[Folk architecture] Term used to describe informal, usually domestic, architecture that is rooted in local traditions and is generally produced by craftsmen with little or no formal academic training, whose identity is unrecorded. The vernacular architecture of any region may be characterized by the use of a particular material readily available in the area, by the prevalence of a particular building type related to the dominant local economic activities or by the use of a particular style, possibly derived from local materials and techniques. A comprehensive definition is impossible, however, since there is little agreement among scholars as to which is the essential quality by which an architectural work, technique, or feature can be characterized as vernacular (see §I, 1 below). For this reason, vernacular architecture is sometimes identified negatively, that is to say as comprising any building activity that does not form part of the academic, ‘high-style’ or ‘polite’ architectural tradition, of which the conventional aesthetic criteria are usually perceived as inappropriate when applied to the vernacular. Thus the identification and characterization of the vernacular is simplest in Europe, where the opposing formal or high-style tradition is most prominent and most easily recognizable. In North America, however, discussion of vernacular architecture is necessarily more complex, since vernacular forms, types, and techniques have been introduced by different immigrant communities as well as evolving organically, while in Central and South America the assimilation by the indigenous communities of the styles and techniques of Spanish and Portuguese high-style (and especially religious) architecture can itself be said to constitute a distinct, if highly unusual, vernacular tradition. In the Islamic lands, on the other hand, it is more natural to identify the vernacular tradition in architecture with the rich and varied tradition of largely domestic building that has long existed alongside Islamic religious architecture....