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Abbott Lowell Cummings Award
The Abbott Lowell Cummings Award, named after the founding president of the Vernacular Architecture Forum, is conferred annually upon the book that has made the most significant contribution to the study of vernacular architecture and cultural landscapes. In judging the nominated works, the jurors look for a publication that:
- is based on primary research;
- emphasizes fieldwork that takes seriously the materiality of architecture and landscapes, and draws on particular elements of environments as evidence;
- breaks new ground in interpretation or methodology;
- contributes generally to the intellectual vitality of vernacular studies in North America; and
- nominated works must be in English.
2021 Cummings Award Recipient
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In a field of extraordinary new publications covering a wide range of buildings and landscapes from California to Germany, this year’s Abbott Lowell Cummings Award winner forces us to rethink something we thought we understood: common American housing in the first half of the twentieth century. Thomas C. Hubka’s, How the Working-Class Home became Modern, 1900-1940, is an important and beautiful book, the culmination of decades of Hubka’s patient and rigorous fieldwork, and a discerning analysis of buildings, documents, and previous scholarship.
Please visit the 2021 Cummings Award page for more details about How the Working-Class Home became Modern, 1900-1940.