Smart Vernacular Architecture: A Framework for Assessment and Virtual Reality-based Visualisation of Indigenous Toda Dwellings

Indigenous communities and their way of life are facing significant challenges due to globalisation, industrialisation and urbanisation, which have forced them to gradually adopt the architecture, lifestyle, and culture of mainstream society. This paper proposes a Smart Vernacular Architecture (SVA) framework and applies it to the indigenous dwellings of the Todas, a tribal community living in India's Nilgiri mountains. The architecture and indoor space quality of these dwellings are investigated in this paper based on specific thermal comfort parameters like the interior temperature and airflow. The indoor temperatures of Toda dwellings are simulated for the predicted climate of 2100 to evaluate their climate resilience. Finally, the paper illustrates the usage of virtual reality (VR) to explore and visualise the Toda settlement and the interior environment parameters of a Toda dwelling to effectively convey and preserve the knowledge of vernacular architecture. In a nutshell, this paper elucidates the advantages of vernacular architecture and construction methods to arouse the interest of academics, policymakers, students, and professionals in preserving architecture, culture, and indigenous knowledge.