Shaping communities

de Elizabeth C. Cromley

This volume brings together nineteen essays from an array of academic disciplines - American studies, folk lore, history, architectural history, and architecture - which are currently contributing to the study of vernacular structures and places. Addressing places as distant from each other as rural Massachusetts and Hawai'i and building types as disparate as Native American houses in Alaska and vacation cottages in Florida, the contributors are unified in their concern with community building and place making. As the editors note, scholarship on vernacular forms once focused rather narrowly on individual buildings and building types - an emphasis that has since given way to broader explorations. Accordingly, these essays reflect the ever-growing interest of vernacular architecture studies in the role building plays in defining communities, how building shapes the discourse between individuals and the society and culture of which they are a part, and how building conveys a community's sense of itself.