Projects

Vernacular cultural heritage is the complex of material and immaterial manifestations of vernacular culture that have remained preserved or are being rehabilitated in the given region. What we regard as crucial for our project are above all the mutually interconnected branches of vernacular architecture, traditional agriculture and handicraft, which along with the spiritual milieu of the people, their traditions, customs, knowledge and faith represent important milestones in the formation of human society.

The project sets itself the uneasy task of pointing out the substance and character of vernacular cultural heritage. The project is centred on a complex of vernacular buildings from the region of the Bohemian-Moravian Borderland – a brick farmstead, two timbered houses, a timbered polygonal barn and small production and processing buildings. The buildings represent an extraordinarily valuable group of monuments that share, apart from a high cultural-historical value, a poor state of preservation and a danger of immediate destruction. The current owners of the timbered buildings, some of which document the earliest preserved layer of vernacular architecture in the Czech Republic from the late 16th and early 17th centuries, are considering their demolition. The only possible way of saving the buildings is their transfer to a new place. The aim of the project is to centralise all selected endangered buildings at a place in preserved agricultural cultural landscape near Litomyšl in the horizon of five to ten years. The emerging complex will prepare an authentic environment for the presentation of live regional vernacular culture – building practice, agricultural and craft procedures and folk customs in the border region where Czech and German-speaking populations interacted for centuries.