ICOMOS Guatemala

Authenticity and Vernacular Architecture

Blanca Niño Norton

Presidente, ICOMOS Guatemala

The recognition of Vernacular Architecture as part of the cultural heritage has increased worldwide in the last years. There is great interest for the conservation and protection of Vernacular Architecture, but it is not possible to protect it without the understanding of the qualities that make these exposed and fragile constructions our cultural heritage.

Universally, Vernacular Architecture is understood as how a community answers to its cultural, physical and economic environment. Architecture that evolves in function of cultural, social, economical and material changes; an architecture in which the structures, the forms, the building materials are determined by the climate, the geology, the geography, the economics and the local culture.

Some Vernacular Architecture characteristics are: local labor, handycrafted technics, local materials, application of non-professional knowledge based on experience, capacity of adaptation to cultural and environmental changes.

The diversity of cultural expressions that are the essence of the Vernacular Architecture does not make the evaluation of its authenticity an easy matter. The Vernacular Architecture does not follow a unique typology but represents the expression of each community. It will be impossible to understand hand made architecture without knowing the cultural roots of the creating hands. We can not study the monument in an isolated way, nor restore it or conserve it. The authenticity in Vernacular Architecture has an abstract value for it is the sensibility and simplicity of a group that creates and transforms the space to develop its daily life.

The authenticity in Vernacular Architecture not only refers to the meaning of original or genuine, but also the meaning of artistic creativity of forms and volumes while defining a space. It refers to the honesty of being what it is, without trying to represent something it is not.