Database of Vernacular Architecture

Abstract

The Database of Vernacular Architecture (DVA) will create the first interdisciplinary database that archives, curates, and disseminates vernacular building information in the Western Hemisphere. DVA will deepen our understanding of vernacular architecture by creating an inter-site, comparative database through a standardized system of vernacular architecture recording. The database will be a collaborative effort among leading vernacular architecture scholars, based in the Center for Heritage Conservation in the College of Architecture, and hosted by Center of Digital Humanities Research at Texas A&M University and a wider group of scholars that comprise the DVA Working group.

DVA will provide a central repository to digitize, synthesize, and make available quantitative and qualitative data of vernacular architecture, and foster collaborative and interdisciplinary research among architectural historians, vernacular architecture scholars, archaeologists, historians, folklorists, and allied disciplines who will have access to the raw architectural data and a digital scholarly community.

DVA is currently in the beta-testing phase, and funds are requested to develop a comprehensive data recording, documentation, and entry manual to be made available via the site’s online portal. These manuals will become the foundation for a series of webinars and workshops to train scholars on how to record and enter data into the database.

Personnel

Brent R. Fortenberry, Ph.D., RPA

Brent R. Fortenberry is Assistant Professor of Architecture and Associate Director of the Center for Heritage Conservation in the School of Architecture at Texas A&M University. He holds a Ph.D. in Historical Archaeology from Boston University, a M.S. in Historic Preservation from the Clemson University/College of Charleston Graduate Program in Historic Preservation, a MA from Bristol University, UK in the Historical Archaeology of the Early Modern World, and a BA in Anthropology from the College of William and Mary in Virginia. He has worked as an architectural historian and an archaeologist in Bermuda for the last twelve years, as well as Barbados and Jamaica for the last seven. Domestically he has worked extensively in the Carolina Lowcountry, central and southern Texas, and most recently began a major antebellum outbuilding survey in cooperation with the Historic Natchez Foundation, the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, and the National Park Service.