AN INTRODUCTION TO THE “ACEH METHOD”: VISUALISING AND CAPTURING VERNACULAR KNOWLEDGE Julie Nichols, Darren Fong, Pudentia MPSS. Abstract In the December 2004 Tsunami, the Acehnese archives were destroyed and so were many of the local people with the vernacular knowledge of the traditional housing types. Ways of seeing and understanding vernacular knowledge centred on the production of the traditional Acehnese house are revisited with this research through a multimodal platform coined in this study as the “Aceh Method.” This is a method devised as a means or producing a new resource through collating, interpreting, recording, drawing, capturing and engaging with the newly collected data to rethink and re-examine the Acehnese house. It includes re-envisioning remaining evidence and understandings of these traditional domestic timber buildings of the Acehnese to bring together new insight. The main aim is to offer alternative futures for urban development in Aceh which consider socio-cultural conditions and the tools for communities to meet their individual aspirations. This paper reports on the fieldwork activities conducted for July 2017 which have led to the piloting of the “Aceh Method.” The three main forms of recording of four houses and some selected streetscapes in Lambunot Village, Indrapuri, Aceh Besar involved 1. VERNADOC – analogue measuring and drawing on site; 2. Digital capture of the surrounding environment through the gigapan; 3. Documentary filming and an ethnographical study of the interactions between villagers, researchers, students around the implementation of the above methods. Rather than investigating sites for additional remains of the Acehnese past in the conventional sense of writing history, this proposal contributes to ways of understanding past built environments in promoting a field of knowledge based on regional conditions, onsite cultural immersion with the subjects and artefacts and to disseminate to the world the value of Acehnese built cultural heritage. INTRODUCTION