1989. 
• Dwellings: the vernacular house world wide / Paul Oliver. London; New York: Phaidon, 2003. 
• Exploring everyday landscapes / edited by Annmarie Adams and Sally McMurry. 1st ed. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1997. 
• Farm: the vernacular tradition of working buildings / David Larkin ; principal photography by Paul Rocheleau. New York: Monacelli Press, 1995. 
• House form and culture / Amos Rapoport. Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall [1969]. 
• Material culture / Henry Glassie; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999. 
• On Adam's house in Paradise: the idea of the primitive hut in architectural history / Joseph Rykwert. 2nd ed. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1981. 
• People, power, places / edited by Sally McMurry and Annmarie Adams. 1st ed. Knoxville: University of Tenessee Press, 2000. 
• Shelter and society / edited by Paul Oliver. London, Barrie & Rockliff the Cresset P., 1969. 
• 6000 years of housing / Norbert Schoenauer. Rev. & expanded ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 2000. 
• Traditional buildings: a global survey of structural forms and cultural functions / Allen G. Noble. London; New York: I. B. Tauris; New York: In the USA and Canada distr by Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. International library of human geography; 11 
• Traditions in architecture: Africa, America, Asia, and Oceania / Dora P. Crouch, June G. Johnson. New York: Oxford University, 2001. 
• Vernacular architecture / Henry Glassie; photographs, drawings, and design by the author. Philadelphia: Material Culture; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000. Material culture (Indiana University, Bloomington). 
• Vernacular architecture: an illustrated handbook / R.W. Brunskill. London: Faber, 2000.
• Vernacular architecture and regional design: cultural process and environmental response / Kingston Wm. Heath.Amsterdam ; Boston ; London: Architectural Press, 2009.

For additional resources, be sure to search the library catalogs using the subject headings listed above or the name of specific places or cultures.

AFRICA

• African architecture: evolution and transformation / Nnamdi Elleh. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1997.
• African cities and towns before the European conquest / by Richard W. Hull New York: Norton, 1976. 
• African traditional architecture: an historical and geographical perspective / Susan Denyer ; line drawings by Susan Denyer. New York: Africana Pub. Co., 1978. 
• African nomadic architecture: space, place, and gender / Labelle Prussin. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press: National Museum of African Art, 1995. 
• Architectures of Nigeria: architectures of the Hausa and Yoruba peoples and of the many people between tradition and modernization / Kevin Carroll. London: published for the Society of African Missions by Ethnographica Ltd. in association with Lester Crook Academic Publishing, 1992. 
• Drawn from African dwellings / Jean-Paul Bourdier and Trinh T. Minh-ha. Bloomington, Ind: Indiana University Press, 1996. 
• From Cameroon to Paris: Mousgoum architecture in & out of Africa / Steven Nelson.Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. 
• Traditional African environments: the science, the history, the thought processes / Oluwatoyin Huntar. Yaba, Lagos: Touche (Nigeria) Ltd., 1992. 

THE AMERICAS

• American vernacular buildings and interiors, 1870-1960 / Herbert Gottfried and Jan Jennings.New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2009. 
• EnvDesign NA710 .G68 2009
• America's architectural roots: ethnic groups that built America / edited by Dell Upton. New York: Preservation Press, 1986. 
• American home life, 1880-1930: a social history of spaces and services / edited by Jessica H. Foy and Thomas J. Schlereth. 1st ed. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992. 
• Back of the big house: the architecture of plantation slavery / John Michael Vlach. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993. 
• Baltimore's alley houses: homes for working people since the 1780s / Mary Ellen Hayward. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.
• Caribbean traditional architecture: the traditional architecture of Philipsburg, St. Martin (N.A.) / Joan D. van Andel. Leiden, Nederland: Caraibische Afd., Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, 1985. 
• Casa de hacienda: architecture in the Colombian countryside / edited by Benjamin Villegas ; texts, German Tellez ; photography, Antonio Castaneda ; Bogota: Villegas Editores, 1997. 
• Gas, food, and lodging / John Baeder. 1st ed. New York: Abbeville Press, 1982. 
• Images of an American land: vernacular architecture in the Western United States / edited by Thomas Carter. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1997. 
• Landscape in sight: looking at America / John Brinckerhoff Jackson; edited by Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997. 
• Main Street to Miracle Mile: American roadside architecture / Chester H. Liebs. Boston: Little, Brown, 1985.
• The Making of the American landscape / edited by Michael P. Conzen.2nd ed. New York : Routledge, 2010. 
• Metropolitan corridor: railroads and the American scene / John R.Stilgoe.New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983. 
• The patina of place: the cultural weathering of a New England industrial landscape / Kingston Wm. Heath. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2001.
• Real places, an unconventional guide to America's generic landscape / Grady Clay. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. 
• A river and its city: the nature of landscape in New Orleans  : with a new preface / Ari Kelman. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.
• Theaters of conversion: religious architecture and Indian artisans in colonial Mexico / Samuel Y. Edgerton ; with photographs by Jorge Pérez de Lara ; drawings by Mark Van Stone, James E. Ivey, and the author. Imprint Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001.
• The traditional architecture of Mexico / Mariana Yampolsky ; text by Chloe Sayer. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1993. 
  

ASIA AND MIDDLE EAST

For additional research tips and books, see the guide for History of Asian Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Urbanism.

• Asia's old dwellings: tradition, resilience, and change / edited by Ronald G. Knapp. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. 
• The Chinese house: craft, symbol, and the folk tradition / Ronald G. Knapp. Hong Kong ; New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. 
• Chinese houses: the architectural heritage of a nation / Ronald G. Knapp ; foreword by Jonathan Spence ; photography by A. Chester Ong. Imprint Singapore: Tuttle Pub., 2005.
• Form & space in Japanese architecture / Norman F. Carver, Jr. 2nd ed. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Documan Press, 1993. 
• House in East and Southeast Asia: anthropological and architectural aspects / editors K.G. Izikowitz, P. Sorensen. London: Curzon Press, 1982. Scandinavian Institute of Asian Studies monograph series; no. 30. 
• The living house: an anthropology of architecture in South-East Asia / Roxana Waterson. Vermont : Tuttle publishing, c2009.
• The native architecture of Saudi Arabia : architecture and identity / Ellahi M Ishteeaque; Fahad A Al-Said ; Riyadh : Riyadh Municipality , c2008.
• The past in the present: architecture in Indonesia / edited by Peter J. M. Nas. Rotterdam: NAi, 2006. 
• Technology, tradition and survival: aspects of material culture in the Middle East and central Asia / editors, Richard Tapper, Keith McLachlan.London ; Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 2003.
• Traditional Arab settlements: climatic influences and urban forms / El-Sayed Amer. Liverpool, England: Dept. of Civic Design, University of Liverpool, 1998. 
• Traditional architecture in Iran / Mehdi Khansari, Minouch Yavari. Bruxelles: P. Mardaga, [1986]. 
• Traditional domestic architecture of the Arab region / Friedrich Ragette. Fellbach: Edition Axel Menges, 2003.
• Traditional buildings of India / Ilay Cooper, Barry Dawson. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1998. 
• Vietnam: traditional folk houses. / Vietnam: Ministry of Culture-Information ; Showa Women's University, 2000. 

EUROPE

• Holz Haus: rurale Bauform, Maisons de bois: habitations rurales, Wood houses: form in rural architecture / Werner Blaser. Basel; New York: Wepf, 1980. 
• Mediterranean vernacular: a vanishing architectural tradition / V.I. Atroshenko & Milton Grundy. New York: Rizzoli, 1991. 
• Mittel Europa: rediscovering the style and design of Central Europe / Suzanne Slesin, Stafford Cliff, Daniel. New York: C. Potter, 1994. 
• Modern architecture and the Mediterranean: vernacular dialogues and contested identities / edited by Jean-François Lejeune and Michelangelo Sabatino. Imprint London ; New York: Routledge, 2010. 
• Traditional buildings of Britain: an introduction to vernacular architecture / R.W. Brunskill. London: Gollancz in association with P. Crawley, 1992. 
• Venetian vernacular architecture: traditional housing in the Venetian lagoon / Richard J. Goy. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989. 
• Wooden houses / introd. by Christian Norberg-Schulz ; text and drawings by Makoto Suzuki ; photographs by Yukio Futagawa. New York: Abrams, 1979. 
• Vernacular modernism: heimat, globalization, and the built environment / edited by Maiken Umbach and Bernd Hüppauf. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2005. 

• Alternative building sourcebook: for traditional, natural and sustainable building products and services / edited by Steve Chappell. Brownfield, Me.: Fox Maple Press, 1998. 
• Alternative construction: contemporary natural building methods / edited by Lynne Elizabeth, Cassandra Adams. Imprint Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley, 2005. 
• Appropriate building materials / by Roland Stulz. St. Gall, Switzerland: SKAT, 1981. SKAT publication ; no. 12. 
• Appropriate technology sourcebook: a guide to practical books for village and small community technology / by Ken Darrow, Mike Saxenian. Rev. and enl. ed. Stanford, Calif., USA: Appropriate Technology Project, Volunteers in Asia, 1986. 
  • For items in bibliography see Appropriate technology microfiche library
• Building with earth: design and technology of a sustainable architecture / Gernot Minke. Basel; Boston: Birkhäuser, 2009. 
• Climate responsive design: a study of buildings in moderate and hot humid climates / Richard Hyde. London ; New York: E & FN Spon, 2000. 
• Natural energy and vernacular architecture: principles and examples with reference to hot arid climates / Hassan Fathy ; edited by Walter Shearer and Abd-el-rahman Ahmed Sultan. Chicago: Published for the United Nations University by the University of Chicago Press, 1986. 
• Shelter / Bolinas, CA, Shelter Publications; distributed in the U.S. by Random House, New York, 1973. 
• Shelter II / editor, Lloyd Kahn. Bolinas, CA: Shelter Publications: [New York: distributed in the U.S. by Random House, 1978. 
• Spectacular vernacular: the adobe tradition / text by Jean-Louis Bourgeois ; photographs by Carollee Pelos ; historical essay by Basil Davidson. Imprint New York, NY: Aperture Foundation, 1996.
• Spectacular vernacular: a new appreciation of traditional desert architecture / text by Jean-Louis Bourgeois ; photographs by Carollee Pelos. Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith Books, 1983. 
• A way of seeing: discovering the art of building in Spring City, Utah / edited by Thomas Carter and Julie Osborne. Salt Lake City, UT: Graduate School of Architecture, University of Utah, 1994. Western Regional Architecture Program; no.2. Has an excellent bibliography.