#2 VERNACULAR INSIGHTS - Modern vs Vernacular Methods and Tools

Welcome to the second post of Vernacular Insights

The reflections we share today are deeply rooted in the vibrant exchanges that took place during the Festival of Traditional Architecture in Mérida in August 2025. This article directly reflects the insights from a roundtable discussion that brought together Eve Nanji (add.apt studio) and Matteo Arietti (Space Travellers).

During their panel, a fundamental question was raised: In an era of rapid technological shift, which methods should we prioritize : Modern or Vernacular?

This question remains at the heart of debates in architecture studios and universities worldwide. Today, we invite you to look closer at this dialogue, exploring how the wisdom of the past and the tools of the future can coexist to serve a single purpose: meaningful design.

The Wisdom of the Ground: Lessons from Anambra

Illustration 1 - Drawing of a hat

Before looking forward, we must look at the resilience of what is already there. Vernacular methods are not static; they are high-performance responses to local environments.

Taking the Anambra region in Nigeria as a case study, Eve Nanji and her team identified a sophisticated ecosystem of strategies that many modern solutions fail to match:

• Climate Adaptation: High-pitched roofs that drive ventilation while doubling as elevated storage.

• Material Intelligence: Hydrophobic palm fibers and bamboo water-storage pots that provide fresh water even during peak flooding.

• Spatial Resilience: Courtyard typologies where vegetation acts as a natural rainwater collector, and elevated walkways that maintain community mobility.

These solutions are locally sourced, renewable, and produce little to no carbon footprint. Importantly, they evolve slowly over time, adapting alongside climate change and shifting environmental conditions. By observing and understanding this evolution of indigenous knowledge, we gain insight into how landscapes have changed, which solutions have proven effective, and which have not. This understanding allows us to design more flexibly, using materials and methods that truly respond to place and people and go pararelly to the climate changes

The Digital Ally

Illustration 2 - Visualisation of a hat based of the drawing done in DeeVid AI and color changed in Photoshop

In contrast to vernacular methods, we also have the latest tools. These include not only materials, which are luckily becoming more ecological, but also technologies and programs that can be highly questioned, especially Artificial Intelligence, which evokes very different feelings.

Regarding this topic, Matteo Arietti shared a very precious perspective on how he personally integrates AI into a three-layer process:

1. Organizational: Researching information, structuring content, and preparing presentations (always with critical verification).

2. Inspirational: Using generative AI tools such as Midjourney or Stable Diffusion to explore visual ideas. Unlike passive scrolling on platforms like Pinterest or Instagram, this process is more active and iterative, allowing rapid modification aligned with a designer’s vision compared to traditional modeling or drawing.

3. Analytical: Extremely useful when working with Grasshopper and algorithms, where AI enables the management of large datasets and complex systems that would otherwise be impossible for a single person to handle.

As Matteo sums up, it is an extremely powerful tool to initiate, develop, and conclude a project. It makes you more efficient and your work easier and less time-consuming. Of course, it requires a prompt that needs to be properly engineered; it is necessary to understand one’s craft to create a prompt that actually leads towards the desired idea. Yet, it remains faster than traditional ways and democratizes the creative process by lowering barriers related to manual skills like drawing or sculpting. Its presence in architectural practice will only grow stronger, making it essential to critically engage with it now.

The "Room" Metaphor: Coexisting Realities

The key takeaway from our conversation was the connection of both ways. As Eve Nanji aptly noted:

"Even if we are in a room, we may notice a painting of a certain setting, a person who is on his phone, a record playing in the background, a traditional pipe on the table, and a vacuum cleaner that is cleaning the floor by itself. There are all these layers of technology, layers of time in the same moment."

We live in a time where AI exists alongside hand drafting, a skill Matteo Arietti finds lacking in many universities today. The ability to express oneself through hand sketching at 1:10 or 1:20 scales is a skill he deeply admires. There is no need to fear choosing the “wrong” tool; prehistoric wisdom and advanced technology coexist. What truly matters is understanding where, why, and for whom we are designing.

As Eve Nanji so aptly summed it up:

“It is more important to understand your intention than the tool you use.”

Above All: Communication and Multidisciplinarity

Two final tools emerged as crucial: Communication and Multidisciplinarity. Eve emphasized that architecture requires dialogue, listening and co-creating with the communities we serve. Education should place a stronger emphasis on philosophy and critical thinking to help architects articulate their thoughts for the people they serve.

Furthermore, we must break our professional silos. Like Brunelleschi or Da Vinci, who "were everything," we must look at fashion, art, and sociology. As Arietti suggested, an architectural office should not just house architects, but also sociologists, anthropologists, and psychologists to understand those who live in different conditions and face different problems.