In the summer of 1990, writer Charles Gaines and his artist wife, Patricia, bought 160 acres of wild land on the northeast coast of Nova Scotia. They believed they were simply buying a remote getaway spot, but within a few months a more complex dream for the property developed. By midwinter, they had begun to see the land as a place where family intimacy might be reclaimed, as a home that might heal their recently battered marriage, and as an opportunity to take on a big, risky, long-term ...

The first world atlas ever compiled on vernacular architecture, this comprehensive work illustrates the variety and ingenuity of the world’s vernacular building traditions from a multi-disciplinary, cross-cultural and comparative approach, using over sixty world and regional maps.Mapping such diverse aspects as materials and resources, technologies, structural systems, symbolism, forms and service systems on a cross-cultural and comparative basis, the Atlas of Vernacular Archit...