General observations reveal that the built environment in our traditional settlements have undergone major transformations in the past few decades ,where scientific and technological advancements has been one important factor for the transformations with respect to architecture. The rapid ‘modernization’ as we call it, has often led to clashes between the traditional values and the new imported ideas.
Aishwarya Tipnis in her book 'Vernacular Traditions Contemporary Architecture (2012) mentions that when buildings (traditional) fail to meet the basic requirements of contemporary standards, conflicts arise and often lead to redundancy , vacancy and overcrowding.
My PhD research is an attempt to investigate such conflicts wrt traditional and contemporary architecture. The attached images are from case studies in India. But how do we study a conflict with respect to architecture?
Please share your views and also links to any research papers, journals, books etc related to the topic.
The conflict you're talking about has at least 2 dimensions. One is about technology, and the other one is about identity. Technological development in the contemporary era of global networks is in a way that results of a new innovation in one country can become a fashion in another country in another continent. There's nothing wrong with this as long as it serves people and their needs.
Regarding identity:
Identity, arguably has had a notable destructive function on people's lives throughout the history. In this regard I would suggest searching about what some Indian yogis (e.g., Osho and Sadhguru) have said about identity. Identity is the source of separation between people. It never results in global integration and sustainability. It always defines us vs them. What today's world needs is unity.
In my work I deal with performance of buildings and urban environments in relation to environmental factors such as sun light, air temperature, wind and climate in general. At the half of past century, after important technology innovations and due to low energy cost buildings were mostly controlled by active systems. They were the opposite of what can be called vernacular architecture, the same typologies were built all over the world. In the last decades for shortage of resources and environmental concern passive measures have been developed on the basis of strategies adopted by vernacular architecture to heat and cool buildings in order to save energy and increase occupant comfort. I mention this just as one possible research direction that link vernacular architecture with technological advancements.
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