Ongoing Project Documenting Traditional Teak Farmhouses of Myanmar

Jeff Allen, Southeast Asia Program Director, World Monuments Fund, offers an overview of an ongoing preservation program focusing on the documentation of traditional teak farmhouses. The present situation in Sagaing Region has compelled the team to shift its focus to more accessible parts of the country. In collaboration with the Inya Institute and local colleagues, the project’s objective is to preserve age-old building techniques and structures at a time when village communities have, for good reason, other priorities and craft knowledge and built structures are under extremely severe threat.

Elevated above ground on a sturdy wood structure, with wood and split bamboo walls and a thatched or corrugated metal roof, the farmhouse building type embodies a centuries-long building culture in Myanmar. Such farmhouses once abounded in Burmese villages throughout the central plains of Myanmar and around the Irrawaddy River delta.

Under successive kingdoms, dwellings in Myanmar were subject to sumptuary laws ensuring that building height, materials, and construction techniques were consistent with a person’s status in society. The end of monarchy and the colonial period saw the end of sumptuary restrictions on building, allowing for grander houses to be built using teak, a material that had once been restricted to monastic architecture alone. Drawing on a tradition of wood joinery and carving, farmhouses were built on sturdy posts, supporting a broad platform and a sparsely furnished main level. A covered staircase gave access from below, while the space beneath the house provided shelter for livestock and a place to store agricultural tools. Roofs were built of thatch, which always represented a fire risk, and were increasingly replaced with corrugated zinc after the nineteenth century.

Today, even as agriculture continues to underpin Myanmar’s economy, many farmhouse owners are opting to replace their homes with modern buildings that allow for a higher level of convenience and comfort. Rural Burmese populations are abandoning wood for cement slabs, brick walls, and aluminumroofed dwellings.

An influx of new building technologies and cheap materials previously inaccessible to the masses, partly connected to reduced tariffs amongst more industrialized ASEAN members and the People’s Republic of China, is changing the built Burmese environment. Agro-teak restrictions have further restricted legal teak sales and exports and, at the same time, enriched a corrupt, illegal trade. Today, teak building materials for new construction, repair, and expansion are financially out of reach for farmhouse owners. In response, there is a growing interest in salvaging historic teak architecture for reuse. Dismantling for resale is an activity that is aggressively destroying not only farmhouses but also Myanmar’s multicultural identity through the erasure of its varied forms of ethnic expression and the disappearance of entire rural cultural landscapes. Finally, the COVID pandemic and the 2021 military coup have released other threats through a collapse of the rule of law, where in parts of the country, demolitions take place singularly without permission and whole villages are burned to counter an unrelenting insurgency.

The destruction of Myanmar’s wooden farmhouses is part of a more extensive rapid socio-economic transformation that undermines the survival of traditional architectural forms and building craft. But while these changes are plainly visible, more research needs to occur on the mechanisms that drive them. Also documentation of the disappearing farmhouses is very sparse in libraries and archives. It is crucial that this architectural typology, its ethnic variations, and its usage, often ignored and undervalued, be documented before it is too late.

World Monuments Fund’s relationship with Myanmar began in 2012 in identifying project opportunities for cultural heritage preservation. With support from the U.S. Government’s Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation and other donors, WMF implemented conservation activities through an enriched capacity-building program at Shwe-nandaw Kyaung in Mandalay. Work continued for nearly six years until the military coup extinguished donor support and Myanmar Government cooperation. At the early twentieth-century First Baptist Church of Mawlamyine, WMF assembled a team of skilled specialists in Myanmar and from abroad to collaborate on documentation, condition assessments, conservation planning, and execution of remedial work. The project utilized the First Baptist Church’s asbestos roof replacement as an educational opportunity to introduce a cadre of local tradespeople, students, and officials to safety, cultural and architectural heritage conservation methods.

tation strategy through three survey field campaigns in Mandalay Division and Shan State by conducting inconspicuous inventories and avoiding intrusive documentation activities. To reduce anxieties and avoid attention, young women form our field survey teams, which stimulate close relationships with the female heads of houses. Contrary to some of our early concerns, thus far, communities have been not only welcoming to our interests but incredibly supportive and interested. Despite the complications of Myanmar’s current instability situation and the hardship it has brought, its people remain true to their rooted friendliness and hospitable nature. These initial contacts establish fundamental photo and drawing documentation and, notably, relationships for expanded and more comprehensive social and lifestyle documentation opportunities when circumstances permit. Based on a flexible methodology and emphasis on capacity building in young professionals, the EWAP grant

In 2020, World Monuments Fund placed Burmese Teak Farmhouses on its biannual WMF Watch list. Since the program’s inception, the Watch has been a proven tool for raising awareness about heritage places needing protection and galvanizing action and support for their preservation. Heritage sites can be nominated by any individual or organization, ensuring that the Watch remains a powerful platform for amplifying the voices of local community members and residents.

Watch-listing Burmese Teak Farmhouses brought attention to the plight of Myanmar’s unique domestic vernacular architecture and the support of the ‘Endangered Wooden Architecture Programme’ (EWAP). EWAP is a grant-giving program that offers small and large grants for documenting endangered wooden architecture. The program is hosted by Oxford Brookes University in the U.K. and was established in 2021 with funding from Arcadia, a charitable fund. Through EWAP, the Burmese Teak Farmhouses documentation project has been energized, not only through its funding but by the institution’s programmatic principles and organizational strengths that are shaping WMF’s work, not just during this EWAP grant cycle, but for our continuation in the years to come.

The state of emergency in parts of Myanmar has restricted access to some of our initial farmhouse priorities, so flexibility is critical. To date, WMF has established an effective implemen- activities serve well as a platform for later developing 3D models and other rich documentation incorporating equipment and technologies that remain limited in Myanmar.

Our shared investment with EWAP is toward building the capacity of young Burmese and other Southeast Asia professionals. Training young architects, archaeologists, and engineers and involving young residents through a hands-on documentation process means recording vanishing architectural forms, building appreciation, and, hopefully, future advocacy for its preservation. Young Burmese have proven they are not indifferent to their surroundings and today inspire older generations acclimatized to accept situations as imposed upon them. Despite the challenges of the moment, there is a unique opportunity to build on this momentum with projects like this.

Ultimately, the documentation of the various typologies of teak farmhouses we have identified will contribute to the understanding of Myanmar’s rich vernacular architectural legacy and provide the foundation for future research on its evolution and regional and ethnic variations. This will immediately benefit researchers and architectural historians and, in some cases, can lay the groundwork for future cultural tourism opportunities that generate income and benefit local residents and farmhouse owners while encouraging and funding the maintenance and continued preservation of these architectural masterpieces.