EWAP2026 conference in Ahmedabad

Following on from our first conference in Oxford in October 2024, the second and final EWAP conference took place in Ahmedabad, India on 28 February 2026. The conference, coordinated by Kelly Reed, was organised in collaboration with the Centre for Cultural Heritage (CHC) at CEPT University in Ahmedabad, a first round EWAP project recipient.

Participants representing 14 EWAP projects travelled from across India, Brazil, Mexico, New Zealand (project in Fiji), Malaysia, Indonesia, Poland, Iran, and the UK (projects in India, Iraq, Bulgaria and Serbia) to present their processes of documenting wooden architecture. The conference once again highlighted the rich diversity of EWAP projects, the wooden architecture that is being documented, and the different approaches to architectural and ethnographic documentation followed by the teams. 

Approaches ranged from the highly technical to the very personal. The ways in which we capture, document and represent wooden heritage was a key discussion point. Lively dialogue amongst EWAP participants was evident throughout the four days we spent together and we hope this will lead to future collaborations and joint projects. A big thank you to all our speakers and to Sandra Wilkins and Martin Devereux for chairing the sessions.

It goes without saying that a day trip organised by CHC to visit some of the wooden havelis of Gujarat was a highlight, bringing to life their EWAP project that documented townhouses in Bhadran, Dharmaj and Anand (https://doi.org/10.60491/ewap1007lg042025061). Over the course of a full day of visits led by Ashna Patel, we encountered an extraordinary range of wooden havelis and met local historians, custodians, and residents, who shared what these historic homes mean to them.

The EWAP conference was preceded by a two-day conference on ‘Reframing Vernacular Architecture for a Decolonised World’ organised by CEPT University in collaboration with Oxford Brookes University. The conference followed on from the equally successful two day ‘Knowing the Vernacular: Critical Reflections and Future Directions’ conference held in Oxford in conjunction with the first EWAP conference in 2024. 

Building on the focus of the first conference on decolonisation in the context of vernacular architecture research and representation, speakers and discussions examined the processes of valuing, interpreting, conserving and using vernacular architecture. Many presentations highlighted a divide between understanding vernacular architecture and practice through forms of poetry, literature, daily and seasonal life cycles, rituals and gender roles, and colonial systems of documentation, imposed taxonomies, reinterpreted terminologies and international doctrines. The latter, it was argued, often overlooked the strength of cross cultural dialogue, and the interconnected systems within which vernacular architecture was conceived. Several presentations demonstrated how knowledge systems continue in contemporary production, as well as being appropriated.

Marcel Vellinga and I were both delighted to deliver open lectures as part of the conference, online and in person respectively, Martin Devereux acted as a discussant. I was also honoured to open an exhibition by the eminent academic and author Miki Desai on his work documenting architectural heritage in India. Prof Desai then walked us around the exhibition and shared insights into his experiences of documentation, long before 3D scanning was widely available.

We are hugely indebted to Prof Jigna Desai for her leadership and stimulating discussions, her team, especially Prachitee Naik for the flawless organisation of the two events and the very informative field visit to the wooden havelis, and Shivangie Akhaury and Hitarth Shah at CEPT for the smooth running of the event and assistance in securing visas for the participants. It was also lovely to catch up with a good number of our former Brookes students who presented at or joined us at the conference.