2007 Vernacular Architecture Forum Meeting

The Vernacular Architecture Forum (VAF) has announced the program for its upcoming meeting in Savannah, Georgia (March 28-31, 2007). Details can be found here. The following is the overview/invitation:

Savannah is a prime setting to explore aspects of the cultural landscape of the city, lowcountry rice and cotton plantations, German settlement patterns, post-bellum African-American communities, and coastal livelihood and recreation. Established in 1733, the city has one of the largest historic districts in the United States with a fascinating plan and a remarkable, largely 19th-century urban fabric.

Themes to be addressed include:

• The high and low, ideal and real: architectural and social sorting in the city
• African-American identity (antebellum plantation, downtown, postbellum to the present: residential, educational, religious, civic, commercial)
• Coastal landscapes (rice cultivation, shrimping, oystering, recreation, trade)
• Creole architecture
• German settlement patterns
• Plantations then and now
  
• Landscapes of faith

The VAF is concerned with "promoting the broad and multidisciplinary study of the history of North American architecture, landscape and material culture." Information on the VAF is available here.