ISVS, the International Seminar on Vernacular Settlements, is amongst the longest-running seminar series in the field of Vernacular Architecture and Settlement studies. Started in the year 1999 in Depok, Indonesia the seminar has travelled to different parts of the world such as India, Sri Lanka, North Cyprus, Turkey. In the process, ISVS has created a community of scholars, professionals and academic that have contributed to the seminar in various capacities.
Certain cities or parts of a city are lost in the layers of history and fade away from public memory. However, many of such long-forgotten urban conditions are important because within them they are a repository of certain collective culture and consciousness. In this writing workshop, we will write episodical histories of such cities while emphasising key ideas or practices that defined them. The aim would be to create a narrative which can be quickly shared in the public domain.