February 22, 2007
Class notes: Preserving the vernacular
Class Title: Urban Design and Planning 587: Preservation and the Vernacular Environment, taught by Manish Chalana.
Description: The class examines the “vernacular” built environment, the ordinary structures and landscapes designed by individuals who are not necessarily professionals. A graduate-level seminar course, it looks at ways this environment can be both appreciated and preserved by urban planners and designers within contemporary communities.
The instructor says: “The goal of the course is to familiarize students with the ‘everyday’ environments that are often ignored in favor of places exhibiting ‘high style’ — environments like the Ave, or Ballard’s working waterfront, or the agricultural landscapes of the Yakima Valley,” Chalana said.
Tackling the complex history and meaning behind the places people often take for granted, the class delves into the multifaceted idea of “vernacularness,” and how this idea is expressed in the man-made world. Chalana, who has a doctorate in design and planning from the University of Colorado, a master’s degree in landscape architecture from Pennsylvania State University and another master’s degree in architecture from the School of Planning and Architecture in New Delhi, India, said he wants his students to look beyond the iconic or famous structures that first come to mind when one thinks of architecture, and instead try and understand the importance of the literal commonplace.
“There can be much beauty and value in these places, and in many ways they reflect a people and their aspirations better than their more elite cousins,” said Chalana. “So while it’s important to learn about the Pantheons and the Taj Mahals of the world, it’s equally important to appreciate the seemingly ordinary places which comprise the vast majority of the built environment.”
Taking Capitol Hill’s Pike-Pine corridor in Seattle as an example, Chalana’s students explore out-of-the-way places or well-known locales in new ways through the prism of historic preservation.
“Much of this course is just that — learning to understand and appreciate the world we spend most of our everyday lives in,” he said.
Unexpected Experiences: “For me the…fun part of the course is observing my students develop [an] interest in aspects of the environment they never seemed to have noticed, let alone cared much about!” Chalana said. That excitement has been a truly pleasant surprise, he said.
“Seeing them get excited about alleys, yard art, telephone poles, parking meters and P-patches in their neighborhood…seeing them develop an understanding of how all of these pieces have a place in the larger fabric, and how they contribute to the whole of a sense of place, their multiple meanings to the community, is all very rewarding.”
Students say: Casey Hildreth, a graduate student working on a master’s degree in urban planning, enrolled in the course last winter quarter.
“I took ‘Preservation and the Vernacular’ because I was interested in better articulating what it was I felt when I saw certain everyday places — spaces off the beaten track, unregulated, [and] grown rather than staged,” said Hildreth, whose other objective was to develop as many perspectives as possible on the planning process. To that end, the class format helped a great deal.
“I really enjoyed the seminar style of the class — most of my other classes at the time were in larger lectures, so being able to engage in back-and-forth conversation with students from multiple disciplines was a welcome thing,” said Hildreth, who also emphasized the research skills the class helped the students develop.
“In studying common or ‘ordinary’ places, and trying to decipher how or why something was built, we needed to sort of get in the heads of the people [who] developed these places…we had to develop stories to go along with our theories, connect[ing] the dots between the built form and the social, historical, cultural and economic.”
Reading list: Students read articles from journals and texts including Folk Housing in Middle Virginia, by Henry Glassie; The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History, by Dolores Hayden; What Time is this Place?, by Kevin Lynch; and America’s Architectural Roots: Ethnic Groups That Built America, by Dell Upton.
Assignments: Students focus on reading, discussion and independent research. Some of the discussions are led by the instructor to provide background, but the majority of class time is dedicated to student-led discussions of readings and presentations of independent research, including a local case study of a “vernacular” structure or landscape in the Seattle area and a research paper focused on the Northwest.
Class Notes is a column devoted to interesting and offbeat classes at the UW. Compiled by UW Week Intern Will Mari.
