How have Indigenous building traditions shaped modern building practices?

What can the study of vernacular architecture contribute to debates about sustainable development?

How has vernacular architecture been used to argue for postcolonial modernisation – and what has been the effect on heritage and conservation?

Design and the Vernacular explores how the vernacular architecture of Australasia and Oceania intersects with modernity and globalization – challenging assumptions about vernacular architecture being anachronistic and static, and instead demonstrating how it can shape contemporary architecture, nation building and cultural identities.

Sixteen chapters by architects, designers, and theorists, including Indigenous writers, explore different facets of vernacular architecture amid the context of rapid political, economic, technological, social and environmental changes. The result offers valuable lessons and case studies for architects across the globe, and for anyone interested in how the vernacular can inform contemporary urban planning and architectural design.

This is a welcome, timely volume drawing attention to local architectural traditions. Often overlooked, these represent generations of experience of particular places. They feature ingenious, often sustainable, solutions to local conditions. They are versatile and adaptable, and importantly today, they offer many people the scope independently to manage with climate change, being within their control, depending on local knowledge, skills and available materials. * Paul Sillitoe, Durham University, UK *

Paul Memmott is a trans-disciplinary researcher (architect/anthropologist) and the Director of the Aboriginal Environments Research Centre (AERC) and the Indigenous Design Place (IDP) at the University of Queensland, Australia.

John Ting is an architect, researcher and educator. He teaches in the architecture program at the University of Canberra, Australia.

Tim O’Rourke is Health Safety and Wellness Chair and Senior Lecturer in Architecture at the University of Queensland, Australia.

Marcel Vellinga is Professor of Anthropology of Architecture at Oxford Brookes University, UK.