VERNACULAR PICTURES 5: SPOLIA

Spolia (from the Latin ‘spoils’) is the name given by architectural historians to (typically stone) fragments of earlier buildings that have been repurposed to serve as part of later buildings.

In the west, spolia are probably most closely associated with the period spanning the late Roman empire and the early middle ages- a period of decline in resource availability and technical ability, in which scavenging older or derelict buildings for building materials was common.

The practice is a good illustration of the writer John Michael Greer’s theory of ‘catabolic collapse,’ which uses the analogy of biological metabolism to explain the life-cycles of human civilisations. When civilisations are on the rise, they grow in an ‘anabolic’ manner, whereby ‘cheap and easy’ energy is consumed to combine simple elements into more and more complex structures, just as the human body transforms dietary proteins and energy into muscle. When energy is no longer cheaply or easily available, civilisations enter their decline and collapse phase, and their complex structures are broken down via ‘catabolic’ processes into simpler elements in order to unlock the energy and resources they contain, just as a starving organism will cannibalise its own muscle to meet its energy requirements. Think of the energy inputs, technical expertise and apparatus needed to produce and distribute even something so seemingly simple as dimension lumber, and then to assemble it into the form of a house; compare this with the act of pulling the house down and burning its timber to stay warm.

VERNACULAR PICTURES 4: PAINT AS ORNAMENT

One objection that is sometimes raised against the possibility of resurrecting ornament in modern architecture is the expense of it, whether real or perceived. However, the residential vernacular architecture of the world presents us with many examples of one possible solution: using paint to ornament or decorate buildings that are otherwise plain (i.e. lacking in fractal scales). A few examples are presented below.

The counter-objection against introducing this practice into our own building is that, just as we no longer have a genuine vernacular architecture, we also no longer have a shared vocabulary of unconscious, communal folk images or motifs to draw from; indeed, we no longer have a folk culture at all.

We do however have a precedent for what widespread ‘exterior decoration’ would probably look like in the modern context: the mainstreaming of tattoos. Instead of the ‘variety within uniformity’ and symbolic/ritual significance of say traditional Polynesian or Ainu tattoos, or even of underworld or sailors’ tattoos, tattoos in our own society are simple self-expression; everyone is free to pick and choose designs and styles from every era and every area of the world, or to make up something ‘unique’ according to their own imaginative whims. Imagine the architectural equivalent of this: houses with LIVE LAUGH LOVE and other inspirational slogans written in big bold letters across their facades.

But there is still a lot of potential in the idea of painted ornament in a modern setting, and there’s no reason it shouldn’t be one of the architect’s tools of the trade, to be at least considered if the circumstances suggest it and the conditions are right.

VERNACULAR PICTURES 3: LOG AND PLANK CONSTRUCTION

I’ve never been a fan of log cabins, at least not the sort most people associate with the name, where large diameter logs are left ‘in the round’ and stacked up by notching them out near their ends and interlocking them in alternating rows at the corners:

To me the effect is both crude and kitsch at the same time. But when the logs are squared off, or dressed into planks, and especially so when the gaps are plastered, ‘log’ cabins become a different thing entirely- they have the right balance of rusticity and sophistication, and you can easily imagine them being integrated into a ‘modern’ design very effectively.