ABSTRACT
The arrival of Arts and Crafts-oriented architects in Cape Town from England and Scotland towards the end of the 19th century brought specific attitudes to building materials to the Cape. Whilst they abhorred corrugated iron, these architects were also primed to value vernacular architecture – on its own terms but also as a resource for modern interpretation. This paper subjects the emergent contradictory discourse and its ambivalences about settler and native mud and thatch vernacular architectures to scrutiny. The general prejudice against ‘native’ mud architecture was born out of ‘Englishness’ white supremacy such that the contradictions and ambivalences in the attitudes towards these two vernaculars were papered over through racist discourse. On top of this, it finds that the contradictions were resolved by separation of ‘native’ and settler vernacular through simplified spatial configurations – round and square – rather than trying to parse what was a strong homology in building materials.
