Hoping to Stop Covering the Sky with One’s Palm: It’s Time to Go Back to Vernacular Spirit

Abstract

There is an old saying in my country, ‘covering the sky with one’s palm’. It refers to when someone is pretending to avoid something unavoidable in vain. It can also be referred to as trying to avoid the cry of the earth under powerful and efficient air conditioner inside a brilliant glass building but modern society can’t go back to what it was before the industrialization. Eventually modern human society should do something more meaningful for our survival. For instance, as adopting the merit of hunter-gatherer’s life, it is imperative that modern architecture industrially succeed to the architectural assets initiated from prehistoric wisdom. That is, to utilize developed modern architectural technology to interpret and apply the advantages of the vernacular spirit out of the architecture from the past. This needs to be executed now more than ever, before the palms burn to ashes in the sun.