The future vernacular involves an investigation of the potential of locally rooted materials and design solutions to address urgent issues facing society and the environment today. Designs that work towards
a future vernacular have the potential to remedy environmental imbalances that have resulted from decades of industrial production and unsustainable living patterns.
Traditional vernacular architecture contains within it centuries of accumulated insight into the connection between humans and the environment. Modern, standardized methods of construction meant to facilitate work at high speed and large scales have typically ignored vernacular architecture, casting it
as outmoded, underdeveloped, and irrelevant. This overlooks the vast potential of vernacular expertise for our contemporary situation. There is a need to find a new way of working, a set of strategies that use site- specificity and environmental balance to repair the ecosystem, support the local economy, and focus on local resources, including waste materials produced as part of industrial processes.
The UAE’s vast date palm plantations offer a specific solution. waiwai’s current research combines waste from palm plantations with mycelium extracted from mushrooms, exploring how elements of traditional materiality and spatial language can be adapted to a contemporary context. For example, mycelium can be integrated with traditional building materials such as sand and stone. This approach offers a way to repair the ecosystem at a local level – a necessary condition of the future vernacular.
