VAF 2026 | Papers and Posters 

Columbia River Plateau

Atomic Space. Native Soil. Geologic Time.

Walla Walla, Washington | May 27-30, 2026

Conference Co-Chairs:

Amanda C. Roth Clark, Whitworth University, Dean of the Library & Special Programs

J. Philip Gruen, Washington State University, Professor, School of Design + Construction 

Paper & Poster Session Schedule

9:00 am - 10:30 am: Paper session I

10:45 am - 12:15 pm: Paper session II  

10:45 am - 12:15 pm: Poster session (with presenters)   

2:15 pm - 4:00 pm: Paper session III

Below is the schedule for paper & poster sessions. To see the full abstracts submitted for each paper, please click here. To see the full abstracts submitted for each poster, please click here.

9:00-10:30 am: Paper Session I

PANEL A: Rhetoric and Representation

Chair: Chris Wilson

Karlyn Allenbrand, The House That Scientists Built: Solar One and the Search for Vernacular Solar Architecture during the Energy Crisis, 1972-1980

Ernesto Bilbao, The Tiki Pop and South Florida’s Architecture of Escapism: Architect Charles F. McKirahan and the Mai Kai Restaurant, 1956-1959

Lydia Mattice Brandt, Picturing the Southern Plantation, 1850s-1880s

PANEL B: Ritual Architectures

Chair: Will Moore

Joseph Sciorra, “We try to make it look like a shrine”: Votive Offerings and Vernacular Philanthropy at Domestic St. Joseph Altars in Queens, New York

Clarisse Figueiredo de Queiroz, Unburied by Hand: Vernacular Reinscriptions, Indigenous Ritual, and the Moving Landscape of Almofala

Laura E. Ruberto, Italian Vernacular in the Pacific Northwest: Romano Gabriel’s Wooden Sculpture Garden

PANEL C: Architectures of Authority and Autonomy

Chair: Louis Nelson

Collin Caywood and Christopher Brian Pritchett, Sunset Village: The Architecture of War/The Architecture of Home

Madeline Webster, Gretchen Jackson v. Boston Redevelopment Authority

Ruth E. Mills, From Colonial America to Indigenous America: Reframing Federal Heritage Documentation at Knife River Indian Villages

10:45 am - 12:15 pm: Paper Session II  

PANEL A: Settler Colonization and the Vernacular 

Chair: Kelema Lee Moses

Angelika Joseph, Constructing Alternative Political Relationships at Wounded Knee, 1973

Andrew Herscher, The Political Wigwam

Jennifer Chutter, The Vancouver Special: Tracing Settler-Colonial Legacies through a Residential Architectural Style

PANEL B: StoryMapping East Pasco, Washington (roundtable)

Chair: Robert Bauman

Participants: Robert Franklin, Kyley Canion Brewer, Alison Moon 

PANEL C: Material Histories

Chair: Jim Buckley

Janet Ore, “The Building is the Enemy”: Fire and the Petrochemical House

Thompson Teasdale, Painting Black Spaces: Uncovering Architectural Finishes at the Historic Whitfield Hotel

Andrea Bertassi, Rediscovered Interiors and Vertical Domesticity: Interpreting Bosa’s Vernacular Architecture through a Seventeenth-Century House

PANEL D: On the Water

Chair: Michael Chiarappa

Qingyun Lin, Purity, Hygiene, and Environmental Conflicts: Boat Communities during Guangzhou’s Modernization, 1930-1966

Casey Breen, The Water's Spell: Modernity and its Fringes along Chicago's Houseboat City

Kelsey Kuehn, Calumet Fisheries: Industry, Tourism, and Culture Shape Integrity of a Historic Fish Shack and Smokehouse along the Calumet River in South Chicago

10:45 am - 12:15 pm: Poster Session

Sophie Applegate, The Not-So-Little House on the Prairie: The Bregant House’s Expression and Performance of (Dis)ability
Paula Arning, Vernacular Logics in Modernist Design: Eileen Gray and Margaret Leischner
Christopher Carlberg, Refining and Redefining Belonging through Adaptive Reuse in Tallahassee
Jackson Dent, Origins of a Southern Vernacular: A Study of the Carolina Rain Porch
Eliot Heath, Diners, Drive-Ins, and Documentation: Identifying and Evaluating Roadside Restaurant Chains
Reese Greenlee & Nitzan Farfel, County Fairgrounds as Vernacular Cultural Landscapes
Jayne Flynn, South Carolina Rice Culture and Winnowing Houses: A Typology
Ashley Dever, Pigeon Houses in North America: A Southeast Vernacular Study
Kade Kosarich, Coffee, Culture, and Community: La Tropicana Café’s Third-Space Legacy in Ybor City
Lizzie MacWillie, Housing Catalogs as Cultural Texts
Marie Saldaña, Navigating Geographies of Kinship in a Borderlands Cultural Landscape
Samantha Threlkeld, Furnishing the Everyday: A Conservation-Centric Furniture Study at the Whitfield Hotel

2:15 - 4:00 pm: Paper Session III

PANEL A: Domestic Landscapes, Ideal and Real

Chair: Matt Lasner 

Travis Olson, Partitioning the Plains: The Speculative Landscape of Southwestern North Dakota 

Diana J. Painter, The Hanford Engineer Works Village: Vernacular by Design

Anna Andrzejewski, Florida Living Beyond Florida: A Domestic Ideal in Postwar America

PANEL B: Regional House Types 

Chair: Kim Hoagland

Amani Morrison, On Method: Researching Chicago’s Kitchenette Apartments

Anne Delano Steinert, Not Just Dumbbells: The Breezeway Tenements of Cincinnati, Ohio 

Jiayue Hao and Hiroyuki Shinohara, More than Material: Cultural Identity in the Dai Dwellings

Brian D. Rich, Fantastic Floods, Environmental Exploitation, and the Rehabilitation of the Basalt Buildings of LaCrosse, Washington

PANEL C: Gendered Architecture, Unseen Architecture

Chair: Sally McMurry

William Littmann, Hidden Spaces of Premarital Pregnancy: Maternity Homes in Postwar America 

Sylvia Faichney, Imagining the Military Family: Standardization and the 'Waiting Wives' of Schilling Manor 

Ipek Mehmetoglu, An Architectural Network of Women’s Labor: Turkish Charity Association

PANEL D: Revelatory Technologies

Chair: Jake Torkelson

Warren Hofstra, Architectural Space, Spatial Cognition, Virtual Reality, and “The Great Experiment”

Kirk Ranzetta, When the Waters Recede: Cultural Succession in the Vernacular Landscape of K’uč’uxwárax

Laken Sylvander, Mapping Memory: Toward a Methodology for Estimating Floor Plans of Inaccessible or Lost Vernacular Buildings