www.vernaculararchitectureforum.org
During the past twenty-five years, interest in the ordinary architecture of North America has grown rapidly and in diverse directions. Scholars and field professionals now apply the term “vernacular architecture” to traditional domestic and agricultural buildings, industrial and commercial structures, twentieth-century suburban houses, settlement patterns and cultural landscapes.
The Vernacular Architecture Forum was formed in 1980 to encourage the study and preservation of these informative and valuable material resources. In both membership and methods, VAF embraces the value of multidisciplinary interaction. Historians, designers, archaeologists, folklorists, architectural historians, geographers, museum curators and historic preservationists contribute substantially to the organization. Just as wide ranging are the interests and research subjects of our members. Some emphasize construction methods and materials. Others use building types or regional surveys as data for social and cultural interpretations. Many members do both.
Topics of study include the community planning from eighteenth-century cities to Civil War encampments to Nevada ranching towns; regional and cultural differences of traditional houses, particularly as they relate to ethnicity and race; religious architecture of various times, places and denominations; farm buildings from pattern-book dwellings to sod houses as well as barns and other components of agricultural production; and, increasingly, the complex and contradictory phenomenon of popular culture and architecture in the twentieth century.

New Jersey

http://www.preservationnj.org/magazine/forum/