In the Quest for Meaning: Revisiting Modernism’s debate around non-pedigreed architecture

In architectural historiography, it is widely accepted that in the aftermath of WWII, Modern Architecture found itself in the trouble of redefining its quest, its meaning, and its purpose; a crisis of the Modern before the Post-Modern. Thus, in this particular context, the marginalized prewar study of "non-pedigreed" architecture became one of the most dominant elements of the postwar architectural discourse. By "non-pedigreed" architecture, we will refer to all those buildings that have not been designed by professionally trained architects and that preceded the mass-construction techniques of industrialized society. These buildings could also be called vernacular, even if the terms are not exactly equivalent. The current contribution will present the intellectual genealogy, the implications as well as the fruitful contradictions of the aforementioned discourse, aiming to discuss its contemporary relevance in the age of architectural sustainability.