Future View: Vernacular Technologies is a two-day symposium considering the impact of vernacular construction materials and methods on the future of architecture. Day one will feature lectures and conversations, including researchers and industry professionals. Day two will consist of a series of hands-on workshops, involving vernacular building techniques, designed to allow for empirical testing of the completed constructions.
Vernacular architectural technologies have developed through thousands of years of experimentation. These technologies made use of locally available biogenic and geogenic materials to create shelter and provide thermal comfort. Then, mechanized heating and cooling, reliable electric lighting, and the oil to fuel these systems, seemingly eliminated the need for this knowledge. Over the course of the last decade, recognizing the need to create a more sustainable future, we focused on building performance, forming ever better plastic solutions, increasing architecture’s embodied carbon, and inadvertently accelerating climate change. Our focus on the future prevented us from seeing the wealth of knowledge we had left behind. Now, facing a climate crisis, we acknowledge that to move forward we must look back, not as historicists, but as innovators.

Join us for a weekend of lectures, workshops, conversation, and networking with professionals and academics, posing the questions: What are the contemporary technological opportunities of traditional building materials and methods and how can they be applied en masse? Can we use modern, scientific methods to better understand the function of biomaterials and vernacular structures? How might this diverse vernacular knowledge shape a new carbon negative architecture now?

The symposium will offer the opportunity to earn up to 12 AIA CEU credits.

For more information, please visit https://www.futureviewsymposium.com/

Follow us @futureview_symposium.
Keynote Speaker:
Lola Ben Alon, Assistant Professor, Columbia University GSAPP

Selected Speakers & Workshop Leaders:
David J. Lewis, Dean, Parsons School of Constructed Environments; Founding Partner, LTL
Ian Crawford, University of Alabama College of Human Environmental Sciences
Johan Jönsson, Sustainability Specialist Materials and Transformation, White Arkitekter
Katie MacDonald and Kyle Schumann, AIA, Assistant Professors & Directors of Before Building Laboratory, University of Virginia; Cofounders of After Architecture
Myrrh Caplan, Vice President of Sustainability, Skanska
New Frameworks, Natural Design Build, Director of Building Science and Sustainability, Jacob Deva Racusin
Ronald Rael, Professor of Architecture, Berkeley College of Environmental Sciences
Sandra Piesik, General Editor, Habitat: Vernacular Architecture for a Changing Climate
Sydne Nance, Henning Larsen
Trilox, a circular design, fabrication, and manufacturing practice, Alexander Bender