ARSITEKTUR VERNAKULAR: PATUTKAH DIDEFINISIKAN ?

Abstract

Vernacular Architecture, today, is a very common term. In its daily usage, it issometimes pararelled with the term "anonymous architecture" or "architecture withoutarchitect". From other standpoint it is also referred to be the product of or belonged to the lowclass of the society, in opposite to the high style architecture that belongs to the high classsociety. Are those the true meaning of vernacular? This paper tries to deal with this question. Bytaking the footprints of Amos Rapoport, this paper tries to rearticulate his thought about thissubject. It can be seen that concerning the meaning of vernacular architecture, it is better for onejust to describe it rather than to define the subject tightly as an ideal type that is contrast withother defined types. In doimg so, Rapoport proposed the term "polythetic definition” thatdescribes a list of criteria that must be met by a certain built environment, so that it is deservedto be called vernacular. Since design (incl. Architecture) can be viewed as a process or aproduct, then the criteria formulated in that polythetic definition must deal with that two contexts.Unfortunately, Rapoport himself did not describe his polythetic definition about vernaculararchitecture precisely. It seems that he wanted us to describe that "definition" personally, basedon our perspective about this topic. Instead of focusing on the problem of defining or describingthe meaning of the term "vernacular design (architecture), he proposed the "learning from thevernacular" as a better and urgent issue.