Buildings Without Architects - May, John, 1950

WITHOUT
- AARCHITECTS
GLOBAL GUIDE TO EVERYDAY ARCHITECTURE
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BUILDINGS WITHOUT ARCHITECTS
A GLOBAL GUIDE TO EVERYDAY ARCHITECTURE
John May
Anthony Reid, Consultant Editor
Buildings Without Architects is a wonderfully

informative reference on vernacular styles, from
adobe pueblos and Pennsylvania barns to Mongolian
gers and European wooden churches. This small but
comprehensive book documents the rich cultural past
of vernacular building styles. It offers inspiration for
home woodworking enthusiasts as well as architects,
conservationists, and anyone interested in energy-
efficient building and sustainability.
The variety and ingenuity of the world’s vernacular

building traditions are richly illustrated, and the
materials and techniques are explored. With examples
from every continent, the book documents the diverse
methods people have used to create shelter from
locally available natural materials, and shows the
impressively handmade finished products through
diagrams, cross-sections, and photographs.
Unlike modern buildings that rely on industrially

produced materials and specialized tools and
techniques, the everyday architecture featured here
represents a rapidly disappearing genre of handcrafted
and beautifully composed structures that are
irretrievably “of their place." These structures are the |
work of unsung and often anonymous builders that
combine artistic beauty, practical form, and necessity.
BUILDINGS
WITHOUT
ARCHITECTS
John May
Anthony Reid, Consultant Editor
BUILDINGS
WITHOUT
ARCHITECTS
New York Paris London Milan

First published in the United States of America in 2010
by Rizzoli International Publications, Inc.
300 Park Avenue South
New York, NY 10010
www.rizzoliusa.com
This book was conceived,

designed, and produced by
Ivy Press
210 High Street, Lewes
East Sussex BN7 2NS
www.ivy-group.co.uk
© 2010 Ivy Press Limited
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior
consent of the publishers.
2010 2011 2012 2013 / 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
ISBN: 978-0-8478-3361-0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2009936367
creative director Peter Bridgewater

publisher Jason Hook
conceived by Sophie Collins
editorial director Caroline Earle
art director Michael Whitehead
designer Martin Topping
ILLUSTRATOR Coral Mula
picture manager Katie Greenwood
Printed and bound in China
3 1223 09438 4733

n n
CONTENTS
Foreword by Anthony Reid 6
Gallery of Building Media 8
Introduction by John May 42
FROM DUTCH WINDMILLS TO FROM THE PLAINS TIPI TO

GERMAN BARNS 46 FRONTIER LOG CABINS 120
Sami Gamme and Goatte 48 Inuit Igloo 122
Hebridean Black House 50 Haida Plank House 124
Cruck-Frame Buildings 52 Plains Indian Tipi 126
Cob House 54 Big Barn 128
Hallenhaus House Barn 56 1-House, Cracker House, and Saltbox 130
Early Dutch Windmills 58 Log Cabin 132
Later Dutch Windmills 60 Shaker-Style Buildings 134
Russian Izba 62 New Mexican Adobe House 136
Wood Churches 64
Slovenian Hayrack and Bee House 66 FROM CHATTEL HOUSES TO
URUS REED HOUSES 138
FROM MEDITERRANEAN CAVES Tzotzii Chukal Na 140
TO BEDOUIN TENTS 68 Caribbean Chattel House 142
Trullo Stone House 70 Yanomami Shabano 144
Mediterranean Cave Dwellings 72 Paisa House 146
Cappadocian Cave Dwellings 74 Urus Reed House 148
Black Tents 76 Wood Churches of Chiloe 150
Yemen Tower House 78
' Marsh Arab Reed House 80 FROM BALINESE KUREN TO
Iranian Desert Towns 82 MAORI MEETINGHOUSES 152
FROM JAPANESE MINKA TO TODA HUTS 84 Balinese Kuren 154
Kalinga Octagonal House 156
Japanese Minka 86
Toraja Tongkonan 158
Japanese Townhouse 88
Korowai Tree House 160
Chinese Yao Dong 90
Abelam Spirit House 162
Fujian Tulou 92
Aboriginal Shelter 164
Mongolian Ger 94
Maori Meetinghouse 166
Lhasa Buildings 96
Samoan Fale Tele 168
Indian Stepped Ponds and Stepwells 98
Toda Hut 100 MODERN VERNACULAR
FROM ZULU INOLU TO THE ARCHITECTURE 170
“VENICE OF AFRICA” 102 Brazilian Squatter Settlements 172
Indian and Filipino Squatter Settlements 174
Great Mosque of Djenne 104
Earthships 176
Mousgoum Tolek 106
Bottle Buildings 178
Ganvie Stilt Village 108
Natural Building 180
Batammaliba Roundhouse 110
Vernacular Revivals 182
Rendille Min 112
Zafimaniry House 114 Glossary 184
Zulu Indlu 116 Resources 186
Ndebele Painted House 118 Index 188
Acknowledgments 192
FOREWORD
ANTHONY REID
We humans have an amazing ability to innovate. Nowhere is this
more apparent than in the world’s diverse range of handmade or
vernacular buildings. In the pages of this book, John May has carefully
detailed key examples from around the world of this highly important,
yet little-known building form.
Vernacular architecture is a subject that provides a window on
the lives and traditions of the indigenous people of our world, and in
so doing creates a mirror that reflects our own experiences. This,
in turn, helps us to understand more clearly where the buildings of
our contemporary world spring from, and, more importantly, why
such buildings so often fail to meet our fundamental human needs.
It takes little imagination to appreciate the disastrous long-term
effects that, for example, high-density, high-rise housing has had on
the communities and social cohesion of our world's cities. The notion
that houses should be “machines for living” long resonated in the
mind-set of many planners and architects. Education systems
provided an aesthetic awareness and certain expertise. Rationally
applied building technology and forms matched the required
“function” of the building. Solutions were fixed, immovable, and sold
as a modern utopian ideal to the world’s aspiring urban classes.
However, if we look at both current and historical vernacular
building traditions, there exist opportunities to learn of solutions to
our housing needs that draw less on the limited resources available
to us. These impact more gently on our fragile ecosystems, offering
solutions that engender a profound connection between the builders,
their environment, the materials used, and the wider community.
Much has been written, and indeed understood, about human-
scale architecture and the need to limit the environmental impact
of the building industry. However, the truly sustainable practitioners
are still widely ignored by the majority of the establishment, where
the champions and practitioners of vernacular building are still This renovated “Black
marginalized, either through misinformed opinion or by the forces of House" in the Outer
property speculation and planning policy. Hebrides symbolizes
the enduring nature of
It may be that the notion of tradition leaves people feeling un¬ vernacular architecture.
easy, with associations to a world of convention and constraint; they The form of these
feel that traditions belong to a place in the past, inhabited by the low-lying, stone-built,
thatched longhouses
ghosts of disapproving ancestors. However, tradition can also be our
is perfectly suited to
guide and teacher, and provide the template for architectural the harsh, windswept
solutions that can stretch the imagination far beyond the seemingly Scottish landscape.
6
rational. In a world where the politicians and the policy makers are
struggling to find effective solutions to the problems that threaten
the very existence of our world, it is time for individuals to take the
initiative and look seriously at the creativity inherent in the vernacular
buildings of our world.
As the author describes in the introduction, this book is a global
journey. I would add that this is a journey that will ultimately lead
us all back home, and in so doing, it reveals new perspectives and
insights into this very special place where we make our lives.
7
GALLERY OF BUILDING MEDIA
Vernacular architecture, by its very nature, is built from local materials that are
readily on hand and is thus defined by the geology and ecology of the region, as
well as by local climatic conditions. Constructed by the community using traditional
tools, these structures are highly practical, energy efficient, and blend with the
landscape. These buildings carry many of the attributes that we are now seeking in
"green architecture” as we struggle to adapt our built environment to the demands
and concerns of the climate-change era.
WOOD
The immense forests of the northern and southern hemispheres have traditionally
provided a ready source of construction material for many kinds of vernacular
buildings. The structural properties of wood, its strength and length, make it ideal
for the framework of a building, and also for walls, floors, and roofs.
above The striking gable end

of a wood-frame Hallenhaus
house barn, many of which still
survive in the eastern Netherlands
and northern Germany. The
•building is supported by a post-
and-truss system of wood beams.
right Giant cruck frames—made

from two halves of a single tree,
joined together so their curves
mirror each other—provide the
main structural support for this
thirteenth-century tithe barn,
located near Bath, England.
9
above The distinctive three-tier
structure of a Carpathian
Lemko church, built entirely
of intersecting wood logs
with wood shingle roofs topped
by spires and cupolas.
left This Slovenian hayrack,

known as a kozolec, is a simple
wood, freestanding structure
with a small thatched or wood
shingle roof for shelter. The four
main posts provide support for
the racks, which are themselves
made of thin wood poles.
10
above These Japanese minka
(“houses of the people") are
built in the gassho-zukuri (steep-
slope roof) style, the thatched
roofs being designed to shrug
off the heavy snows of winter.
Their sturdy wood frames and
internal bamboo screens are
appropriate technologies for
earthquake regions.
right A fine example of an urban

minka (machiya), a long narrow
row house fronted with wood
grilles, and supported by a
framework of wood columns,
beams, and braces.
right These beautiful hand¬

crafted wood houses—built
by the Zafimaniry people of
southeast Madagascar—have
walls formed of vertical planking,
wood roofs, and ornamental
window shutters, all assembled
using wood pegs and mortise-
and-tenon joints.
11
above The simple two-room
Caribbean chattel house was
originally built entirely of wood,
without using nails, so that it
could be readily disassembled
and moved from place to place.
left A strikingly carved totem

pole stands guard in front of
the highly decorated facade of
a Haida house on the Queen
Charlotte Islands, off British
Columbia, Canada. Such houses
have two to eight wood beams
forming their main framework,
with wood plank walls and
wood roofs.
RIGHT This unusual twelve-sided

barn near Pullman, Washington,
is built entirely of wood with
a giant wood shingle roof and
two large dormer windows on
opposite ends.
13
ABOVE This shows the typical
style of wood church building on
the island of Chiloe off the coast
of Chile, with its rectangular
basilica divided into three naves
by wood columns, a roofed
portico, a main roof of wood
shingles, and a symmetrical
tower at one end.
left The imposing facade of

a Maori meetinghouse, with
its carved barge boards and
post, fronts a large rectangular
building supported by a wood
post-and-beam structure, with
walls of wood clapboards and
a corrugated iron roof.
left A view of two of the many

thatched wood pavilions that sit
within a walled compound and
which together form a traditional
Bali house (kuren).
right A large traditional hollow-

post drainage mill near Cabouw
in the Netherlands, which was
used to draw water from the
land. The thatched, wood-base
structure provided a home for
the miller and his family.
14
above An elegant and sizable
example of a Russian izba, a
wood house with a small
attached barn, built of logs
with interlocking corners and
a sloping wood shingle roof.
The posts of the wood portico,
eaves, window frames, and
doors are carved and embellished
(see detail left).
mngffi? ••••'• -v-v'

left This is an example of
a common northern form
of izba, the two-story koshel
(basket house) in which the
living quarters and the
agricultural spaces are
integrated into one building.
IB
above A simple one-room
log cabin provided a basic
rudimentary dwelling for many
pioneer settlers in North America.
Overlapping corner notches help
fit the logs more securely and
tightly together. The stone
chimney is a later addition.
right An elegant wood building

built by one of the Shaker
communities in the United
States. It demonstrates their
basic approach to architecture
and design, which emphasizes
simplicity and utility.
17
STONE
The earliest dwellings were cave shelters carved out of stone and rocks; many in the
Mediterranean are still occupied. Other ancient forms of building were dwellings
with dry-stone walls or roofs, built without mortar. In India, elaborate step wells
and stepped ponds are a testament to the skills of the stonemasons of the past.
LEFT, ABOVE, AND right Three views

of the extraordinary cave houses
of Cappadocia, a region of
Anatolia, central Turkey.
A landscape composed of soft
tufa, it has been carved by the
wind and weather into strange
shapes that were then occupied
by early Christian settlers who
constructed large underground
towns and settlements. Above
ground, the most distinctive
features of the landscape are
the so-called fairy chimneys
(left), which have, for centuries,
been turned into multistoried
dwellings with rooms, staircases,
and windows hand-carved out
of the soft volcanic rock. Many of
these are still occupied, and the
whole area has become a major
tourist destination.
18
<• ' MM
19
ABOVE A stunning view of the
extraordinary network of cave
houses that make up the Sassi
of Matera, in southern Italy. The
houses stretch deep into the rock
and have been continually
occupied for centuries.
right A Spanish cave house to

which external buildings have
been attached. This is a common
feature in Andalusia, where
many cave dwellings have
been renovated on ancient
sites and are now reoccupied.
20
above Found mainly in the
desert states of Gujarat and
Rajasthan in India, these ancient
Indian step wells, designed to
store the monsoon rains, are
amazing examples of stone
craftsmanship and engineering.
right The strange and wonderful

stepped ponds of India, with
their zigzag stairs, were
constructed near temples and
used for bathing and rituals.
Built of stone blocks, each
flight of stairs is a matched
pair placed side-by-side.
21
above A side view of a Hebridean
Black House, showing the exterior
dry-stone wall and thatched roof.
In fact, the building is ringed
by two thick dry-stone walls
running in parallel with a gap
in between, forming a rectangle
with rounded corners.
left, below, and right Three views

of the stone houses, or trulli, in
the Apulia region of southeast
Italy, which have double
dry-stone walls (below left) built
of local stone and conical roofs
made of overlapping limestone
slabs. The biggest concentration
of these houses is found in the
town of Alberobello and typically
comprises rectangular buildings
containing several square rooms
connected by semicircular
arches. The pointed ogival roofs
are topped with a plastered
"hat”culminating in a pinnacle.
As can be seen in the two main
photographs, the unpainted
roofs are often decorated with
mythological and religious
symbols of various kinds.
22
23
EARTH AND CLAY
One half of the world’s population—approximately three billion people—live or
work in buildings created of earth, mud, or clay. They are found on all continents
and vary in shape and size from individual shelters, such as a Mousgoum tolek, to
vast ceremonial buildings, such as the Great Mosque at Djenne.
above This pretty pink thatched

house in the English county of
Devon has thick walls built of
cob, a building material made
by mixing fiber and water with
clay and aggregate.
left An overhead view of one

of the desert towns of Iran that
are built entirely of adobe bricks.
The distinctive towers of the
wind catchers provide a flow
of air through the buildings.
right The facade of a row

of well-established Chinese
yao dong, man-made earth-
sheltered family dwellings that
are dug into the side of a cliff.
They face south to gain
the maximum sunlight.
24
left The distinctive form of
a Mousgoum tolek, glimpsed
through the brightly painted
compound entrance. Toleks
are handcrafted out of layered
balls of clay. The protruding
ribs add solidity and provide
footholds to aid construction
without the use of scaffolding.
right The extraordinary earthen

roundhouse of the Batammaliba
people of Benin and Togo is one
of the great examples of African
vernacular architecture. The
thatched towers are granaries
that flank the main opening.
RIGHT AND below The imposing

buttresses and protective walls
of the Great Mosque of Djenne,
in Mali, form the largest
mud-brick building in the
world. They are punctuated
with ceramic pipes, to direct
water away from the walls,
and palm branches that help
to reduce cracking and also
serve as ready-made scaffolding
for the annual repairs. These
are carried out at a spring
festival in which the entire
community takes part.
27
above The painted mud and
thatch houses of the Ndebele
people have gained worldwide
attention due to the striking
nature of their exterior artwork,
which is painted entirely by the
women of the tribe.
left A partial view of the adobe

walls of the Taos Pueblo in
northern New Mexico, which
was originally built between
ad 1000 and 1450 and has
been continually occupied ever
since. The roof of each level
is supported by beams of pine.
right These remarkable tower

houses in Yemen are built
of sun-dried clay, mud blocks,
or fired bricks 'on a stone
foundation. Originating
as defensive towers, they
are an ideal structure for
housing an extended family.
28
POLES, POSTS, AND COVERINGS
These varied shelters from many parts of the world use flexible poles of various
kinds to create a basic framework, which is then covered with thatching. Such a
construction method is also used by nomadic peoples to create lightweight shelters
that can easily be erected and disassembled.
LEFT An aerial view of a

Yanomami shabano in the
Amazon forests of southern
Venezuela. This communal
structure has a framework of
hardwood poles covered with
a canopy of slender saplings
thatched with palm leaves.
below One of the stilt houses

of the town of Ganvie on Lake
Nikoue in Benin. The house is
supported on mangrove poles,
which are also used as a
framework for the wattle walls
and the hipped roof, thatched
with grass.
30
above The framework of the
Zulu indlu consists of a ring of
saplings that cross each other
at right angles. The roof is
supported by posts and beams,
and the whole structure is
thatched with grass, secured
by a net of grass ropes.
LEFT The distinctive four-sided

thatched roofs of the Tzotzils’
chukal na in the Mexican state
of Chiapas. This rectangular
single-room house has a
framework made of oak or
cypress posts topped with
wood beams that support a
pyramid of rafters and posts,
covered with a wattle structure
and thatch.
31
right A Korowai tree house in
the remote rain forests of West
Papua, Indonesia, built around
a tree and supported by a
network of wood poles secured
firmly in the ground. The house
has a floor of wood spars, wattle
walls, and a thatched roof.
below This fale tele, a type

of roundhouse, is a building
unique to the islands of
Samoa. The structure is entirely
supported in the center by three'
wood posts, which hold up a
matted covering made of coconut
or sugarcane, thatched with
fronds and leaves. This rests
on an outer ring of posts.
32
above The distinctive ftp/'of the
native Americans is made up
of four elements—a set of wood
poles that form the basic
structure, a semicircular
covering of skin or canvas,
an inner lining, and a door flap.
above RIGHT The Mongolian ger ls

built from a ring of expandable
lattice panels of flexible willow,
which support a roof framework
of bent poles. The tent is covered
with felt mats fastened by ropes
woven from animal hair.
center right The min, the

nomadic home of the Rendille
camel nomads of northern Kenya,
consists of a whelk-shape
structure made of wood poles
covered with overlapping tiles
made of sisal.
right Various forms of the

black tent are used by nomadic
groups across a huge arc from
Mauritania, in west Africa, to
Tibet, in east Asia. The tent’s
main structure is formed by
. a varying arrangement of poles,
secured by ropes and pegs,
with a covering of goat hair.
33
BAMBOO
Bamboo, which is native to five continents, has been used as a structural material
in vernacular buildings for two millennia. It has a high strength-to-weight ratio and
can be worked with simple tools. Fast-growing and easily harvested, bamboo looks
set to provide a valuable sustainable building resource for the future.
right The dramatic shape of the

korambos (“spirit houses") of
the Abelam people of New Guinea
dominates the village. They are
built of a framework of bamboo
rafters and poles, fastened to a
sloping ridge pole and covered
with thatch.
right These paisa houses,

common in the mountainous
coffee-growing region of
Colombia, are built almost
entirely of bamboo, which
is surprisingly earthquake
resistant. The roof spaces are
used for drying coffee beans.
34
above The huge extended boat-
shape saddleback roofs of the
tongkonan, the ancestral houses
of the Toraja people of central
Sulawesi, sit on a wood cabin
supported by thick wood posts.
The thatched roof is built of
bamboo poles overlaid with
layers of bamboo staves.
left The curved roof of the

beautiful half-barrel-shape
huts of the Toda people of
southern India consists of
bundles of thin bamboo bent
over bamboo poles; this is
overlain by a dense covering
of thin bamboo canes running
horizontally and topped by a
thick thatch of swamp grass.
35
REED
Reed is widely used for thatching and to produce woven mats for cladding, but less
commonly for structural purposes. The two best-known examples of reed builders
are the distinctive communities of the Marsh Arabs of Iraq and the Urus people
of Lake Titicaca.
above The impressive cathedral¬

like mudhifs, built by the Marsh
Arabs of Iraq, are the largest
reed buildings in the world.
Large arches of reed bundles
are strengthened at the top
and sides by additional long
reed bundles.
RIGHT A reed builder cuts off

the top of a reed bundle, used
to support the mudhif walls.
left A traditional rectangular

Urus reed house is flanked by two
tipi-type reed structures, built
on a floating island of reeds.
36
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RECYCLED MATERIALS
The use of scrap and waste materials as a building resource is one of the most
important trends in modern vernacular architecture. In the squatter cities of the
developing world, vast areas of ad hoc buildings provide shelter to poor rural
immigrants. In the West, increasing use of discarded materials is driven by new
imperatives to create low-energy, low-carbon buildings.
38
above A giant squatter
settlement on the edge of
Caracas, Venezuela’s capital
and largest city, stretches up
the hillside. Squatter cities are
spreading across the world
and increasing in both size
and number. Here, homes are
made from whichever materials
come on hand, and temporary
structures gradually evolve
into permanent dwellings.
RIGHT Earthships are passive

solar homes made out of recycled
and natural materials. The thick
walls of the building, which can
be designed in many shapes and
forms, are composed of recycled
car tires packed with earth. Much
use is also made of recycled
cans and bottles.
left The Wat Pa Maha Chedi

Kaew temple in Thailand was
constructed using one million
beer bottles that were collected
'by Buddhist monks.
39
SNOW
One of the most iconic of all vernacular buildings, the Inuit igloo is both ingenious
and simple, a snow-block dome built without the use of any supporting structure.
Constructed in a wide variety of sizes, the best-known is the smallest, which is used
as a temporary shelter for hunters and can be built in a matter of hours.
above A sturdy igloo with a long

sunken entrance tunnel, which
acts as a cold sink and helps
to maintain warmth within the
igloo. Loose snow is used to
cover the snow-blocks and seal
the cracks between them to
provide extra insulation.
left A view of the igloo during

construction, showing how the
snow blocks are arranged in
a spiral, with each additional
layer leaning inward to create
the domed shape.
40
INTRODUCTION
JOHN MAY
This book is an introductory guide to, and a global tour of, some of the
world’s vernacular architecture, which is most simply defined as
the architecture of the people, designed and built by communities,
families, and individual builders. It is also a book with a message:
vernacular architecture is an important global issue for our time.
The authority on this vast subject is Paul Oliver, who initiated and
edited the standard publication on the subject, the massive three-
volume Encyclopedia of Vernacular Architecture (impossible to buy
but available in some libraries), and many other key works, including
Dwellings. The definition he uses in both the encyclopedia and
Dwellings to define his subject is: “the dwellings and all other
buildings of the people. Related to their environmental contexts and
available resources, they are owner- or community-built, utilizing
traditional technologies. All forms of vernacular architecture are
built to meet specific needs, accommodating the values, economies,
and ways of life of the cultures that produced them.” To which could
be added, "They may be adapted or developed over time as needs
and circumstances change.”
In another of Paul Oliver’s works, Atlas of Vernacular Architecture
of the World, produced with his colleague Marcel Velinga, we learn
some extraordinary things. Among them, that “no one knows exactly,
or even approximately, how many buildings there are in the world, but
estimates of well over a billion have been made.” Of these, eighty
percent or more are estimated to be vernacular buildings. Put another This impressive
way, buildings designed and built by professional architects and fortlike structure is
a circular tulou in the
builders constitute only a small part of the world’s built infrastructure.
Fujian province of
The vast majority of people in the world live in homes and use southwest China, a
buildings that they and their friends and family have built themselves. communal dwelling
originally built to
This is obviously more true in some countries and regions than in
protect the inhabitants
others. In the Western world, planning restrictions limit self-building, from armed bandits.
land is expensive, and the traditions of our forebears and ancestors A group of forty-six
have been marginalized, their skills lost and forgotten. In other large of these remarkable
buildings are now
parts of the world—in Africa, Asia, and Latin America—people are
included on UNESCO’s
closer to their vernacular architecture, and in many cases are still World Heritage List,
living in it and building it. However, the situation is changing fast. The but vernacular
rush to modernization means that more people than ever before are architecture in
China is generally
moving to cities, where vast numbers now live in squatter settlements
under threat.
where they construct houses from waste and scrap. This is the new
vernacular architecture of our time.
42
All over the world, meanwhile, traditional vernacular architecture
is disappearing—not only the building forms themselves, but also the
knowledge, skills, and customs behind their creation. China is an
outstanding example of the battle being fought to protect vernacular
building forms from the march of the bulldozers. Academics and
NGOs are seeking to educate the country’s policy makers about the
value and importance of preserving traditional architecture, but their
efforts are outweighed by the huge commercial pressures driving a
rush to modernization. And now we come to another world issue: how
are we going to house our new arrivals? As of August 3, 2009, the
earth’s population is estimated by the United States Census Bureau
to be 6.775 billion; it is expected to reach 9 billion by 2040. We are
not going to be able to house our future generations in concrete
blocks. Apart from other considerations, climate-change predictions
and concern over the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide precludes
this. For each new bag of cement, a bag and a half of carbon dioxide
43
INTRODUCTION
is created as waste. This is why many architects and designers, aid

organizations, and others are looking at vernacular architecture to
learn howto build using local materials and live lightly on the earth.
Any examination of vernacular building is full of surprises and,
by its very nature, interdisciplinary. These buildings do not exist in a
vacuum—they are built as part of people's lives and culture. These
structures are shaped not only by physical circumstances and
available materials, but also by the beliefs, myths, customs, and
traditions of the tribe, clan, or group that builds them. Early vernacular
shelters were once considered "primitive,” whereas now we look on
them with more respect, noting the ingenuity employed to fashion
functional and aesthetically pleasing structures with simple tools.
It is fascinating to consider the wide variety of structures in which
people choose to live, which includes tents and caves, pile dwellings, A traditional wood
courtyard houses, log cabins, and mud towers. Also noteworthy is shack in Georgia.
Wood cabins and
the manner in which similar basic materials—such as earth, brick,
shacks of all shapes,
stone, wood, bamboo, palm, and reed—can be employed for different sizes, and styles are
purposes. Forms are expressed in whatever material is close on hand. a vernacular feature
Therefore, a roof may be made out of almost anything: grass thatch,
across huge areas of
the great American
clay tiles, wood shingles, or corrugated iron. landscape.
The majority of examples given in this book are houses, but we
have also investigated the step wells of India, the churches of Chile,
the windmills of Holland, the big barns of the United States, and the
bee houses of Slovenia, which remind us that vernacular building is
a broad term, including places of work and worship and communal
facilities. Many vernacular buildings are beautiful as well as functional.
Some demonstrate a wealth of detail and decoration. Doors and
windows are carved with geometric motifs, walls are elaborately
painted, and domes are topped with ostrich eggs and finials.
Above all, vernacular design must be practical. Nomadic
peoples build lightweight structures that can easily be packed up
and reassembled; sedentary peoples build permanent homes that
can last five hundred years, during which time they are constantly
renewed and adapted to suit changing requirements. As a general
rule, vernacular builders aim to stay warm in winter and cool in
summer, and they have devised numerous ingenious techniques for
achieving those ends. The desert architecture of Iran incorporated
air-conditioning systems that have a great deal to teach today’s
house builders, who must tackle the uncertainties of climate change.
44
INTRODUCTION
Many vernacular buildings around the world are devoted to

revered ancestors. These buildings are often constructed in precise
alignments according to spiritual beliefs. The interiors are arranged
Dense living
in a similar manner, with precisely placed central hearths and conditions, past
shrines to the family. In Madagascar (see the Zafimaniry House, and present: The cave
pages 114-15), the family home coevolves with the relationship of houses of Matera in
southern Italy (below
the couple who live in it. In other examples that we have selected,
left), whose built
the women are in sole charge of house building, or their role may be facades lead into a
to paint and decorate. In almost all cases of vernacular building, cave dwelling behind;
the modern squatter
women and men inhabit separate, clearly defined spaces.
city of Dharavi in
Such is the wide variety of vernacular forms, which encompasses Mumbai (below right),
towers and domes, subterranean dwellings, giant circular communal India, where some
fortresses, meetinghouses, cabins, shacks, and huts, that this one million people
live in makeshift
collection is inevitably partial and selective. We have covered the
houses constructed
globe, drawing interesting examples from each region, and have of scrap and recycled
tried to profile a satisfying mixture of structures in order to do justice materials. Such
to the subject’s complexity. We hope you enjoy the global journey dwellings are the
most common
and that some of our enthusiasm rubs off on you. You may even be vernacular buildings
inspired to build your own handmade house. of our time.
45
FROM DUTCH WINDMILLS
TO GERMAN BARNS
Our journey across Europe and Eurasia commences in the
far north with the different forms of shelter used by the Sami
people. We highlight two forms of earth buildings, found at
the extreme ends of their territory, and the cruck wood
frame, of which Britain has the greatest density in the world.
We profile the giant housebarns of northern Germany and the
unique wood churches of the Ukraine, as well as the many
forms of izba found across vast swathes of Russia. In addition,
we admire the working windmills of the Netherlands and the
practical and elegant hayracks and bee houses of Slovenia.
SAMI GAMME AND GOATTE
The Sami are an indigenous people, scattered across the northern SEE ALSO
territories of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. Some groups > Mongolian Ger,
of Sami lived a semi-settled life on the coast and in the fjords, pages 94-95
supplementing their farming with wild game and fish from the forest > Rendille Min,
and the sea. The pastoral nomadic Sami were principally reindeer pages 112-13
herders who, to this day, follow the animals through the winter and > Plains Indian Tipi,
spend the summer by the coast. pages 126-27
The coastal Sami built turfed winter dwellings of various kinds
called gahti or gamme (pi. gammer), all of which were based on a
skeleton frame of wood rafters covered with turf. The oldest kind was
round at its base and had a domelike form. The semi-settled coastal
Sami built larger, more solid turf huts. Some groups of Sami, who
became permanently settled and took up dairy farming, developed
larger versions—the rectangular "joint gamme" building—in which
people and livestock shared the same house. In the twentieth
century, many Sami moved into small two-room wood houses, with
adjoining farm buildings made of turf or logs.
The Sami began building a gamme by constructing two arches
from birch wood. The arches were then linked by a birch pole at the
top and another that ran along the side of the arch. A well-built
gamme could last thirty years or more.
The nomadic Sami of Northern Norway use a transportable tent
dwelling called a goatte, which employs a similar type of arched wood
frame as the turf houses, covered by canvas in the summer and a
double layer of woollen rugs during the winter.
The Sami peoples protected their food supplies from marauding
animals, such as wolverines, by building storehouses. These were
huts, solidly constructed of horizontal logs, notched at the corners;
the whole was raised off the ground either on four corner poles (to
make an aite) or on one or two tree trunks with roots (njalla).
MATERIALS
* Lumber for wood
Sami is the name of the framework: two
cultural region traditionally arches linked by
inhabited by the Sami long pole
people, which covers an
area of about 150,000 square * Turf for outer covering
miles (388,350 sq km). * Reindeer skin and
roundwood for
nomadic shelters
48
FROM BUTCH WINDMILLS TO GERMAN BARNS
SAMI GAMME AND GOATTE
EARLY GAMME
This is the oldest form of
Sami dwelling, constructed
of bow-shaped rafters and
vertical poles, covered first with
birch bark and then with a layer
of turf. These were used not only
for living accommodation, but
also as storehouses, animal
shelters, or as huts.
Vertical wood
planking (sits just
behind the turf)
Turf
covering
RECTANGULAR GAMME Hearth
The interiors of both the dome-
shape and rectangular forms of
the gamme are constructed in a
similar manner. For a rectangular
gamme, two parallel rows of poles
are arranged vertically from floor
to ceiling, creating a narrow
corridor running from the door
to the back wall. The hearth Wood
is placed in the center, with poles
a smoke hole above and a support
turf roof
kitchen behind it.
Curved birch poles

GOATTE
The main supports of the
nomadic Sami's "bent-pole”
tent are two pairs of curved
birch poles to which numerous
side poles are attached to
support the fabric of the canvas
wall. All these poles are light,
making them easy to handle
and transport. The tent takes Canvas covering
about thirty minutes to erect
or dismantle.
49
HEBRIDEAN BLACK HOUSE
Once common in the islands and highlands of Scotland, mainly built SEE ALSO
in the mid-nineteenth century, and evolved from an older form, Black > Zulu Indlu,
Houses (taigh dubh in Gaelic) survive, and are still in use, only on the pages 116-17
Hebridean islands. Perfectly suited to the harsh local climate, these > Ndebele Painted
single-story thatched longhouses, low-lying and rounded with thick House, pages
118-19
walls, present little resistance to the prevailing winds sweeping
in from the Atlantic. Their name may have come from the fact that,
without a chimney, these houses soon acquired a blackened interior.
The construction of a Black House began with the building
of two dry-stone walls—as broad as they were high (up to 6V2 feet/
2 m thick), tapering toward the top—that ran in parallel, with a gap
in between, forming a rectangle with rounded corners.
The gap was filled with pebbles, rubble, and sand overlain with
turf, and formed a grass-covered “path," which sheep would climb
up and graze on. These strong, durable walls ensured the houses
were well insulated, and also soundproofed them against the constant
howl of wind and the crash of the ocean.
Because there are no trees on the Hebridean islands, the
components that supported the thatch roof were mainly driftwood
that had been washed ashore, often carried by the Gulf Stream from
North America or the Caribbean. These were laid across the inside
wall and topped by a thatch of two layers of turf overlain with cereal
straw, which was then draped with old fishing nets, tied down with
heather ropes, and weighted by large stones.
According to Donald John Maclennan, who was born in one,
“because of the shortage of wood, and the toil involved in collecting
stone, families often built houses back-to-back, sharing a common
wall.1’ Inside the Black House, a family would live at one end, and
animals (mainly cattle) at the other. Traditional Black Houses were
still lived in as late as the 1970s.
MATERIALS
* Stone for two walls,

infilled with pebbles,
The Inner and Outer rubble, and sand
Hebridean Islands
form an archipelago * Driftwood for roof
off the west coast supports
of Scotland. * Turf and cereal
straw for thatch,
tied down with
heather ropes
50
FROM DUTCH WINDMILLS TO GERMAN BARNS
HEBRIDEAN BLACK HOUSE
Driftwood
supports for
thatch roof
CROSS SECTION Parallel
This cross section of a Black

House, viewed from the wood
gable end, shows clearly the two
stone walls running in parallel
with a gap in between, the
hearth in the center, and the
heather ropes, weighted by
stones, used to secure the
thatch; this was renewed
annually, the old smoky thatch
making excellent fertilizer. Stones hold down Hearth
heather ropes
TRADITIONAL
BLACK HOUSE Thatch of turf Net of heather ropes
and cereal straw holds down thatch
This shows the solidity of the
low-lying thatched longhouse.
Inside a Black House, a family
would live at one end, animals
(mainly cattle) at the other. An
open-hearth fire burned dried
peat and gave off smoky fumes.
The people would often sleep in
recesses in the thickness of the
wall behind the fireplace.
MODERN BLACK HOUSE

This first modern version of
a Black House was built in
four months in 1993, in the
traditional way using local
materials, but with the addition
of windows, a chimney, and
modern conveniences, such as a
toilet. It serves as a guesthouse
for tourists.
51
CRUCK-FRAME BUILDINGS
The origin of cruck-frame buildings is open to speculation, because SEE ALSO
there is little evidence of examples before 1200. They are preeminently > Natural Building,
found in Britain, where four thousand have been recorded, mainly in pages 180-81
the north and in the west of the country, with none in the eastern and > Big Barn,
southeastern lowland. Crucks are also found, in fewer numbers, in pages 128-29
many areas of France, in Northern Ireland, and Scandinavia.

Building a cruck frame involved the use of an entire tree trunk
or the main branch of a large tree, which was split down the middle,
the two halves (known as “blades") being positioned in an A-frame
shape so that the curve on each mirrors the other, and fastened
at the top by a “collar" or tie beam. A series of these, erected at
intervals, would be linked together by a ridge board and by two side
rails at the level of the eaves. Smaller pieces were arranged in triangles
within the framework to act as wind braces. The roof was formed of
rafters, running from ridge to side rail, which carried the thatch.
Because the framing supported the weight of the roof, the walls
were only required to keep out the weather and were made variously
of wattle and daub, turf, clay, and—from the sixteenth century
onward—stone. To help minimize rot, the feet of a cruck frame were
commonly stood on rounded padstones.
By the end of the Middle Ages, there was a critical shortage
of large trees, so Henry VIII tried to stop cruck construction in order
to save the trees that were left for use by the Navy. As a result, box
framing, an alternative method that used smaller lumber components
yet less lumber overall, and was already dominant in the east and
southeast of England, began to spread across the rest of the country.
Box framing became popular for residential buildings because
it enabled the building of second and third floors, and also made it
easier to add extra wings to a building.
MATERIALS
* Tree trunk or large

branch, split into
two, fastened with
The biggest concentration of a tie beam. Also
cruck frames is in Britain; they wood for frame
are also scattered in areas of components
France and Scandinavia.
* Wattle and daub,
turf, clay, or stone
for walls
* Thatch for roof
52
CRUCK-FRAME BUILDINGS
THE CRUCK FRAME

The completed cruck frame is
made up of three cracks linked
together by a ridge board and by
two side rails. In medieval times,
the timber for the cracks would
have been felled with a two-man
saw and ax, squared up with
an adze (an axiike tool with an
arched blade used for shaping
wood), assembled on the
ground, and then raised.
CRUCK-FRAME HOUSE
This cutaway diagram of a cruck-
frame house shows clearly the full
extent of the additional wood
framing added to the initial
structure, including the rafters
with thatch topping. Since c. 1980
in the UK, there has been a revival
in new buildings using green oak
and incorporating cruck frames.
Wattle and daub walls
Rounded stones
53
COB HOUSE
Cob is an earth-base building material comprising subsoil, clay, sand, SEE ALSO
and gravel, which is mixed with straw and water to a stiff but malleable > Vernacular Revivals,
mass and used to build the walls of a house and numerous items pages 182-83
within it, including shelves, benches, floors, and ovens. > Ndebele Painted
People have likely been building cob houses of various kinds House, pages
118-19
since prehistoric times, and such houses and shelters can be found
in many parts of the world, including the United States, parts of
Europe, and Africa, as well as Australia and New Zealand.
Exactly when cob building originated in England is not known,
but it has certainly been in use since the fifteenth century and was
one of the primary methods of building construction for all social
classes up until the early 1800s, when fired bricks became readily
available. The oldest surviving cob structures in the UK are seven
hundred years old, and there are approximately fifty thousand
cob buildings still in use in England today. One of the main centers
of cob building is the southwest of England, particularly Devon; the
word cob is an old Devon word for a mud wall. Devon is one of
the wetter counties in England, so the mixture of ingredients in the
cob—which includes a naturally occurring aggregate called shillet—
is constituted for a wet climate.
Cob building has many advantages: the cob walls, when dry, are
extremely hard and will last for centuries; they can be shaped to any
required form using a sharp spade or mattock; cob is load-bearing,
so cob houses need no wood framework. The only disadvantage is
that because the building process involves various stages, the total
construction time may be as much as fifteen months.
Cob walls are commonly rendered with permeable lime-base
coatings and paint to enable the walls to breathe and moisture to
evaporate. Most cob houses are thatched, with overhanging eaves.
MATERIALS
* Stone foundations
* Subsoil, clay, sand,

Devon has a tradition of cob and gravel, mixed
houses, built of local materials with straw and
to suit the wet climate. water, for cob walls
* Lime-base coating
to enable walls to
breathe
* Thatch for roof
54
COB HOUSE
COB HOUSE
This is a grand and conventional
style of cob house, but cob
houses come in many shapes,
sizes, and styles. The thickness
of the cob-house walls—the
average in a Devon cob is 2 feet
(60 cm)—means they are warm
in winter and cool in summer.
FOUNDATIONS
Building with cob is a slow and Stone foundations
very labor-intensive process. The

cob is mixed using hands and
feet or, for larger projects, a
cement mixer or power machinery.
It is then loaded onto stone
foundations, which prevent
damp. Each layer, or "lift”—
typically 2 feet (60 cm) high and
2-3 feet (60-90 cm) thick—is
shaped by hand and trodden
down to compress it.
LIFTS
Each lift needs several days to
dry out before the next is added.
Asa result, it can take three
months or more to make a
two-story building. It can then
take six to nine months for the
thick walls to dry out completely,
in the process of which they
will shrink. Only after this
Additional lifts added once First story complete with wood
has happened can doors and each has dried, until the window frames in place
deep-set windows be added. building is complete
55
HALLENHAUS HOUSE BARN
Once found in a wide arc right across the eastern Netherlands and SEE ALSO
north Germany, the Hallenhaus (pi. Hallenhauser/Hall-House) is a > Big Barn,
form of wood-frame house barn that contained, under one roof, living pages 128-29
quarters, stables, and crop store. It was in use from the fifteenth to > Japanese Minka,
the twentieth centuries and numerous fine examples survive to this pages 86-87
day. The basic three-aisle form of the Hallenhaus possibly developed
from an early longhouse of the seventh to tenth centuries, to which
the aisles were gradually added. Although there is a great deal of
regional styling and variation in construction details, the basic form
of the Hallenhaus remained consistent throughout.
The support system for the central nave of the building was
constructed in a post-and-trussform, with long beams running across
the top of parallel rows of posts, capped with a wood framework. This
wide hall space (Diele), which was covered with large floorboards,
was used for all important tasks, including the threshing in wintertime.
On either side of the Diele were the stables and stalls, for cattle and
horses. Hallenhauser can be categorized by the number of animal
bays they have—the smallest would have two, the largest ten or more,
stretching for up to 148 feet (45 m) in length. At the far end of the
Diele was a living and sleeping area for the farmer, his family, and
farmworkers, arranged around a central open hearth.
The large, steep roof was thatched and the exterior walls were
wood frames with panels in between made of wattle and daub
or bricks. Many examples of Hallenhauser have an older interior
framework, as the outer walls and rafters, which are not integral to
the main structure, have been replaced at some point in the
building’s history. The entrance to the larger form of Hallenhaus was
big enough to accommodate a horse and wagon; at harvest times,
the corn was loaded up into the empty space above the Diele.
MATERIALS
Originally widely distributed * Lumber for wood
across the entire north German frame post-and-
plain, Hallenhauser still survive
H in many German villages.
truss system
* Wattle and daub or

brick for walls
EASTERN * Thatch and, later,
NETHERLANDS/
NORTHERN GERMANY tiles for roof
56
HALLENHAUS HOUSE BARN
TYPICAL HALLENHAUS
This is a typical style of
Hallenhaus, a wood-frame
house barn of which numerous Wood frame
and brick
fine examples still survive. walls Steep
Walls are made of brick thatch
or wattle and daub. roof
CROSS SECTION
This cross section of a large
Hallenhaus clearly shows the
roof space filled with a harvest
of grain sacks; but why would
farmers go to the inconvenience
of storing the harvest in the
rafters in this way? According
to author and photographer Will
Pryce, in the Middle Ages harvest
time was set for a whole village,
regardless of the weather. As a
result, the corn had to be stored
damp. The advantage of using
the roof space in this manner
was that smoke from the
domestic fires below dried
out the corn and prevented
it from rotting.
Hall space (Diele)
57
EARLY DUTCH WINDMILLS
One of the world’s most remarkable vernacular structures is the SEE ALSO
windmill, a work of supreme craftsmanship and ingenuity, combining > Later Dutch
structural beauty with mechanical skill. Although found scattered in Windmills,
pages 60-61
smaller numbers throughout much of Europe and Eurasia, it is in the
Netherlands that the windmill has become a symbol of the country > Iranian Desert
Towns,
itself and where the greatest number was built in a relatively small
pages 82-83
area. Many survive in excellent condition, and a considerable number
> Paisa House,
are still working today.
pages 146-47
Windmills are said to have existed in the Netherlands from about
> Toraja Tongkonan,
1200; the oldest known written reference dates from 1274. These
pages 158-59
were post mills (of two types, open and closed), and were used solely
for grinding corn. From the post mills evolved the hollow-post wip
mill, a drainage mill, first recorded in 1414. As the technology of
these windmills steadily improved, they became larger, their water¬
lifting capacity increased, and they became more numerous.
Around 1526, the wip mill was replaced by the familiar large
octagonal smock mill. This was topped by a rotating roof or cap
containing a winch that could be turned to bring the sails into the
wind; in the late 1500s, smock mills with tail poles were developed,
enabling the sails to be turned from ground level. The span of the
sails (twice the length of a single sail) was limited to 90-100 feet
(27-30.5 m) by the length of the tree trunks of which they were made.
These smock mills were used not only for water drainage, but
also for a variety of other industrial purposes—for hulling barley and
rice, and for grinding cocoa, snuff, pepper, mustard, and other
foodstuffs. They were also paper mills, oil mills, dye mills, and
industrial mills for grinding chalk, lime, and oak bark for the
tanneries. Special sawmills (paltrokmolens in Dutch) were also
developed. In the seventeeth century, the Netherlands’ "Golden
Age,” the industrial mill district of Zaan, north of Amsterdam, had
nine hundred mills working day and night.
The Netherlands is often

called Holland, but the country
consists of twelve provinces, of MATERIALS
which the largest are North and * Brick or stone base
South Holland. The country as
a whole was only known as the *Wood structures
Kingdom of Holland for a brief throughout
period from 1806 to 1810. * Canvas for sails
58
EARLY DUTCH WINDMILLS
POST MILL
A side elevation of a post mill,
the earliest type of mill recorded
in use in the province of Holland
in the thirteenth century, used
for grinding corn. In those days,
to ensure an uninterrupted
supply of flour for the population,
there had to be one windmill for
Triangulated
every two thousand inhabitants.
wood base
support —
HOLLOW-POST WIP MILL

A side elevation of a hollow-post
mill. These were the first windmills
that used the power of the wind
to drive a scoop wheel (later an
Archimedes screw) to drain water
Base structure
from the land. houses the
crown, pit, and
scoop wheels
SMOCK MILL
This is a large octagonal smock
drainage mill of the South
Holland type, with an internal
scoop wheel. The smock mill gets
its name because its tapered Internal scoop wheel Automatic
wood tower, clapboarded sluice door
horizontally, resembles a Water intake
Wood
peasant’s smock. piles
59
FROM DUTCH WINDMILLS TO GEI
LATER DUTCH WINDMILLS
The round brick-built tower windmills were developed to give millers SEE ALSO
more working and storage space, and were originally situated on the > Early Dutch
outskirts of towns and villages. These wall mills (walmolens) were Windmills,
pages 58-59
expanded into taller versions—often more than 100 feet (30.5 m)
high—that were able to catch the wind across other buildings and
thus could be built in the town’s center.
Because of their great height, it was necessary to add halfway up
the structure a circular wood “stage” with handrail to enable the
miller to reach the sails and operate the break rope and the mill’s
winding mechanism for turning the cap.
These giant mills were suited for milling corn because they had
as many as six or seven floors, each being used for a separate part
of the milling process. First the grain was hoisted up in sacks from
the grain store to the bin floor, through double-flap trapdoors, by
means of a sack hoist driven by wind power. The grain then flowed
by gravity from the hoppers (funnel-shape containers) to the stone
floor, where it was ground. On the meal floor below, the flour was
collected in sacks, which were then stored in the floor below.
At its base, a tower mill was some 30 feet (9 m) in diameter, thus
providing a reasonable amount of living quarters for the miller and
his family on the first two floors. Two pairs of stable doors facing each
other enabled a horse and cart to deliver grain and take away the
flour to the miller's customers. Between the bin floor and the cap
was the dust floor, full of smoke, dripping oil, and dust from the grain.
By the nineteenth century there were as many as nine thousand
windmills in the Netherlands, but their numbers declined rapidly
during this period as steam power took over from wind as industry’s
main motive force. Many mills were demolished or neglected until
conservation efforts began in the 1920s. Today, around 1,200 of the
original mills survive; in addition, derelict mills are being restored
and replica mills are being built on historical mill sites.
The Netherlands is still

famous for its windmills,
of which some 1,200 survive MATERIALS
to this day. They are used * Brick or stone base
traditionally for draining
water and grinding corn. *Wood structures
throughout
* Canvas for sails
60
LATER DUTCH WINDMILLS
TOWER MILL
The world's tallest tower
mills can be found in
Schiedam, South Holland.
De Nolet, a modern mill
built in 2006 to generate
electricity for a distillery,
is 140 feet (42.5 m) to the Break Cap
61
RUSSIAN IZBA
The traditional Russian izba (pi. izby), a "peasant house” built of SEE ALSO
interlocking ax-hewn logs, was for centuries the most widespread form > Log Cabin,
of house found in the Russian countryside. A typical farmstead would pages 132-33
consist of an izba, a log-built barn and hay shed, either attached to or > Zafimaniry House,
separated from the main building, and a kitchen garden. Izby were pages 114-15
constructed in many shapes and sizes, but they shared similar internal
layouts. Broadly speaking, three main regional types of izba have been
identified, which were designed to deal with different climatic and
environmental conditions.
In the heavily forested north, izby tended to be larger and their
farm buildings were arranged around a courtyard in an /.or Ushape.
Due to the severe climate, another common northern form was the
two-story koshel ("basket house”), in which the living quarters and
agricultural spaces were integrated into one building, covered by an
asymmetrical roof with a short, steep slope over the main house and
a longer slope covering an interior yard and farm structures. Central
Russian izby were smaller, with either attached or separate storage
sheds and animal shelters; izby in southern Russia usually lacked
basements and had similar farm structures around them.
Izby were constructed using hand axes, adzes, or knives, but not
saws, and wood pegs rather than nails (metal was expensive).
Building one was a communal effort, celebrated with feasts that were
held at significant stages in the construction process. A great deal of
attention was paid to the correct siting of the house; coins, wool, and
frankincense were placed underneath the corners of the house so
that its inhabitants would be healthy and wealthy. In one corner of
the izba, the family’s icons would be displayed, providing a spiritual
focus for the home. Most surviving izby, some up to five hundred
years old, are now found only in outdoor museums.
MATERIALS
Widespread throughout Russia,

* Interlocking
wood izby made good use ax-hewn logs
of the huge timber resources *Wood for roofing,
of this vast country. although modern
materials, including
felting and
RUSSIA corrugated iron,
were used later
62
RUSSIAN IZBA
SMALL IZBA
This is an example of the smaller
form of izba found in southern
or central Russia, built of fir or
pinewood. A small traditional
village would consist of a
number of izbas, a church, a
bathhouse, windmills, storage
sheds, and other outbuildings,
spaced apart to try to prevent
the spread of fire.
Log construction with

interlocking comers -
IZBA HEATING
Keeping warm in an izba in winter
was a major problem and one
traditional solution was a
“Russian stove" known as a pech,
a brick masonry construction used
for cooking meals, baking bread
and pies, drying out grains,
mushrooms, and roots, and for
heating and drying the house.
DECORATION
In the north and in the Volga
area, many izby were highly
decorated with exterior carvings
that embellished the eaves,
window frames, and balcony;
interiors were often brightly
painted. The house was
considered a cosmos unto
itself; its facade was likened
to a human face.
63
WOOD CHURCHES
The wood churches of Eastern and Central Europe are found across SEE ALSO
a vast region encompassing northern Russia and Finland, Poland, >Wood Churches
Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary, and the Balkans. They were of Chiloe,
pages 150-51
built in many shapes and styles, but share the same basic forms of
log construction, which were also used in wood houses. Three >The Great Mosque
of Djenne,
distinctive forms of wood church, found in the Ukraine and
pages 104-5
adjacent areas of Poland and Slovakia, were built by three different
ethnic groups—the Boyko, Lemko, and Hutsul people—who stem
originally from the Carpathian highlands.
The Boyko ranged mainly across large parts of the Carpathians in
the Ukraine, as well as adjacent areas of northeast Slovakia and
southeast Poland. Today, Boyko in the Ukraine consider themselves
Ukrainian, and most belong to the Ukraine Greek Catholic Church.
The Lemko, according to The Encyclopedia of Vernacular Architecture,
were “once cattle-breeding nomads coming from the east in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In the nineteenth century, they
changed their lifestyle, developing agriculture, and exploiting forests."
The semi-nomadic Hutsul live in an area that spans from southeast of
the Boyko territory to the Romanian segment of Carpathia. There are
competing hypotheses as to their origins and identity. Some say the
name Hutsul derives from hotul, the Romanian word for “thief"; others
that it stems from kochul, the Slavic word for “wanderer."
The Boyko churches consist of three log rooms built along an
east-west axis, each topped by a dome. The churches of the Lemko
people followed the same three-part structure on an east-west axis.
The churches of the Hutsul are also built on an east-west axis, but
are formed of five rooms, with a dominant central square nave and
two-storyed rectangular rooms connected to it on all four sides.
These treasures of vernacular architecture are slowly attracting
attention internationally; they have become important symbols for
the ethnic peoples whose identity was lost during the Soviet era.
The Carpathian Mountains

form an arc of 932 miles
(1,500 km) across Central MATERIALS
and Eastern Europe,
including the Ukraine. * Logs to make the
wood structures
*Wood shingles
for roofs
64
WOOD CHURCHES
BOYKO CHURCH
In the three-room, three-dome
Boyko churches, the central
room—the nave—is the largest,
and has the largest dome above
it. To the east side is the
sanctuary, to the west the
narthex or babinec, where
the women sat; these rooms
are smaller, with smaller domes
above. The churches are
encircled by a wide overhanging
porch, covered with notched
shingles and supported by posts.
LEMKO CHURCH
Here we see the basic structure of
a Lemko church, with the small
presbytery at the east, the larger
square nave in the center, and
the narthex on the west. The
presbytery is topped by a rising
series of progressively smaller
roofs, culminating in a dome and
a cross; the nave by a larger,
higher version of the same. The
narthex has an even taller bell
tower over it, which contains a
storage room on the second floor.
HUTSUL CHURCH Octagonal central room
All five rooms of the Hutsul

church are covered with gable
roofs with a small cupola on top.
The central room slopes upward
to form an octagon, covered by
an eight-sided conical roof.
In such Hutsul churches there
were two entrances—one on
the western side for women,
the other on the southern
side for men.
Stone base
B5
SLOVENIAN HAYRACK AND BEE HOUSE
Two vernacular structures have become important symbols of SEE ALSO
Slovenian culture: the hayrack (kozolec)and the bee house (ulnjaki). > Ganvie Stilt Village,
The former are not unique to Slovenia, but are found there in large pages 108-9
numbers; the latter incorporate a technical innovation in beekeeping
and also serve as a vehicle for an important folk art tradition.
The landscape of Slovenia—a small country bordering Italy, Austria,
and Croatia—is studded with tens of thousands of kozolecs. First
documented in 1689, they are now built using modern materials, but
still resonate as a symbol of the Slovene nation. Dr. Borut Juvanec of
Lubliana University has said: “It is the only ethnical architecture I know."
Beekeeping has been practiced in Slovenia for more than six
hundred years and the bee houses are unique wood structures,
topped with a thatch or shingle roof, that form another distinctive
feature of the Slovenian landscape. These structures evolved as a
protective shelter for numerous drawer-shaped hives, an invention
of the painter and beekeeper Anton Jansa, which were stacked
together in blocks kept in the bee house’s side.
A tradition of decorating the spruce panels at the end of the
drawers with religious, historical, and humorous paintings developed
among beekeepers in one area of the country, and this practice
spread throughout Slovenia. The oldest surviving bee-panel painting
is dated 1758; the heyday of the practice was the period from 1820
to 1880, and it was widespread until the end of World War I. More
than six hundred different designs have been recorded, many of
which are preserved in the Museum of Apiculture in Radovljica.
They are now highly valued and considered among the most
important works of Slovene folk art. Bee houses in many shapes and
forms persist in modern times, as do the painted hives—which sport
modern, vividly colored illustrations.
The republic of Slovenia MATERIALS

touches the Alps in the north
and borders the Mediterranean * Wood for racks, roof,
in the south. beehive structure,
and drawers
* Straw, wood
shingles, or clay
tiles for roof
66
SLOVENIAN HAYRACK AND BEE HOUSE
HAYRACK (KOZOLEC)
The simplest type of kozolec is a
freestanding wood rack with
a roof, for drying hay and grain.
This would be used on steep
slopes and plains, anchored with
supports, if necessary; in wet
areas it has a projecting roof on
one side to provide shelter from
sudden downpours.
LINKED HAYRACK
(TOPLAR)
Standing on wood legs, with a
drying rack attached to either side,
the larger, more elaborate and
beautiful form is called a toplar
or "linked hayrack.” its second
floor, principally a storage room, is
reached by a staircase and fronted
by a balcony. Its substantial
overhanging roof is either
thatched with straw or covered
with wood shingles or clay tiles.
Shingle roof
BEE HOUSE (ULNJAKI)
This beautiful and ornate
bee house is made entirely
of wood with a shingle roof.
The hive drawers can be seen
stacked in the front, many of
which are painted in bright Painted
colors and illustrated with hive
drawers
folk art. Many of these huts
were mobile, enabling bee
colonies to be moved from
pasture to pasture.
67
FROM MEDITERRANEAN CAVES
TO BEDOUIN TENTS
The Mediterranean is ringed with cave dwellings and cave
houses of various forms, many of which have ancient roots.
Dry-stone architecture is another widespread building type,
most beautifully expressed in the trulli of southern Italy. The
ubiquitous black tent serves not only the Bedouins, but
nomadic groups across a huge area of northern Africa, the 1
Middle East, and beyond. It survives in the modern age, N!
unlike the reed houses of the Marsh Arabs of Iraq, whose

whole culture is under threat. The impressive earth towers of
Yemen and the ingenious wind catchers of Iran offer lessons
for modern architects seeking to build in hot, inclement
climates where water is scarce.
r n. .
tei I mi s^M-
:.ii|i!i
n - f? util
*»»• fijfjtj
/V*'
*i!l rJJs
y.S'
iifiifl
w
TRULLO STONE HOUSE
Based on a prehistoric building technique, dry-stone houses with SEE ALSO
conical roofs are found throughout the Mediterranean region and >Mousgoum Tolek,
beyond. They follow similar construction principles, but each type pages 106-7
has its own name and style. The trullo (pi. trulli) is the name for such > Indian Stepped
buildings that are found scattered throughout the countryside of Ponds and
Stepwells,
the Itria Valley of the Apulia region of southeast Italy. The trulli built
pages 98-99
in this region are either rectangular structures with truncated
pyramid roofs or circular structures with ogival (pointed) roofs. The
only concentrations of trulli are found in the Monti and Aja Piccola
quarters of Alberobello, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which
contain more than 1,600 in all, the majority of which are privately
owned and still inhabited. The trulli here are distinctive rectangular-
plan buildings, containing several square rooms with conical roofs,
connected by semicircular arches.
These trulli are constructed out of roughly worked limestone
boulders, collected from neighboring fields, and were built, without
foundations, directly on the underlying natural rock, using the
dry-stone technique (without mortar). The double walls that form the
rectangular rooms have rubble cores, are pierced by small windows,
and rise to a height of 5-6 feet (1.5-1.8 m). These walls are extremely
thick, providing a cool environment in hot weather and insulating
against the cold in the winter.
The conical roofs, which also have double layers, spring directly
from the walls and are built up of successive courses of overlapping
gray limestone slabs, 2-23A inches (5-7 cm) thick, known as chiance
or chiancarelle. When complete, the cones are sealed off with a
plastered “hat,” culminating in a pinnacle. The interiors are equipped
with wood fittings, such as door frames and barrel-vault niches. In
some of the larger trulli there is a second story formed from a wood
MATERIALS
floor and reached by means of a wood staircase.
* Limestone boulders
and rubble for
double walls
Apulia is the least mountainous * Gray limestone

region of Italy, mainly covered slabs (chincareile)
by broad plains and low-lying to construct
hills, with a very dry climate. conical roofs
* Wood for door
frames, barrel-vault
niches, floors, and
staircases
70
FROM MEDITERRANEAN CAVES TO BEDOUIN TENTS
TRULLO STONE HOUSE
Double walls
GROUND-FLOOR
CONSTRUCTION
This is the first stage in the
construction of a four-room
Aiberobello truilo. Here we see
the ground-floor construction
level. The basic walls have been
built and a flat roof, with circular Stone steps
leading to roof
openings, has been completed. Ground floor complete
Note the main arched entrance with circular openings
for roofs Arched entrance
and the narrow stone steps
leading up to the roof.
ROOF CONSTRUCTION
Here three conical roofs of various
sizes have been built using the
technique known as corbeling,
the laying of successive courses
of stones, each projecting slightly
inward over the preceding ones.
The more pointed chimney on the
far left carries away smoke and
fumes from fireplaces and ovens.
Painted
whitewash
Decorative pinnacle cross on
one roof
Second roof covering
COMPLETED TRULLO
This finished truilo has an
additional room to the side. Two
of the conical roofs are topped
with a decorative pinnacle called
a cucurneoi or tintinule-, one is
marked with a whitewashed
cross—the unpainted roofs were
often marked with mythological
or religious symbols. A final roof
covering links the various parts
of the building together.
71
MEDITERRANEAN CAVE DWELLINGS
The Mediterranean region is one of the major concentrations of cave SEE ALSO
dwellings in the world, some of which have been continually inhabited > Cappadocian Cave
since ancient times. The earliest man-made horizontal caves in the Dwellings,
pages 74-75
region have been found by archaeologists in Anatolia and the
neighboring Aegean islands. According to historian A. T. Luttrell, > Chinese Yao Dong,
pages 90-91
"Mediterranean people have always chosen caves and grottoes,
natural or excavated, as providing cool and often defensible dwellings,
stores, stalls, cisterns, churches, burial places, and catacombs.”
Vertical caves exist in other parts of the western Mediterranean
and in southern France; horizontal caves in Spain, Italy, Greece,
Morocco, and many of the Mediterranean islands, including Sicily
and Malta, where evidence of cave dwelling dates as far back as
5000 8c. Their distribution is largely conditioned by geology, being
built or excavated in areas where limestone, sandstone, or volcanic
deposits (especially tufa) are the predominant rock.
Three sites are of particular interest: the Sassi of Matera in
southern Italy, the cave houses of northern Andalusia in Spain, and
the extraordinary cave houses and underground cities of Cappadocia
in Turkey. The Sassi of Matera cave complex in southern Italy is the
most outstanding and intact example of a troglodyte settlement in
the whole of Europe, dating from the Paleolithic onwards. It is carved
out of the local tufa stone.
One of the major concentrations of cave dwellings in Spain can
be found in the mountains of the Altiplano (High Plateau) of northern
Andalusia. The rock formations in this area consist of a sedimentary
sandstone composed of alternate layers of hard and soft rock. The
hard rock is impervious to water and provides a secure roof; the soft
rock could be dug out by hand. There are caves here that date back
to the Iron Age, thousands of which later provided homes for
farmworkers and their families, until seventy-five percent of them left
in the late 1960s when the local economy collapsed. MATERIALS
* Carved out
of limestone,
A tradition of cave and pit sandstone, or
dwellings has survived in volcanic deposits,
many countries around such as tufa
the Mediterranean.
* Brick frontage and
later extensions
FRANCE/ITALY/ *Wood for internal/
SPAIN/GREECE/
NORTH AFRICA external joinery
72
MEDITERRANEAN CAVE DWELLINGS
SASSI OF MATERA
The Sassi of Matera is a network
of cave houses interlinked with
buildings above them in a
spontaneous and haphazard
manner. During the 1950s, due
to its neglected condition, the
whole complex was closed, and
its twenty thousand inhabitants
were moved to other areas. The
abandoned houses became the
property of the state and a wall
was erected to prevent them
from being occupied. Then, in
1986, the Italian government
allocated 100 billion lira to
reclaim the unique complex,
and in 1993 it was declared
a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
TYPICAL CAVE HOUSE

This is the kitchen of the
reconstructed interior of a typical
cave house in Vico Solitario in the
Sasso Caveoso neighborhood of
Matera. In recent years, some
three thousand people have
returned to live in cave homes,
and Matera has become a
center for international tourism.
ANDALUSIAN
CAVE HOUSE
In the last ten years in
Andalusia, there has been
a substantial revival in the
popularity of caves as both
vacation and permanent homes.
Many renovated cave houses
have had some form of external
building added to the front of
the cave, as seen here.
73
CAPPADOCIAN CAVE DWELLINGS
The Turkish region of Cappadocia, in the center of Anatolia, contains SEE ALSO
the most spectacular examples of cave houses and underground > Mediterranean
dwellings in the world. Its landscape was formed from a layer of tufa Cave Dwellings,
pages 72-73
between 328 and 492 feet (100 and 150 m) thick, from the ashes
produced by the three volcanoes in the region, which are presently
inactive. Over the centuries this has been carved into unusual
shapes and forms by the action of wind and water.
The most striking features in the Cappadocia region are the
geological forms known as “fairy chimneys" (peri bacalari). Giant
pinnacles of eroded softer rock topped by a cap of harder rock, these
extraordinary natural structures have been inhabited for centuries.
Inside some are five-story houses with rooms, staircases, and
windows hand-carved out of the soft volcanic rock.
The first cave settlements here date back to the early days of
Christianity, when Christian settlers, needing to hide from invading
Arabic and Persian troops, dug out and carved underground towns.
There are no fewer than thirty-six of these towns in this area, the
largest being at Derinkuyu, which housed between ten and twenty
thousand people. A 5V£-mile (9-km) tunnel connected Derinkuyu
with the second-largest underground city at Kaymakly, of which four
levels of an estimated eleven have been excavated thus far.
More than four hundred Christian monasteries, churches, and
chapels were also carved from the rock in Cappadocia—the largest
is Tokali church, which contains paintings depicting the life of Jesus.
In most of the Cappadocian villages the older dwellings are part
cave, part house. The family retreats to the warmer cave rooms in
winter and lives in the attached arch houses in the summer. The
cave rooms were also used throughout the year for food storage. Other
buildings—stables, pigeon coops, bee houses, and cloakrooms—were
added to form a domestic complex surrounded by a protective wall.
MATERIALS
* Carved out of
limestone,
The ancient region of sandstone, or
Cappadocia in central Turkey volcanic deposits,
is a place of exceptional such as tufa
natural wonders.
* Brick frontage and
later extensions
CAPPADOCIA, *Wood for internal/
TURKEY
external joinery
74
CAPPADOCIAN CAVE DWELLINGS
FAIRY CHIMNEYS
The fairy chimneys (peri bacalari)
of Cappadocia are extraordinary
natural features that have been
turned into habitations. Inside
some are five-story houses with
rooms, staircases, and windows
hand-carved out of the soft
volcanic rock. The cap of volcanic
basalt rock protects the cone of
tufa beneath it from erosion.
UNDERGROUND CITY
Derinkuyu in Cappadocia was
found, by chance, under a hill,
and opened to the public in 1965.
It covers an area of PA square
miles (4 sq km) and consists of
seven levels, extending to a
depth of 229-79 feet (70-85 m).
It contains some two thousand
households and an extensive
network of subterranean facilities,
including stables for horses, wine
cellars, water wells, and churches.
CAVE DWELLING
A part cave, part dwelling in Back of
Cappadocia. Since the 1970s the dwelling
Turkish government has tried to carved out
of rock
resettle cave dwellers in more
modern accommodation, but many Dwelling
have returned to their original built into
dwellings, which are much better side of rock
pinnacle
suited to the climate. Cappadocia
is now a major tourist attraction, Brick front
and many caves have been
renovated as hotels and boarding
houses for visitors.
75
BLACK TENTS
The black tent in its various forms is used by nomadic groups across SEE ALSO
a huge area, from Mauritania in the west to the Tibetan plateau in > Mongolian Ger,
the far east, most of which is within a climatic region characterized pages 94-95
by hot, arid, or semiarid conditions. It can be found in all the Arabic > Yanomami Shabano,
Mediterranean nations, in the Middle East and Afghanistan. This form pages 144-45
of shelter is used by the Romany in parts of Europe, by the Yuruks > Aboriginal Shelter,
and Kurds of Turkey, the Baluch of Pakistan, and, most famously, pages 164-65
by the Bedouin. For all these peoples and many others, the black
tent provides shade and protection against wind, sand, and dust.
The main structure of the tent is a varying arrangement of poles,
secured by ropes and pegs, overlaid by a covering made of black
goat hair (preferred because it is darker and thicker than sheep’s
wool). “Black tent dwellers are weavers," writes Torvald Faegre in
Tents: Architecture of the Nomads. “They weave not only the roofs,
walls, and floors of their homes, but many of the furnishings as well.”
The Bedouin call their tent bait at Sha'ar ("house of hair”) and it
is considered by many to be the form most perfectly adapted to the
desert environment. The main cover consists of a number of broad
strips of cloth that are sewn together to form a great rectangle,
98-131 feet (30-40 m) in length, which is then draped over ropes
and supported by poles. The ropes carry the load to the stakes,
which lend tension to the structure and anchor it. A long narrow strip
of cloth is attached to three sides of the tent using wood pins and
draped to the ground. The remaining open side always faces away
from the wind; it is also covered with cloth if the nights are cold.
The interior is divided up by decorated curtains to form two main
sections—the male quarters on one side, which also serves as the
public area, and the kitchen and women’s quarters on the other.
The Bedouin, an Arabic ethnic

group, are found throughout MATERIALS
the desert belt that runs
from the Atlantic coast to *Wood poles, secured
the Middle East. by hemp ropes and
wood pegs
* Cloth, woven from
black goat hair
76
BLACK TENTS
Covering made of
black goat hair
BEDOUIN TENT
The distinctive features of
the Bedouin tent are its long
Flat roof lessens
flattened roof, which has
wind resistance
an aerodynamic profile that
lessens wind resistance, and its
extremely long tent ropes, made
of hemp, which are stretched out
horizontally and act like a ship's
anchor. They are fastened to the
ground by wood pegs.
INSIDE THE TENT

These side and bird’s-eye
views of the Bedouin black
tent show clearly the three
almost equal sections—an open
entrance area at one end, the
male quarters in the middle, and
the female quarters at the other
end. The side curtains can be
rolled up to provide ventilation.
77
YEMEN TOWER HOUSE
Tower houses are a form of building unique to southern Arabia. SEE ALSO
They originated in pre-lslamic times in the south of Yemen, where > Lhasa Buildings,
tribal strife was the motivation for developing an effective way of pages 96-97
building defensive towers out of local materials. From there, they
spread across the country because they were an ideal solution for
housing an extended family, because new stories could be added as
the family group grew in size.
Most tower houses are at least five stories high, and some reach
as many as eight or nine. The vertical arrangement follows an upward
transition from public to private space. The internal layout of the
tower house varies between town and country; each individual house
has some variation in its particulars. In a rural area, the ground floor,
apart from the entrance hall, is for animals and the storage of wood,
fruit, and grain; in towns, it is used for shops and stores.
The main feature of the first floor is the rectangular public
reception room (diwan) for visitors to the house. In typical Yemeni
style, this is ringed by cushions, with a carpet in the center, and
illuminated by windows that have shutters for ventilation in the
bottom half and colored glass in the top. One level from the top is the
kitchen with an adjacent outside terrace. This is the primary domain
of the women of the house, who, after their labors, can relax on the
terrace, which has high-screened walls. The highest level contains
the mufraj, a private sitting room reserved for special guests and
family members. The men gather here in the afternoon to exchange
conversation, smoke their water pipes, chew fresh leaves of the qat
plant, and listen to poetry or music.
The foundations of the tower houses are constructed using stone
or earth (sun-dried clay, mud blocks, or fired bricks). In the city, the
ground and first floors are made of tufa, and the upper floors of fired
bricks. The facades of the houses are typically highly decorated, as
are the windows and doors.
The Republic of Yemen, MATERIALS

situated between Oman and
Saudi Arabia, holds a strategic * Stone for the
position on Bab el Mandeb, foundations
) 'il the strait linking the Red Sea * Sun-dried clay,
: a fty and the Gulf of Aden, one of mud blocks, fired
YEMEN the world's most active bricks, or tufa
shipping lanes. for walls
78
YEMEN TOWER HOUSE
CROSS SECTION
A cross section of a tower house, Mufraj (private
which clearly shows a below¬ sitting room)
ground grain store, the arched
entrance on the ground floor, Kitchen with
terrace
the diwan on the first floor, three
floors of storerooms, living and
sleeping areas, the fifth-floor
kitchen and terrace, with the
mufraj on the top.
Living and
sleeping
areas on
third and
fourth floors
Storage area
Diwan (reception
room for visitors)
on first floor
Ground-floor
entrance
Grain store
CITY TOWER HOUSE

The defensive exterior of a city
tower house, fourteen thousand of
which can be seen in Sana’a,
Yemen’s capital and a UNESCO
World Heritage Site, These houses
are also found in Shibam, the
"Manhattan of the desert,” which
has some five hundred towers
made of straw-reinforced mud
bricks—the tallest mud buildings
in the world.
79
MARSH ARAB REED HOUSE
For millennia the extensive wilderness of marshland created by the SEE ALSO
confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers has been inhabited by > Ganvie Stilt Village,
the Ma’dan people of southern Iraq, popularly known as the Marsh pages 108-9
Arabs. They live on islands of reeds, on which they have built a >Toda Hut,
variety of reed buildings, serving many different purposes, including pages 100-1
cattle shelters, workshops, storerooms, and living quarters. > Urus Reed House,
The construction of these reed buildings is an ancient craft. pages 148-49
Long, thick bundles of reeds are set into holes in the reed bed, in two
parallel rows some 6lA feet (2 m) apart; the tops are then bent over
until they overlap, and then bound together to form a series of
horseshoe-shaped arches. These are in turn linked together by long
reed bundles that run in spaced horizontal rows along the length of
the building. Set at each end are four taller vertical bundles of reeds
(sometimes a palm trunk covered with reeds), which stick up higher
than the main roofline. The roof of the structure is then covered with
closely woven reed matting; the walls with a more open matting that
enables a draft to flow through. Both ends are similarly covered with
a mesh of open matting, with a large central opening at one or both
ends. Inside the structure, bundles of reeds are used as backrests
and to make beds, cots, and baskets, as well as reed mats to cover
the floor. The fishermen use reeds to make their canoes and poles;
the reed and its products are also used for trade.
The bottom of these buildings rots in seven to ten years, at which
time the base is cut away and the building lowered, then used for a
further period before being abandoned. Fewer and fewer of these
buildings survive today because the life of the Marsh Arabs, and the
marshes themselves, have been decimated. Saddam Hussein built
numerous dams to drain them and succeeded in turning most of the
area into a dry salt-encrusted wasteland. Some forty percent of
marshland has since been reflooded.
The marshlands of southern

Iraq, the traditional home of MATERIALS
the Ma'dan, are under threat
due to water shortages. *Reed bundles
to form basic
framework
* Reed matting to
make roof and walls
80
MARSH ARAB REED HOUSE
Reed
arches
MUDHIF FRAMEWORK
The largest reed buildings built
by the Marsh Arabs are the
cavernous cathedral-like
mudhifs, originally constructed
for their tribal leaders, later as
guesthouses. The principles of
the structure are the same as
that of smaller houses, but on
a much larger scale. Its five Reed bundles for
giant arches of reeds are structural support
strengthened at top and
sides by long reed bundles.
REED-HOUSE WALLS
Here the woven reed matting has
been added to form the walls.
It is open in form to enable a
draft to flow through in hot
weather. Mudhifs were protected
by being built up on a bank
of woven reeds to raise them
above the waterways.
COMPLETED Traceried windows

at either end enable
REED HOUSE shafts of light to
The finished mudhif, complete Distinctive reed towers penetrate the interior
with giant reed towers and an
impressive facade. They date
back to the Sumerian age
(c. 2900-2350 bc). The Ma'dan
continued to build them until
the 1990s, when three hundred
thousand of them died or fled
their homes due to Saddam
Hussein’s campaign of repression.
81
IRANIAN DESERT TOWNS
Life in the desert towns and cities of Iran is dominated by the SEE ALSO
scorching sun, by the ongoing threat of sandstorms, by ferocious > Indian Stepped
winds, and by the need for water. These climatic conditions have Ponds and
shaped the whole construction of these conurbations and led to Stepwells,
pages 98-99
a unique vernacular style as well as some extraordinary innovations,
> Great Mosque
including ingenious underground water-supply systems, known as
of Djenne,
qanats, that are still in use today. Inside these towns there is a pages 104-5
carefully planned maze of narrow and irregular streets and a web of
>New Mexican
closely interconnected lofty buildings, enclosed from all directions. Adobe House,
This prevents sandstorms from entering the town, reducing wind pages 136-37
speed, and stops the sun from penetrating the streets.
Residential buildings are adobe constructions with thick walls
made of muddy unbaked bricks, the only building material available.
These rise up to 20 feet (6 m) tall, with domes and arched roofs, and
are built facing the direction of the rising sun and the blowing wind.
Inside, the ground floor is a little below the street, with the first-floor
living quarters 10-13 feet (3-4 m) above it.
To make the house habitable under all conditions presented a
challenge to the original builders, who lacked modern heating and
cooling equipment. The thick walls serve the house well during the
winter, absorbing the heat and preserving it for eight hours, releasing
it at night to keep the house warm. In the summer, the absorbed
temperature causes problems, which led to the invention of
ingenious systems using air traps (also known as wind catchers)
linked to a ventilator duct and a water reservoir.
The foremost example of this desert architecture is the ancient
city of Yadz. It is not only one of the largest cities in the world built
almost entirely out of adobe, but also has the largest network of
qanats in the world and a considerable number of impressive wind
catchers, including one of the tallest, and one of the few examples
of a double wind tower in the world. MATERIALS
* Unbaked mud
bricks to build
Much of Iran is desert. The thick walls; more
central“Salt Desert" is mostly recently, fired brick
uninhabited. The eastern Lout
desert can be one of the hottest * Wood for
and driest spots on the planet. internal joinery
* Glazed decorative
tiling for internal
walls and ceilings
82
IRANIAN DESERT TOWNS
Wind
COURTYARD HOUSE catcher
This cross section of a typical Air shaft
Yadz courtyard house shows
how the wind is captured and
tunneled down a long shaft, Living Courtyard
from rooftop to basement,
creating airflows through
the living quarters and
over a cold-water pool.
WIND CATCHER
Wind towers or "catchers” of
many types are found in desert
regions across the Middle East
and beyond. In Iran, wind
catchers take the form of a four¬
sided capped tower, with ducts
on each side that can be closed
or opened, depending on the
wind's direction. These can bring
cool fresh air into the house and
expel stale hot air, helping to
make the house habitable in
all seasons.
ORNATE WIND TOWERS

The ornate Khane-ye Borujerdlha
or "Borujerdis’ House” is a
famous historical house in
Kashan, Iran, considered one of
the gems of Persian residential
architecture. The house, which
took eighteen years to build,
using 150 craftsmen, has three
131-foot (40-m)-tall wind towers
(two pictured), which keep the
interior unusually cool.
83
FROM JAPANESE MINKA
TO TODA HUTS
The beautiful traditional building and woodworking skills of
Japan are highlighted in our profiles of townhouses and urban
minkas. We investigate the extraordinary Chinese yao dong,
which are either sunk in pits or dug out of cliffsides, and the
impressive tulou of Fujian, fortified buildings large enough to
hold an entire clan of people. On the roof of the world, we visit
the gers of Mongolia, supreme examples of nomadic shelter,
and celebrate the conservation and the restoration of some
remarkable buildings in old Lhasa, Tibet. India’s wealth of
vernacular structures is represented by the impressive
stepped ponds and stepwells of Rajasthan and the barrel-
vault huts of the much-studied Toda people in the south.
JAPANESE MINKA
Minka is a broad term that literally means “houses of the people” SEE ALSO
and covers a wide variety of residential types, from the great houses >Japanese
of village headmen and merchants to the smaller dwellings of the Townhouse,
poorest farmers. Minka can also be classified into two main groups:
pages 88-89
farmhouses (noka) and townhouses (machiya). There were different > Hallenhaus
House Barn,
styles for each region of Japan, shaped by the terrain and climate,
pages 56-57
varying from the steep thatched roofs of the north that could cope
> Zafimaniry House,
with heavy winter snows, to smaller, lower buildings in the south with
pages 114-15
raised floors to maximize ventilation and minimize flood damage.
Noka were constructed from local materials. The basic skeletal
structure that formed the roof and walls and the posts that carried all
the weight of the building were made of wood. Stone was used
for the foundations. The external, nonload-bearing walls of the noka
were made of bamboo and clay. The internal space was divided up
by sliding wood and paper screens (fusuma) or wood lattice doors.
The roof was mainly thatched with grass or straw, occasionally with
clay roofing tiles for status.
The Japanese painter Mukai Junkichi (1901-1995) devoted a
large part of his life to capturing the traditional thatched minka
on canvas in the period after World War II, at a time when many
were abandoned and fell into disrepair in the countryside, or were
demolished to make space for modern buildings in the cities.
Nowadays, minka are considered historical landmarks and are
preserved by national and local governments; many of them survive
only in Folk Building parks. The Historic Villages of Shirakawa-go
and Gokayama have been designated a UNESCO World Heritage
Site and contain some marvelous minka built with steep, sloping
roofs in the style known asgasshd-zukuri{"prayer-Uar\6 construction").
MATERIALS
These large three- or four-story houses were built to accommodate
* Lumber for wood-
extended families and, on the upper floors, silkworm factories.
frame load-bearing
structure
* Bamboo and clay
for walls
Minka are found scattered
throughout Japan in urban *Wood and paper
and rural areas. The UNESCO screens to divide
World Heritage Site is in the internal space
Japanese alps on the main * Thatch of grass
island of Honshu. or straw for roof;
the alternative is
clay tiles
86
FROM JAPANESE MINKA TO TODA HUTS
JAPANESE MINKA
Wood planking
GASSHO-ZUKURI
An example of the gassho-zukuri
(steep-slope roof) style of
minka, its extensive voluminous
thatch being designed to
cope with heavy snowfalls.
Its sturdy wood frame was
also earthquake resistant.
Often three to five stories
high, it was fronted by a broad
veranda, the internal space
being divided by bamboo
screens. Minka were not the
most comfortable of dwellings,
particularly in winter, because
the only heating came from an
inefficient, smoky cooking hearth.
Wood porch
CROSS SECTION Ridge structure
This cross section shows the

internal structure of a gassho-
zukuri. The master bedrooms were
Structural framing
situated on the right, the living Grass or
areas on the left. The thatched straw thatch
roof is bound to bamboo laths Roof supports
and rafters. Above, great hand-
hewn beams of pine, zelkova,
or chestnut stretch across the
main expanse of the building,
connecting the outer framework
of the minka to the interior posts.
Extended eaves
Internal screens
Foundation (platform/wood supports)
87
r-nriM ixnAiirpc miiii/a tm tona ljiitc
rROm JAPANESE mlNKA lU IUUA HU Io
JAPANESE TOWNHOUSE
Japan has always had a ready supply of wood, so it is a natural SEE ALSO
choice for a building material. The wood house shown opposite is a > Japanese Minka,
nineteenth-century example of a sophisticated townhouse. Such pages 86-87
houses are no longer common in modern Japan, and intact examples
are carefully preserved. The more common type of traditional town-
house is the urban minka, known as the machiya, which is found
throughout Japan, with the finest examples being in old Kyoto. These
long narrow row houses, fronted with wood grilles, are built by first
erecting wood columns on top of a flat foundation made of packed
earth or stones. In order to avoid moisture from the ground, the floor
is elevated and is laid across horizontal wood floor beams.
The frame is made of wood, and the house’s weight is supported
by vertical columns, horizontal beams and diagonal braces. The
houses have a large sloping roof, covered with tiles called kawara,
with deep eaves to protect the house from the hot summer sun. The
frame of the house supports the weight of the roof. A typical house
has two entrances, one private and one for guests. Inside is a guest
room, a room for entertaining, one or two bedrooms, and a dining
room, which is central and links to all the other rooms. The rooms
are divided from each other by sliding screens. There are windows at
front and back, but none on the side walls.
There are two or three tiny gardens, both inside and outside the
house; if sprayed with water, these create cool breezes that help
with summer temperatures. In addition, the kitchen ceiling reaches
right up to the roof to a skylight, which enables hot air from the
MATERIALS
whole house to escape. Some areas of the have wood flooring while
others are covered with tatami, mats made from woven rush grass. *Wood for frame,
floors, and internal
Traditionally, the exterior walls were made of woven bamboo
structure
plastered with earth on both sides, although modern materials, such
* Stone for supporting
as plywood, have often replaced this.
foundations
*Lime plaster, as
a traditional finish
for external walls
Traditional Japanese buildings
made generous use of the ★ Tile for roof (tiles
country's woodlands and made locally
forests, which cover sixty-eight and fired)
percent of the country. ★ Paper for interior
screens, dividing
the spaces of
the house
JAPANESE TOWNHOUSE
TOWNHOUSE EXTERIOR
This house is an elegant
variation on the basic
rectangular, two-story, wood-
frame Japanese vernacular
form. Although it was built
in the nineteenth century,
its origins are much earlier. .
Additional verandas, and the
wood fencing surrounding the
compound it occupies, indicate
that the house belongs to a
wealthy family.
Ceiling
WOOD FRAMEWORK
Part of the house stripped to
its wood framework, with
a shallow-pitch roof and
a veranda at one end. The
framework rests on foundation
supporting stones, sunk into
the ground. Most of the rooms
are floored with wood planks,
although some, notably the
kitchen and corridors, may
have simple earthen floors.
story
support
CROSS SECTION
veranda and guest room. Room
division is movable, based on
screens and sliding doors. The
shoji is a wood-frame sliding
door “glazed” with paper, and
the fusuma is a sliding screen
with translucent paper panes.
Storage and shelving are built in.
Room sizes are defined by the
number of tatami mats each
can contain; the typical tatami
mat has a standard dimension
of 6 x 3 feet (1.8 m x 90 cm).
89
CHINESE YAO DONG
Some forty million Chinese live in subterranean dwellings or in SEE ALSO
terraces of earth-roof caves, known collectively as yao dong or simply > Mediterranean
yao (which means "kiln”; dong means “cave”). These are dug into Cave Dwellings,
the world’s largest “dissected plateau,” which is covered to a depth
pages 72-73
of up to 656 feet (200 m) by finely textured silts Uoess) that have > Cappadocian
Cave Dwellings,
blown in over the centuries from the Gobi Desert and Mongolia.
pages 74-75
Within China, these ocher-colored uplands stretch in a band
from the provinces of Henan and Shanxi in the north to Shaanxi and
Gansu in the northwest. Trees are scarce, so wood is at a premium.
This arid region has little rainfall and endures extreme temperatures—
in summer, above 95° F (35° C); in winter, below freezing. In response
to these conditions, throughout much of this region at least twenty
percent of the rural population live in yao dong; in northern Shaanxi,
this rises to fifty and even eighty percent.
They are two main types of yao dong—those that are built into a
cliffside (also known as dishang) and pit-type yao dong with sunken
courtyards. Although these are commonly called cave dwellings,
they are entirely man-made, earth-sheltered environments, which,
says Chinese vernacular expert Ronald G. Knapp, “acquire a singular
identity from their internal form instead of their external design.” In
the case of cliffside dwellings, the earth removed to create them is
used to level the site or build earthen walls to create courtyards.
These earth-sheltered dwellings provide protection from a hostile
environment. They are cool in summer and warm in winter, but
have limited interior light, high humidity levels, and inadequate
ventilation—problems the Chinese government is trying to address
by building modern forms of yao dong in accordance with sustainable
design principles. One problem that is harder to solve is that a yao
dong is a dangerous place to be in during an earthquake, which are
periodic in the loessial uplands. In 1921, more than a million people
died in collapsing yao dong in a single quake.
This “dissected plateau" is an

area that has been uplifted and
then severely eroded so that the MATERIALS
relief is sharp and mountainous.
* Caves or pits dug
out of loess (finely
textured silt)
* Brick for front walls
90
CHINESE YAO DONG
PIT COURTYARD
DWELLINGS
“Pit courtyard” subterranean
dwellings are usually square.
Two or three yao dong are dug
into the vertical side walls of the
courtyard, which are sometimes
faced with brick. A ramp or stairs
provides access from ground
level. Trees are often planted in
the courtyard, which serves as
a family or community space.
CLIFFSIDE DWELLINGS
Cliffside dwellings are dug
horizontally into the slopes of
hills or the sides of ravines.
They face south, thus benefiting
from the winter sun. If the
slope has stable soil and good
drainage, several terraces
of such dwellings may well be
built at staggered intervals.
CLIFFSIDE DWELLING Heated Sewing Water

CROSS SECTION
This diagram of the internal
structure of a typical cliff cave
dwelling shows eight rectangular
rooms, radiating off a central
space. The rooms are limited
to a maximum width of 12 feet
(3.5 m) due to constraints
imposed by the stability of the
soil, and to a maximum length
by the penetration of sunlight.
These factors determine the
room’s furniture arrangements
(pictured right).
Stove Food preparation Chair Table
table
91
FUJIAN TULOU
The mountainous areas of western Fujian province in southwest SEE ALSO
China are home to a unique form of rammed-earth building known as >Batammaliba
a tulou—large defensive structures designed to contain and protect Roundhouse,
one family clan. UNESCO has estimated that twenty thousand tulou
pages 110-11
survive on forty-six main sites; a thousand of these areyanlou (round > Lhasa Buildings,
pages 96-97
buildings), which can exceed 33 feet (10 m) in height and 197 feet
(60 m) in diameter.
Tulou were built from the thirteenth to the twentieth centuries by
the Hakka and southern Fuijan people to protect themselves from
armed bandits. These enclosed fortlike buildings, which could take
seven years to build, have rounded stone foundations and a base of
large stones, plastered with clay, which support 6-foot (1.8-m)-thick
earth walls, reinforced by bamboo canes. The building’s interior is
a largely wood structure of beams, decks, and columns, which
contains 250 small uniform dwelling units, housing some eighty
families. These face a central communal courtyard, in which an
ancestral shrine provides a focus for the entire community. Only one
side gets direct sunlight. The mud-wall facade is largely blank, with
small windows on the upper floors protected by the large, overhanging
eaves of the cantilevered slate or clay-tile roof. There is usually one
main entrance, heavily guarded by a thick armor-plate wood door set
in a solid block of granite.
On the ground floor are the communal kitchens, with grain stores
above them, and rooms used for eating and washing. Steep stairs lead
up to the first and second floors, which house the living and sleeping
quarters and have verandas. Food, clothing, and valuables are stored
on the third floor. A small family owns a vertical “set” of these rooms; MATERIALS
a larger family might own two or three. Tulou were constructed up until * Stone for
foundations and
the 1960s; fortified buildings are now illegal in China. A number are
base of walls, later
still inhabited, but many tulou clans have been split up by the state plastered with clay
and now live in separate family units.
* Rammed earth
for thick walls,
reinforced by
Fujian province is traditionally bamboo canes
described as eight parts
mountain, one part water, *Wood for internal
and one part farmland.
framework of
beams, decks,
and columns
* Slate or clay tiles
for roof
92
FROM JAPANESE MINKA TO TOGA HUTS
FUJIAN TULOU
Communal courtyard
Rammed-earth
exterior wall
CROSS SECTION Wood interior
This isometric view of structure of
beams, decks,
a circular tulou gives a clear and columns
view of the many aspects
and levels of these complex
structures, the only circular
buildings known in China.
The circular form has several
practical advantages, being
easier to build and more
economic in the use of materials.
It also has greater stability.
Dwelling units Main

entrance
KING OF TULOUS
The most famous Chinese tulou Stone base
is Chengqilou, built in 1709, Small windows
on upper floors
a massive rotunda with four
concentric rings, with an ancestral
hall in the center, which was used
to house eighty families. The most
significant feature of this huge
collective dwelling is the fact that
all its residents had an equal
share of the living spaces. The
outer ring is 205 feet (62.6 m) in
diameter, and has two main gates
and two side gates.
Armor-plate
wood door
CONCENTRIC CIRCLES
Outer ring Ancestral hall Covered corridor
This internal view of Chengqilou
shows the four concentric-ring
structure of this extraordinary
building. Going outward from the
center, we see the ancestral hall
surrounded by a circular covered
corridor. The second ring is one
story high, has thirty-two rooms,
and served as a community
library. The third ring is two
stories high, with forty rooms on
each level. The outer ring is four
stories high, with seventy-two
rooms on each level—a total
of four hundred rooms.
93
MONGOLIAN GER
The ger—the equivalent of the Turkish yurt— is the traditional shelter SEE ALSO
of the herding peoples of the high Mongolian steppes, seemingly > Rendille Min,
endless expanses of grass-covered land that cover the majority pages 112-13
of eastern Mongolia and extend in a narrow band to the west, > Plains Indian Tipi,
sandwiched between high mountains to the north and west and the pages 126-27
Gobi Desert to the south. These vast open grasslands are grazed by >Sami Gamme and
an estimated population of thirty million sheep, goats, cows, and Goatte, pages 48-49
camels, owned by seminomadic herders, who make up thirty percent
of the country’s 2.9 million people. The ger (which means "home” in
Mongolian) is ideally suited to the herders’ lifestyle as they follow their
animals in search of fresh pasture on a regular or seasonal basis.
For a start, it is easy to erect, dismantle and transport; it takes no
more than an hour to pack a ger and a family’s belongings inside a
truck or onto a train of horses, yaks, or camels. Gers are also well
suited to the climate, which consists of long cold winters, when
temperatures can drop to -22° F (-30° C), and short, hot, and rainy
summers. In winter, the gers are heated by simple stoves, and extra
layers of felt can be added for warmth; in the summer, the bottom of
the covers can be turned up for extra ventilation. These felt-lined
tents are a herder's most important possession. A ger accommodates
the whole family and also serves as a sacred space, where the
orientation and interior layout have profound symbolic significance.
In modern times, the materials used for constructing gers have
changed. Canvas is now frequently used to provide an extra layer
for protection from the rain. In addition, a white cotton cover is now
commonplace, whereas previously this was only used on the gers of
nobles. Vast numbers of Mongolians have moved to the cities where
most live in apartment buildings; many others have created ger
cities, informal settlements where families live in small wood houses
alongside their cnerished gers.
Mongolia is a landlocked MATERIALS

country, slightly smaller than * Felt, made from
Alaska, situated in a strategic sheep’s wool
location between China and
Russia. It is the most sparsely
* Ropes, made from
populated country in the world.
horse or camel hair
*Wood poles, lattice,
and door frame
94
MONGOLIAN GER
Roof
BUILDING THE GER

The concertina lattice panels,
usually made from flexible willow,
are expanded and tied together to
form the basic circular structure;
a band of webbing holds them
firm, and the solid, wood door
frame helps to stabilize the ger.
The roof compression ring and
crown are erected in the center,
and the curved roof pole is then
fitted into place.
ROOF AND COVERING

Steam-bent poles Mats made
The felt mats are tied on with support the roof from felted wool
ropes woven from animal hair or
made from thin strips of hide. The
felt is thick, made from sheep’s
wool, and waterproofed by rubbing
it with animal fat and lanolin.
The door always faces south—
traditionally, it’s believed that the
spirit of the home lives in the
threshold. The compression ring,
which enables the smoke to
escape, is known as the shangrak,
and may be passed down through Lattice (khana) Solid wood frame Ropes made
families. Even if a ger is made from willow, from horse
tied with rawhide or camel hair
completely repaired or replaced,
the shangrak is generally retained.
Honored guests' quadrant
Altar
INSIDE THE GER

Traditionally, space is allocated Family head
according to Mongolian rules quadrant Women and
of etiquette, with prescribed children’s
places for men, women, guests, quadrant
household objects, cooking, living,
and sleeping. Everything centers Hearth
and
on the fire, which is sometimes tripod
set in a square hearth. Gers are
pitched facing south, so that as
the sun moves across the sky,
Saddles
it shines down through the and
shangrak, creating a form weapons Herders'
quadrant
of indoor sundial.
95
LHASA BUILDINGS
Vernacular buildings around the world are threatened by modern SEE ALSO
development, and this is the case in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, > Balinese Kuren,
which has been subject to widespread modernization in recent years pages 154-55
by the Chinese government. In a model project, the Tibetan Heritage > Yemen Tower House,
Fund (THF) set out to record and conserve the city’s traditional pages 78-79
architecture. “The Old Town Conservation Project,” which ran from > Fujian Tulou,
1996 to 2000, identified ninety-three historical buildings in the pages 92-93
Barkor district of the city, creating a detailed database and map in
the process. As a result, these buildings gained protection by the
Lhasa authorities and work began on their conservation.
Three hundred Tibetans were trained to work on the project;
some in traditional building skills, others as surveyors, plumbers,
electricians, and project managers. Only fifty out of the ninety-three
historical residential buildings in the district were saved, but the
inner Barkor neighborhood has been conserved and is today still
inhabited by its original community. The UN Human Settlement
Program awarded the project “best practice" status in 2004.
The buildings pictured opposite represent three forms of the
Tibetan vernacular: a typical Tibetan temple; a “noble house”
(.zim-sha), an opulent building with bay windows and carved
decoration of much higher quality than an ordinary Tibetan dwelling;
a community courtyard building. The temple style was particularly
influential. According to the THF, “For nearly a millennium, Tibetan
architecture was the preferred medium for construction of monasteries
and palaces across much of Inner Asia, including northern India and
Pakistan, Bhutan and Nepal, northern China, Mongolia, and parts of
Siberia." The ground floor contains a main chapel (circled by a
corridor that pilgrims would pace), in front of which is a large
assembly hall for the monks, in turn fronted by an entrance porch
with stairs to the second floor, where a small chapel and room used
by the head monk are located.
MATERIALS
The Tibetan plateau—“the * Lumber for wood
roof of the world'—covers structure of pillars,
965 square miles (2.5 million capitals, and beams
sq km), about four times the and rafters
size of France.
* Earth for constructing
walls and roof
* Clay tiles for roof
96
FROM JAPANESE MiNKA TO TODA HUTS
LHASA BUILDINGS
Internal wood structure of

TYPICAL TEMPLE pillars, capitals, and beams
The basic Tibetan form is a

two-story structure made of
tapering earth walls with an
internal wood structure of pillars,
capitals, and beams. The earth
roof is supported by wood rafters,
covered with scraps of wood,
branches, and twigs to close
any gaps in the structure, and
finished off with a layer of
rounded pebbles on which is
laid a thick layer of earth. The
second-floor structures are
topped with pitched, tiled roofs.
NOBLE HOUSE
three-story living quarters on the
left, adjacent to a two-story
outbuilding that contains stables
on the ground floor and servants’
quarters above, with a main gate
leading through a courtyard to
the main building. This contains
store rooms on the ground floor,
living quarters for house servants,
and a family chapel on the middle
floor, with living quarters for the
family of the owner.
Individual tenanted
GO-RA DWELLING Central courtyard dwellings
The ground plan of a go-ra

("ordinary dwelling"), a simple
and functional building, two or
three stories high, consisted of
numerous tenanted dwellings
around a central courtyard, a
form that evolved from the
traditional caravansery, built to
house some of the large floating
population of traders that visited
Lhasa. These buildings were
often owned by monasteries,
and operated to generate
income from up to fifty tenants.
97
INDIAN STEPPED PONDS
AND STEPWELLS SEE ALSO
> Cappadocian
Modern India is beginning to rediscover the stepped ponds and
Cave Dwellings,
stepwells that form an important part of the historical vernacular pages 74-75
architecture of western India. At present, says author Marco Beach, > Iranian Desert
"these are the least known or visited monuments in India.” He Towns, pages 82-83
says they are also “among the greatest examples of ecologically
sensitive architecture in any country.” For fourteen centuries, they
provided access to groundwater and collected the rainwater from the
monsoons—which last for just twelve weeks—and held it through
the dry months of the year. Apart from a few in Delhi, all surviving
early examples can be found in the desert states of Gujarat and
Rajasthan, where thousands were built in villages and cities.
The stepwells are subterranean water reservoirs, housed in
highly decorated linear stone temples, in which numerous flights of
stairs, with columned pavilions on each landing, lead many levels
downward to a water pool deep below. Designed by masons and built
with the labor of the people, they were funded by royal families or
rich merchants as monuments to their generosity to the whole
community. Here people could drink, wash, and bathe, or simply sit
at any level in the coolness, socializing or contemplating the beauty
of their surroundings. They became an integral part of community
life, and were also the scene of special festivals and sacred rites.
Stepped ponds are usually square, are always found near a
temple, and were used solely for bathing and rituals. The Hindus
believe that purification with water is an essential aspect of everyday
spiritual life and thus a daily bath cleanses your sins and is the
moment when one is closest to heaven. The four walls of a stepped
pond, according to author Morna Livingston, “are made of short flights
of stairs that meet at small landings. It has no columns or covered
spaces— Taken as a whole, the building is like one giant folding
stair, which, like origami, has no form separate from its surface."
The Thar desert, also known

as the Great Indian Desert,
covers an area of approximately
77,000 square miles (200,000
MATERIALS
sq km) in five Indian states. * Stone for flights
of stairs, columned
pavilions, and lining
the water pool
98
FROM JAPANESE MINKA TO TOOA HUTS
INDIAN STEPPED PONDS AND STEPWELLS
STEPWELL
Stepwells are triumphs of
architecture and engineering and
come in a wide variety of styles
and sizes, from the monumental
to the modest, In this view, you
can see the entrance gate and
the beginning of the long flight
of steps of a stepwell, with
colonnades on either side,
which goes down five levels
into the earth.
Tower Flights of stairs leading

PLAN AND pavilion to subterranean well
CROSS SECTION
This plan and cross section
of a stepwell show how the
stepped corridor is punctuated by
numerous intermediate, towerlike
pavilions. One way of visualizing
it is as a giant triangular wedge,
with a horizontal line running at
ground level, a vertical plunging
into the earth, and a long diagonal
marking the line of the steps.
STEPPED POND
Stepped ponds were easier to
construct than stepwells, and
were less polluted. The square
stepped pond creates a powerful
visual effect, like an M. C. Escher
drawing, composed as it is of a
zigzag of stairs, each flight of
which is half a matched pair, •
placed back-to-back to form a
triangle. Like chanting a mantra,
the process of choosing a
pathway and following it step by
step to the bathing pool below
held spiritual significance.
99
TODA HUT
The Toda tribe, who live in the Nilgiri plateau of southern India, SEE ALSO
number fewer than a thousand people and thus represent what > Abelam Spirit House
anthropological linguist M. B. Emeneau called "a minuscule fragment pages 162—63
of the great Indian population.” However, they have been extensively > Kalinga
studied by Western ethnographers, musicologists, and other scholars Octagonal House,
pages 156-57
who have shown intense interest in their religious rituals, social
organization, language, origins, and appearance, their preeminent art
form—extempore (improvised) singing—and their architecture.
“Toda traditional houses are marvels of tribal architecture," writes
conservationist and photographer Tarun Chabra. “These can last for
many decades, only requiring periodic rethatching, in areas where
the annual precipitation can reach 157 inches (4,000 mm).
Even when it is bitterly cold or windy outside, these are very warm
within— Despite having hardly any foundation, they act as natural
wind-breakers and remain intact even after the most violent storm.
They also blend superbly with the undulating terrain.” A traditional
Toda village (mund) would consist of up to ten of these huts but, by
the early 1990s, there were only half a dozen of these barrel-vault
homes left standing in total, because most of the Toda were living
in modern mud and concrete housing. However, Chabra and his
colleagues have, in the lasttenyearsorso, managed to get government
and private funding to build more than forty new traditional houses.
Other changes are also threatening Toda culture. Each village
used to own a herd of a special breed of water buffalo, which required
no shelter and lived on the coarse grass of the high plateau. These
animals not only provided the tribe’s basic income, through selling
dairy products to their neighbors, but some were also considered
sacred. Many villages had conical dairy temples, administered by a
dairyman-priest. The spread of modern agricultural methods has
MATERIALS
greatly diminished the buffalo herds, and international efforts are
* Thick poles to
now under way to save both the people and their environment.
create structure'
of curved, arched
roof, secured with
The Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve rattan ropes
has been established to help
preserve the Toda culture. *Wood or granite
stones to support
structure at
either end
* Swamp grass
for thatch
100
TODA HUT
Bundles of thinner bamboo, bent over bamboo

poles, form the framework of the curved roof
FRAMEWORK
The traditional houses of the
Toda tribe are rectangular half-
barrel-shape huts, the main
structural element of which is
a curved, arched roof of thick Dressed granite
bamboo poles—the thickest stone facade
forming the ridge—supported
at each end by either dressed
granite stones or wood planks
(pictured). These are secured
using multiple lengths of rattan.
BAMBOO ROOF
The framework is overlain by a
dense covering of thinner bamboo
canes running horizontally along
the length of the hut, likewise
fastened with rattan ropes.
The average Toda hut measures
10 feet (3 m) high, 18 feet (5.5 m)
long, and 9 feet (2.7 m) wide.
Dense thatch cover

of swamp grass
FINISHED HUT
The completed roof is then
elaborately thatched with dried
swamp grass and the front and
back of the hut are decorated
with paintings. The structure has
no windows and a tiny entrance
at the front—no more than
3 feet (90 cm) wide and 3 feet
(90 cm) tall—which provides
protection against wild animals.
The hut itself is surrounded by a
wall of loose stones.
Elaborately decorated facade

Tiny entrance keeps
out wild animals
101
FROM ZULU INDLU TO
THE “VENICE OF AFRICA”
One of the most impressive buildings in the whole of Africa,
the Great Mosque of Djenne, symbolizes and celebrates the
innovative earth architecture of Mali. The distinctive toleks
of the Mousgoum people and the Batammaliba roundhouses
display similar qualities on a human scale. Stilt dwellings are
the only housing solution for the people of Ganvie, dubbed
the “Venice of Africa.” The Rendille herders shelter in whelk¬
shaped tents, while the Zafimaniry people of Madagascar
build houses from bamboo and wood that evolve into a more
permanent form as the relationship of its married owners
deepens. In the south, the Zulu’s beehive indlus and the
painted houses of the Ndebele 'are widely celebrated as
expressions of their differing, but equally vibrant, cultures.
GREAT MOSQUE OF DJENNE
The Great Mosque of Djenne in Mali, a country famous for its earth SEE ALSO
architecture, is the largest mud-brick building in the world and one > New Mexican
of the most famous landmarks in Africa. Along with the old town of Adobe House,
Djenne, it was designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1988.
pages 136-37
Djenne was a flourishing center on the Trans-Saharan trade network,

and it was Arab traders who first introduced Islam, leading to the
building of the first mosque on the site in the thirteenth century. This
was demolished in 1834, rebuilt in 1896, then demolished again to
make way for the current structure, which was completed in 1907,
during the French administration.
The Great Mosque is built on a raised platform, with a surface
area of 62,500 square feet (5,625 sq m), to protect it from the
annual flooding of the Bani River, which turns Djenne into an island
and can flood parts of the city. This has so far protected the mosque
from even the most severe floods. The prayer wall (quibla), which
faces east toward Mecca, is supported by eighteen buttresses and is
punctuated by three large boxlike minarets, each of which contains
a spiral staircase leading to the roof and is capped by a cone-shape
spire crowned with an ostrich egg. Half of the mosque forms an
interior prayer hall, covered by a roof supported by ninety wood
pillars, which can hold three thousand people. Behind this is an
open-air prayer hall in the form of a courtyard, which is enclosed on
three sides by walls punctuated with arched openings, and on the
fourth by the mosque itself.
For many years, a spring festival (crepissage), supervised by a
guild of eighty senior masons, has been staged at which the entire
community of Djennd takes part in replastering the mosque to repair
any weather damage that may have occurred during the past twelve
months. The spring festival now also involves foreign visitors, as MATERIALS
tourism provides the majority of income for Djenne. * Sun-baked mud
bricks, coated with
mud plaster to form
the walls
The landlocked nation of Mali *Palm branches,
is one of the poorest nations which are built into
in the world, and is comparable the structure
in size to South Africa. Most
of the country lies in the * Ceramic pipes to
southern Sahara. provide drainage
* Ostrich eggs for
the minarets
104
FROM ZULU INOLU TO THE "VENICE OF AFRICA’
GREAT MOSQUE OF DJENNE
MOSQUE WALLS
The huge walls of the Great
Mosque, which are 16-24 inches
(41-61 cm) thick, depending
on their height, are made of
sun-baked mud bricks (ferey)
coated with a mud plaster, which
gives the building its smooth,
sculpted look. They keep the
building cool during the day and
gradually release the heat they
have absorbed at night, which
keeps the mosque warm.
PROTECTIVE
STRUCTURE
The facade of the mosque has
the same structure and building
materials as a traditional house
in Djenne. Although it has many
architectural elements similar to
mosques throughout the Islamic
world, the use of local materials
and traditional styles makes it
uniquely African. To protect the
building from the local climate,
with its frequent and drastic
changes in humidity and
temperature, palm branches
Ostrich egg
have been built into the structure
to reduce cracking and to serve
as ready-made scaffolding for
annual repairs. Gutters made
of ceramic pipes also stick out Surface cracking
from the structure to direct water
draining from the roof away from
the walls. The ostrich eggs, Palm branches help
which symbolize purity and to reduce mud
fertility, symbolically protect the plaster cracking
highest and most vulnerable tips
of the minarets.
105
FROM ZULU INDLU TO THE “VENICE OF AFRICA”
MOUSGOUM TOLEK
Among the most extraordinary of all African vernacular structures are SEE ALSO
the celebrated bullet-shaped earth houses known as toleks. Built by > Cob House,
the Mousgoum people, who live on either side of the Logone River, pages 54-55
which divides northern Cameroon and Chad, these unique mud huts > Trullo Stone House,
have no supporting structure, because wood is a scarce resource. pages 70-71
Andre Gide saw them in 1925 and famously celebrated them in his > Inuit Igloo,
travel journals: "The [Mousgoum’s] hut... resembles no other; but it pages 122-23
is not strange, it is beautiful; and it is not its strangeness so much as

its beauty that moves me ... this hut is made by hand like a vase; it
is the work, not of a mason, but of a potter. Its color is the very color
of the earth—a pinkish-gray clay.”
Built without foundations on a mound of flattened earth, the
entire structure is made of a progression of circular walls, 16-23 feet
(5-7 m) in diameter, constructed of balls of clay mixed with straw
and smoothed by hand, that lean slightly inward and get gradually
narrower as they reach the top, forming a parabolic shape. The
outside is covered with protruding ribs, which add to the structural
stability, but also offer footholds to make it easy to climb up and thus
to build it without the aid of scaffolding. A circular opening at the top
serves as a skylight and chimney. The difference in height between
the door and the top—a completed hut is 23-26 feet (7-8 m) high—
ensures there is a natural draft to carry the smoke upward.
According to Steven Nelson, in his book From Cameroon to Paris:
Mousgoum In and Out of Africa, toleks (pi. toiekakay) started to die
out in the 1930s and few were left standing by the 1990s. However,
he reports that, since 1955, there has been a resurgence in the
building of toleks, and as a result some twenty new ones have been
built. There has also been what he calls a “virtual explosion" in wall
painting, much of which depicts the distinctive form of the tolek.
Cameroon is often described

MATERIALS
as “Africa in miniature," as it * Balls of clay,
experiences all of Africa’s major mixed with straw,
climates and can support most arranged in layers,
of the continent's vegetation. to build the main
It is home to some three structure on
hundred different ethnic a mound of
and linguistic groups. flattened earth
106
FROM ZULU INDLU TO THE VENICE OF AFRICA"
MOUSGOUM TOLEK
The opening at the apex serves as a

CLASSIC TOLEK chimney, but also provides ventilation
and allows light to enter
The classic shape of the
Mousgoum tolek has been much
admired by Western artists and
architects for its handmade
grace and practicality. The
Protruding ribs
distinctive protruding ribs aid
construction without scaffolding;
the keyhole entrance enables
cattle, sheep, and goats to enter
the hut at night. They sleep
behind a low wall that rings
the inside of the hut.
TOLEK COMPOUND
The Mousgoum’s “house” is
composed of a number of toleks
set around the edge of a circular
courtyard, all linked together by Keyhole entrance
a low earthen wall. The entrance
to the compound is located
between the man’s two toleks;
the woman has a bedroom and Granary
a kitchen, the latter being built

on a smaller scale.
107
GANVIE STILT VILLAGE
Often referred to as the “Venice of West Africa," the town of Ganvie SEE ALSO
on Lake Nokoue in Benin (formerly Dahomey)—a huge brackish lake > Paisa House,
fed by the major north-south rivers—is the biggest lake-dwelling stilt pages 146-47
town in Africa, with some three thousand houses and a population >Korowai Tree House,
of twenty-five thousand inhabitants. The town was first established at pages 160-61
the end of the seventeenth century, at a time when the armies of the > Samoan Pale Tele,
kings of Dahomey were raiding villages to capture the inhabitants to pages 168-69
sell as slaves to the Portuguese, a practice that continued until the > Aboriginal Shelter
end of the nineteenth century and provided abundant slaves for the (Platform Shelter),
pages 164-65
Americas. In order to avoid capture, the Tofinu people escaped first
to the lake and its surrounding marshlands, where they established
Ganvie, a name that means “safe at last.”
The Ganviens of today make a living by fishing and trading at
a daily floating market, conducted from numerous wood boats
known as pirogues, which also provide transport from the mainland.
The whole life of the town is conducted on and in the water. There
are some small artificial islands in Ganvie on which a school, a
cemetery, and other social facilities are situated.
The main activity of the men of Ganvie is fishing with a round net
from a pirogue. They also make large net traps from a maze of
branches planted in the mud, from which the fish cannot escape
once they enter. Here the fish develop and grow and are harvested
periodically. Women dry and smoke the fish and sell them on the
market. They also fetch and sell drinking water, because the waters
of the lake have become increasingly saline since the creation of a
channel linking the lake to the sea in the 1880s.
In modern times, there has been a drastic drop in the fishermen’s
catch, an increase in water pollution, and a rise in the infant mortality
rate. Ganvie has also become a significant tourist destination.
MATERIALS
* Mangrove poles to
The long, narrow country make the stilt frame
of Benin extends inland for
400 miles (650 km), but is * Wood to make the
only 200 miles (325 km) across floors and walls
at its widest point. It has a hot, *Palm fronds and
humid climate, with two rainy grass thatch, or
and two dry seasons a year. corrugated iron,
for the roof
108
FROM ZULU INDIU TO THE "VENICE OF AFRICA"
GANVIE STILT VILLAGE
RECTANGULAR
Traditional thatched
STILT HOUSE hipped roof
A typical rectangular plan house
in Ganvie is, according to author
Paul Oliver, built on a stilt frame
of mangrove poles with floors
raised above flood level. They
have hipped or gabled roofs,
which are first covered with
palm fronds that are then
overlaid with a thick grass
thatch. Most of the houses
do not have electricity, so people /
use either kerosene or solar
Wattle walls Additional wuenui
power and cook on an open fire. supporting poles
GANVIE CAFE Spear-shape finials
This unusual example of

vernacular building is the “Cite
Lacustre Ganvie Cafb.” It is
painted a garish pink, has many
gables topped by spear-shaped
finials, and incorporates modern
materials. Its wide veranda caters
InHfllllllllllll I—L
not only to the community, but
also to the increasing number
of tourists who come to see this
unique lakeland settlement.
T M \ nui
Mangrove poles Landing point for visitors
STILT HOUSE AT
WATER LEVEL
At flood time, the Ganvib houses’
stiltlike legs disappear beneath
the waters, leaving the main
house structure sitting on the
surface. The level of the floors
in a Ganvie house are determined
by the water level at high flooding
and are usually 5 feet (1.5 m)
above low water.
Veranda used for storage Canoe, enabling

and laundry access to and
from house
109
FROM ZULU INDLU TO THE “VENICE OF AFRICA”
BATAMMALIBA ROUNDHOUSE
The Batammaliba people, who live in the northern regions of Togo SEE ALSO
and Benin, West Africa, have long been recognized as among the > Fujian Tulou,
greatest vernacular architects of Africa. Their name means "those pages 92-93
who are the real architects of the earth,” reflecting the importance of > Ndebele
architecture within their culture. The Western traveller Leo Frobenius Painted House,
pages 118-19
encountered them in 1913 and called their remarkable two-story earth
houses "artworks,” describing them “genuinely and rightly as small
castles." According to Suzanne Preston Blier, who lived with the
Batammaliba and wrote a definitive study of them, each roundhouse
functions as a self-sufficient economic unit—incorporating special
areas for sheltering animals, drying crops, preparing food, and storing
grain. Each house is surrounded by an area of land, fertilized by the
animals, and used for growing crops.
The single most important figure in the community is the earth
priest, who is responsible for the village and its architecture. Also
revered are the architects (otammali), who are involved in building
the houses, aided by the house owner and his family. Each ottomali’s
design has to be approved by a group of community master architects.
House construction is generally undertaken in the dry season (from
December to February) and each architect builds one house per
season. Each house is built in courses, one layer per day, beginning
with the main rooms and the outer joining walls. When complete, the
women cover the terrace and exterior walls with a plaster made of silt,
fruit essence, dung, and oil to protect the earthen core from rain.
While the plaster is still wet, they draw patterns in it with their fingers.
When dry, they stain the walls with a fruit juice and water solution that
produces a deep maroon or brown finish.
Each part of the building has great significance, relating both to
different organs of the body and to spiritual and cosmological beliefs.
The Batammaliba people live MATERIALS

on fertile plains dominated by * Earth, to build ring
the Ataccora Mountains. They of seven earthen
are believed to have arrived towers
there in the seventeenth or
eighteenth century. * Thatch to top towers
*Wood frameworks to
support roof terrace
110
FROM ZULU INOLU TO THE VENICE OF AFRICA"
BATAMMALIBA ROUNDHOUSE
Smaller granaries
ROUNDHOUSE PLAN
The basic form of the Central tower
Batammaliba house is a ring contains sleeping
of seven earthen towers, linked room for women
on upper floor
together by semicircular walls
to form a seamless protective
outer shell. Inside the ring there
is another circular thatched
tower in the center, which is
surrounded by an earthen roof
terrace, supported underneath
by a wood framework, which
extends to the outer ring. Kitchen on
Important elements of the upper floor
building contain altars and
shrines; the whole village is
also mapped out with a network
of ritual paths, which relate to
the image of Butan, the female Earthen
earth goddess. roof
terrace
Entrance building
ROUNDHOUSE FACADE
In the center of the facade of the
house is a west-facing doorway,
above which are two or three Granary
earthen “entry horns.’’ On each
corner of the facade are two
thatched granaries (one male,
one female), each supported by
a tall earthen tower, which have
shelters for chickens or ducks
in their base. The oval entrance
building is where crops, such as
millet and sorghum, are ground;
the chamber above holds a
sleeping compartment. Behind
the granaries are two towers with
flat earth roofs, both of which
have ground-floor storage rooms.
One houses the main kitchen
on the upper floor. Two smaller
granary structures complete the
outer ring. The central tower has
Shelter for
a sleeping room for the women chickens
on the upper floor. or ducks
111
RENDILLE MIN
The Rendille camel nomads live on semiarid lowlands in northern SEE ALSO
Kenya, in light, portable shelters they call min. Shaped like a whelk’s >Sami Gamme and
shell, the min’s physical structure is highly practical. The back half, Goatte, pages 48-49
which is tall enough to stand up in, is the sleeping area. The back > Mongolian Ger,
wall is covered with hides to keep out the wind at night. Personal pages 94-95
possessions are hung from the roof. The wider, more open front half > Plains Indian Tipi,
of the min is the public area, where firewood, sandals, and milking pages 126-27
vessels are stored. > Aboriginal Shelter,

On average, a Rendille settlement would consist of thirty to fifty pages 164-65
mins, which would be moved six times a year in search of fresh > Abelam Spirit
House, pages
pastures and water, or to escape from conflict. Each married woman
162-63
or widow owns a min, which is built for her on the day of her marriage;
from then on, she is responsible for it. On the day of a move, the
women rise before dawn, dismantle the mins, and load them on
camels. The long arched main frames are tied vertically to the sides
of the camel and held together at the top. In the space between are
stacked the shorter sticks and rolls of roof and floor mats, topped by
a cone of wall and floor skins. In front are large containers and the
clay cooking pot in its basket.
Within three hours, the settlement is on the move and will
travel distances of 25 miles (40 km) in a day. Before the sun sets,
the women unload the camels and rebuild the houses, and the
men fence the animals. Anders Grum, a Danish architect and
anthropologist, traced the movement of one nomadic group in detail
and calculated that, over a seventy-year period, they traveled
approximately 12,000 miles (19,000 km). However, in more recent
times, many Rendille settlements have stabilized near townships
and become dependent on them; they have also become separated
MATERIALS
from regular contact with their livestock, which are now looked after
in smaller, more mobile camps. *Wood poles and
sticks to define the
basic frame
* Sisal tiles,
The camel is essential to the overlapped and tied
Rendille, providing them with to the structure, to
transportation and their staple provide a covering
food, known as banjo, which ★ Cowhides, to frame
consists of camel meat and the entrance and
a mixture of milk and blood. provide a windbreak
at the rear of the
shelter
112
FROM ZULU INDLU TO THE VENICE OF AFRICA"
RENDILLE MIN
Private area for sleeping
MIN FRAME
The basic frame of a min
consists of two main parts, the
curved back and the fanlike
front. The back is defined by two
pairs of long curved poles, one of
which provides the leading edge,
the other a curved brace to the
rear. Thinner sticks are lashed to
these to form the domed sleeping
quarters. The front consists of a
fan of straight sticks, inclined
inward, spaced at regular
intervals and secured by stones.
Thinner sticks added Fan of straight

to form dome sticks at the
MIN SIDE VIEW

This view of the min shows
that the rear section allows
for standing room. Stones are
used to help position the curved
frame on the ground. The wider
front section of the min is
a public area and is without
floor coverings.
Overlapping sisal tiles
COVERING
When the skeleton of the min is
complete, it is covered with “tiles”
made of sisal, a stiff, long-lasting
plant fiber, which are overlapped
and tied to the structure. A long
rope is bound around the whole
min to provide further stability.
113
ZAFIMANIRY HOUSE
To the Zafimaniry people of Madagascar, wood plays a central role SEE ALSO
in all aspects of life and death, and the structure and building of > Russian Izba,
their decorative wood houses carry important social and symbolic pages 62-63
significance. Some twenty-five thousand Zafimaniry live in about one > Shaker-Style
hundred villages and hamlets scattered in the wooded highlands of Buildings,
pages 134-35
southeast Madagascar. The men living in this unique community are
foresters, carpenters, and craft workers of great knowledge and skill, > Caribbean
Chattel House,
who not only build houses and tombs in wood but also create a wide
pages 142-43
variety of everyday objects, such as rosewood chairs, stools, honey
pots, and chests that they sell to make a living.
All are highly decorated with geometric patterns that carry rich
symbolic significance and traces of both their Polynesian origins and
the Arabic influences on Malagasy culture. The wood they use comes
from twenty different species of local trees, each of which is employed
for a specific type of construction or decorative function.
To the Zafimaniry, building a house and making a marriage are
two sides of a single process. When a young couple tell their parents
of their Intentions, the man builds a flimsy and fragile house out of
soft, permeable bamboo. As the relationship strengthens, the bamboo
is replaced with hardwood planks, a process they call "acquiring
bones.” Over time, the house becomes an entirely wooden structure,
decorated throughout, and develops into a "holy house” that will be
passed on to the couple’s descendants.
Zafimaniry culture is now endangered. Despite the demand for
their work, little of the money comes to the makers, and counterfeiting
is rife. In addition, the deforestation of the region, made worse by
slash-and-burn agriculture, means that their raw material is running
short. Younger people, rather than training in traditional woodcrafts,
are leaving to find work in the towns. A UNESCO action plan is trying
both to protect the natural environment of the Zafimaniry and to
preserve their traditional techniques. MATERIALS
* Woven bamboo to
make the first form
Much of the natural habitat of the house
of Madagascar is being
destroyed, despite the fact * Long, flattened
that it is a jewel of biodiversity. bamboo stalks
Some five percent of the world's
for roofing
species live here, including * Hardwood planks to
eight thousand species make the wall of
of flowering plants alone. the finished house
114
FROM ZULU INDLU TO THE "VENICE OF AFRICA'
ZAFIMANIRY HOUSE
TYPICAL HOUSE
A typical Zafimaniry one-room
house, initially built out of woven
bamboo, gradually acquires
“bones” as the bamboo is
replaced by large wooden
hardwood planks, assembled
using mortise-and-tenon joints
and wood pegs, without any
nails or metal hinges. This
vernacular style is classified
as Neo-Indonesian.
INTERNAL LAYOUT
The simple internal layout of
the house is oriented around the
four directions, which relate to
the four major destinies. The bed
is always placed in the northeast,
while the unimportant objects
and entrance are placed in the
west. The positioning of the
houses in the village follows
similar principles.
DECORATIVE DETAILS
A woven wood door and carved
wood panel are examples of the
kind of handiwork for which the
Zafimaniry are famous. Their finely
chiseled geometric motifs on doors
and windows reflect their beliefs.
Two common motifs are
a spiderweb pattern (which
symbolizes family ties) and the
honeycomb (symbolizing
community life).
115
FROM ZULU INDLU TO THE “VENICE OF /
ZULU INDLU
The Zulu, who live mainly in the South African province of KwaZulu- SEE ALSO
Natal, are the country’s largest ethnic group and their language is >Toda Hut,
the most widely spoken. The traditional home of the Zulu is a pages 100-1
thatched “beehive” dwelling known as an indlu. It is considered one > Balinese Kuren,
of Africa’s finest vernacular structures, both aesthetically beautiful pages 154-5
and ingeniously constructed. The framework of the indlu, known as > Tzotzil Chukal Na,
the izingtungo, consists of a ring of saplings that cross each other at pages 140-1
right angles and are tied together at each intersection. The roof is
supported by a series of upright posts, up to nine in a large hut,
which carry curved lumber components that support the roof.
Mats of thatching grass are tied to the framework with braided
grass loops and the whole thatch is then secured by a net of grass
ropes running from the apex to the ground and in concentric rings
parallel to the ground. The indlu is topped by a cylinder of grass
matting, which forms a small finial poking out of the thatch. Access
is gained by crawling through a small arched opening, approximately
31/2 feet (1 m) high, made of stepped rings of thatch; the entrance is
secured by a thick hide, a wicker screen, or a hinged wood door.
The interior of the hut is divided into the men's side, to the right
of the door, and the women's to the left. The floor is made of a
carefully smoothed and polished mixture of cow dung and termite-
mound clay that is smeared on the ground, where it sets hard and is
polished by a smooth stone. A third of the way between the entrance
and rear, a circular depression serves as the hearth, surrounded by a
raised molded rim. Smoke from the fire escapes out the door or
through the thatch. A platform at the back of the hut is used to store
the family's possessions, guarded by charms that the community’s
medicine man buried beneath it when the hut was built.
MATERIALS
* Saplings, tied
together, to form
framework
KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) consists
of three main geographic areas: *Wood posts and
a narrow coastal plain; a central curved lumber
region of hilly plateaus; and two components to
mountainous areas, one formed support roof
of basalt, the other of granite. * Grass for thatch,
tied together with
grass ropes
116
FROM ZULU INDLU TO THE “VENICE OF AFRICA"
ZULU INDLU
External structure secured Finial made of grass matting

by network of grass ropes
INDLU CONSTRUCTION
The construction of an indlu
is a task that is jointly shared
by the men and women of the
Zulu. The men do the building,
the women the weaving and
thatching. Thatching methods
vary between regions and tribes,
and often include patterns
created by the interweaving
of grass ropes or withies (willow
stems). The distinctive beehive
shape and structure of the indlu
was an early inspiration to the
architect Buckminster Fuller,
creator of the geodesic dome.
Chiefs mother's house

First wife
Third wife Chief’s hut
Second wife
Inner palisade
Cattle
kraal
Outer palisade
Unmarried
boys
Watchtower
Unmarried girls
ZULU HOMESTEAD
A Zulu community lives together in a homestead (umuzi) that consists
of two concentric palisades of coral tree branches or thorny bushes. The
huts are located inside the outer palisade (in the precise layout indicated
above) and the cattle are kept in the inner circle, which is known as a
kraal. A Zulu man is devoted to his cattle, which are a symbol of status, A dense outer palisade of spiky,
coral tree branches provides
wealth and power; Zulu chiefs are often buried in their cattle kraals. protection for the homestead
117
NDEBELE PAINTED HOUSE
The extraordinary painted houses of the Ndzundza Ndebele have SEE ALSO
gained worldwide attention for their graphic splendor. Executed > Cob House,
entirely by women, their powerful and colorful abstract designs have pages 54-55
an interesting history. Archaeological evidence suggests that the >Batammaiiba
various tribes of the Ndebele people originally lived in northeastern Roundhouse,
pages 110-11
South Africa in simple thatched domes until the 1860s, when they
moved to settle and intermarry with the Tswana and Pedi tribes.
From the Tsawana they adopted a different form of dwelling—a
cylindrical earth house that was topped by a conical thatch roof—
which they began decorating initially in the style of the Pedi.
Fierce wars with the Boers in the 1880s resulted in all the
extensive Ndebele lands being confiscated and the Ndzundza
becoming indentured servants, a situation that lasted until the late
twentieth century and parallels the situation of African slaves in the
Americas. As a result, the Ndzundza people used the wall paintings
on their houses to carry a message of cultural resistance, in the form
of abstract colors and shapes—a secret language only understood by
their fellow tribespeople. The white farmers considered this house
decoration harmless and allowed the practice to continue.
The tradition of the Ndebele paintings has been maintained by
the women of the tribe, because it is the responsibility of the wives to
keep a well-decorated home. Over the decades, these paintings have
evolved into an elaborate, symbolic communication system, based
on a traditional palette of colors and forms, so that the paintings on
each house speak of the history, beliefs, and identity of the family
within. Pattern strategies were passed on from mother to daughter.
The modern world has affected the life and art of the Ndebele.
They have appropriated and incorporated new symbols into their
work and some of their women artists have become famous around
the world. Their settlements near Pretoria have been absorbed by
the city, and many Ndebele have adopted Western lifestyles.
There are three main groups

of Ndebele people: one group
in Southern Transvaal, one MATERIALS
group in Northern Transvaal,
and one in Zimbabwe, known * Earth to build the
as the Matabele. main circular house
* Thatch to cover
the conical roof
118
FROM ZULU INDLU TO THE “VENICE OF AFRICA ’
NDEBELE PAINTED HOUSE
PAINTED HOUSES
The Ndebele painted earth
houses take the form of a central
drum, some 20-26 feet (6-8 m)
in diameter, surmounted by a
conical thatched roof. The central
circular space was used by the
parents as a sleeping area, with
the left-hand side being the side
of the woman, and the right the
side of the man. These two
examples show the different
styles of thatching used in
different areas. Similarly, the
designs on the outside walls vary
from region to region. They are
created and painted by Ndebele
women using pigments derived
from natural ochers, soot, and
lime. The traditional painted
houses now survive largely in
scattered rural settlements.
Earth walls with painted designs
LATER RECTANGULAR
DWELLINGS
In more modern times, Ndebele
houses have evolved into
rectangular dwellings, set in
a courtyard, used by the women
of the household for a variety
of social functions. The courtyard
is surrounded by walls that are
elaborately painted with bold,
geometric patterns.
119
FROM THE PLAINS TIPI TO
FRONTIER LOG CABINS
The Inuit igloo and the Plains Indian tipi have immediate
cultural resonance, and both are justly recognized as supreme
examples of simple shelters of great ingenuity. Less well known
are the striking forms of the Haida plank houses, decorated
with vibrant paintings and crowned with the first totem poles.
Log cabins come in all shapes and styles, as do the big barns
of the North American landscape and the early settlers’
building forms—the l-house, cracker house, and saltbox
house. The Shakers devised their own architectural language
of unadorned shape and form, which to this day remains
highly influential. The adobe houses of New Mexico, designed
for desert climates by the Pueblo peoples, have now become
an internationally recognized style.
INUIT IGLOO
The igloo (a word derived from the Inuit term iglu) is a domed shelter SEE ALSO
built of snow blocks by the Inuit people of the far north. Igloos were >Mousgoum Tolek,
originally built by only the Inuit people of Canada’s Central Arctic pages 106-7
regions and the Thule area of Greenland, but were later adopted
by all Polar Inuit groups. The form of the igloo—a dome built without
the use of any supporting structure—most likely evolved through trial
and error over thousands of years.
Constructed in a variety of sizes, the best-known igloo is the
smallest—the simple, snow-block dome, which could be constructed
in a few hours to provide hunters with temporary shelter. Larger igloos
provided semipermanent living accommodation during the winter
months. In the summer, when the igloos started to melt, the Inuit lived
in portable tents, framed with poles made of narwhal tusks and
covered with sewn sealskins, which were more suitable for the
warmer months. Extra-large snowhouses (karigi), up to 20 feet (6 m)
in diameter, were built for ceremonies and feasts.
Once in use, heat from human bodies, from a stove, and lamps
fueled by the oil from animal blubber rises and is trapped inside the
snow dome, which has excellent insulating properties. The cold air
sinks and is trapped in the entrance tunnel, built below the internal
floor level. Thus the igloo remains comfortable and can maintain an
internal heat level of 59.9° F (15.5° C) or more, when the outside
temperature is far below freezing.
To prevent the snow shell from melting, igloos were sometimes
lined with caribou skins, which would trap a layer of cold air above
them and also serve as extra insulation. Over time, the igloo forms a
smooth, airtight ice surface that also increases its structural strength,
making it strong enough to support the weight of a person standing
on its roof. An ingenious ancient invention, using the very simplest
of available materials, the energy-efficient igloo is a prime example of
vernacular building at its most effective.
MATERIALS
The Inuit Circumpolar Council

* Snow blocks
(ICC), established in 1977, now * Sticks, bones, or
represents the 150,000 Inuit broken paddles to
people who live in the USA, insulate sleeping
Canada, Greenland, and Russia. platform, over
which is laid moss
NORTHERN and sealskin (or
CANADA/
GREENLAND preferably deerskin)
122
FROM THE PLAINS IIPI TO FRONTIER LOG CABINS
INUIT IGLOO
Blocks constructed in a spiral

SPIRAL CONSTRUCTION
The igloo is built from the inside
and constructed in a spiral. First,
a central hole in the ground is
excavated by cutting out even
blocks of snow that has turned
to ice, which are then arranged
in a 16-foot (5-m)-wide circle
around it. The first layer is then
cut into a slight upward and
inward curve.
Key block completes

the construction
BUILDING THE CURVE

The walls are built up using
progressively smaller, overlapping
blocks, shaved so that they
gradually lean inward, and the
dome is completed by a final key
block, shaved until it fits exactly
in the top hole. The dome is then
covered with loose snow, which is
rubbed into all the cracks between
the blocks to seal them.
Key block
CROSS SECTION
Once the dome is complete, Air hole
a hole is cut under the wall
to provide a cold sink, leading Cold sink helps
to a short roofed entrance tunnel, maintain igloo
warmth
inside the igloo, several blocks
are used to create a living
and sleeping platform (iglig).
The dome is pierced by small
ventilation shafts to avoid the
risk of asphyxiation.
Living and sleeping platform—
insulated by a layer of sticks,
bones, or broken paddles
123
n IE T; IPP
CABIN!
f-;
IP iN s LU u
HAIDA PLANK HOUSE
The indigenous nation of the Haida has lived on the archipelago of SEE ALSO
the Queen Charlotte Islands, off the coast of British Columbia, and > Maori Meeting-
Prince of Wales Island, off the coast of Alaska, for between seven House, pages
166-7
thousand and ten thousand years. These isolated peoples developed
their own unique crafts and skills, introducing the first totem poles
and building substantial war canoes—each made out of a single
cedar tree and manned by some fifty warriors—used to carry out
raiding missions. They were also superb carvers and artists. Contact
with Europeans in 1774 had a dramatic impact on their way of life
and their ability to survive according to their traditions. Hunter-
gatherers and fishermen, they lived in small villages, consisting of
one or more rows of plank houses, with the village chiefs house at
the center, strung along a beach between the ocean and the forest.
To the Haida, these plank houses, built of western red cedar,
were central to their culture and contained the spiritual world of
their ancestors. Much ceremony attended every aspect of house
construction; it had to be aligned correctly and built in a certain
order. There were two main types: the more common two-beam
house, and the eight-beam house, found only on the Queen Charlotte
Islands. The interior of the house was organized around a central
open hearth in which a fire burned constantly. Small houses averaged
20 x 30 feet (6 x 9 m) and were occupied by thirty to forty closely
related family members, while large houses were up to 50 x 60 feet
(15x18 m), with twice as many residents, including extended family.
There are only two small surviving villages of Haida, at one of
which, named Massett ("white slope”), the largest Haida house built
since 1850 has been constructed. Known as Chief Weah’s “Monster
House,” it is an eight-beam house, measuring 55 feet (17 m) square,
which took two thousand people to build.
The Queen Charlotte Islands MATERIALS

form an archipelago of two
main islands—Graham and * Western red cedar
Moresby—and 150 smaller for structural
ones. To the north is Prince framework of
of Wales Island, the fourth- posts and beams
largest island in the USA. *Wood planking
for walls
124
FROM THE PLAINS TIPI TO FRONTIER LOG CABINS
HAIDA PLANK HOUSE
Two round beams

TWO-BEAM HOUSE
The basic framework of a Haida
two-beam house, a large, gable-
roofed structure, is built around
four massive vertical posts,
spanned by two huge round
beams up to 50 feet (15 m)
in length, the whole being
covered with a cladding
of wide planks.
Main vertical posts
Eight log beams with flat undersides

EIGHT-BEAM HOUSE
The eight-beam bouse is a
more sophisticated structure,
held together using mortise-
and-tenon joints. The four
substantial round corner posts
are mortised to receive the
tapered gable plates, which,
in turn, support the heavy roof
beams. These are cut with a flat
underside to provide a stable,
supported surface.
Curved gable plate
Base plate
Mortised corner posts
HERALDIC POLE
The final act of constructing a
Haida house is the erection of
a heraldic pole at the center of
the front of the building, bearing
carvings of the mythological
history of the clan who live in
the house. The entrance is a hole
made in the stomach of the
crest animal that forms the
pole’s base. The outer posts also
support carved figureheads, and
the building’s facade is highly
decorated in the Haida style.
125
FROM THE PLAINS TIPI T
PLAINS INDIAN TIPI
The tipi, according to historian James H. Creighton, “is perhaps the SEE ALSO
most perfectly designed tent structure that has ever been used_ > Rendille Min,
The conical home is as old as man and has multiple origins pages 112—13
worldwide.” Various forms of tipi-like shelters were certainly used by >Sami Gamme and
nomadic tribes across North America from earliest times, employing Goatte, pages 48-49
a basic structure of poles covered with whatever animal skins or > Aboriginal Shelter,
natural material, such as barks and grasses, were on hand. pages 164-65
The tipi, or tepee—a structure familiar to most people from

American westerns—used by the Indians of the Great Plains, such
as the Sioux, was a relative latecomer, but is now considered the
classic form. Its name derives from two Dakota Indian words—ti, “to
dwell,” and pi, "used for.” (It should not be confused with a wigwam,
also known as a wickiup, which is a domed single-room dwelling.)
The simple but elegant tipi is typically made up of just four
elements—a set of sapling poles (lodgepole pine being ideal) that
forms the basic structure, a semicircular cover made of skin or
canvas, an inner lining, and a door flap. These are secured and
bound together with rope and wood pegs, pins, and stakes.
The key innovations that enable tipi dwellers to have an open fire
for cooking and heat inside the tent, without being smoked out, are
the top opening and the smoke flaps (both of which are adjustable)
and the inner lining, which is pegged up at a certain height around
the bottom part of the tent. Air that comes in under the tent cover is
tunneled upward behind it, taking the smoke with it; the lining has
the additional benefit of providing extra insulation.
The modern interest in tipis is generally acknowledged to stem
from the seminal work The Indian Tipi: Its History, Construction and
Use by Reginald and Gladys Laubin, first published in 1957. What
was once the simple nomadic home of indigenous peoples has now
been adopted across the world by tipi enthusiasts.
The Great Plains of North MATERIALS

America are defined as the
vast area of prairies and steppes * Wood poles to form
that lie east of the Rocky the main structure
Mountains and ivesf of the * Buffalo hide,
Mississippi River. later canvas skin,
secured using wood
lacing pins
126
PLAINS INDIAN TIPI
Smoke exits through

the smoke flap
TIPI STRUCTURE
The women of North American
Indian tribes were responsible
for making the tipis, choosing
an appropriate site for them and
erecting the structure. Erecting
a tipi starts with tying together
three main poles to form a
triangular base. Ten or twelve
additional poles, regularly
spaced in a circle, are tightly
tied to them. The canvas skin
is then put in place, pulled down
and around the framework and
secured, using wood lacing pins
to draw the seams together and
pegs to hold it to the ground.
A blanket serves to cover the
entrance. The diagram indicates
how the airflow is funneled up
behind the lining to carry smoke
from the fire up and out through
the smoke flap.
Fireplace
Altar
Beds with backrests
TIPI INTERIOR
Entrance
The egg-shaped interior of a
typical tipi contains two beds
with backrests; the cooking
pots are kept in between
them. The entrance is indicated
by the dotted oval on left, with
a firewood pile beside it. In
the center is the fireplace,
with the dotted shape indicating
the smoke hole above it and the
small square, the altar behind it.
127
BIG BARN
The barn is an essential feature of every farm in the United States SEE ALSO
and Canada—used to protect livestock and store grain—and its > Hallenhaus
variety reflects the diverse building methods brought to this House Barn,
pages 56-57
continent by the early European settlers. Nancy L. Mohr writes in
the The Barn: Classic Barns of North America that “For centuries,
farmers created barns from memory and experience, using the
materials most readily available. They used whatever skills they had
learned, considered the uses to which the barn would be put,
remembered perfectly and imperfectly barns they had known, and
threw themselves into solving problems.”
Common to many farms was the giant of the form, the big barn,
traditionally constructed with the help of friends and neighbors at a
barn-raising ceremony, during which the preassembled framework
of the barn was raised and put together in a single day. Such barns
were completely utilitarian and rarely decorated; they were often
painted “barn red," using a pigment of iron oxide, to protect the wood.
One of the most distinctive forms of barn in North America—and
one of the rarest (less than one percent of the total)—is the round
barn. George Washington had one in the 1700s, but the oldest
surviving is the Hancock Barn, built by Shaker farmers in Hancock,
Massachusetts, in 1824. Most were constructed between 1870 and
1920, of which about a thousand survive in the Midwest today.
In the early 1900s, an agricultural experiment station at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign built three prototype
round barns that triggered off a wave of construction in the state and
across the Midwest. The experts claimed that such barns could be
built using fewer materials, that they were more efficient to feed
animals in, and were more stable in strong winds. In fact, they never
became the dominant barn form; their efficiencies were overstated
and the electrification of farms favored rectangular barns, which
were much easier to wire.
The first ever census of

historical barns, conducted
by the U.S. Department of
Agriculture in 2007, found
there were 664,264 farm and MATERIALS
ranch owners who had bams *Wood for framework,
on their properties that had wall, cladding, and
been built before 1960. roof shingles
128
BIG BARN
A gambrel roof has a double slope on each

side, the lower one with a steeper pitch
BIG BARN
This big barn, with its metal
grain silo, is built abutting a
small hill, in the three-level
German style that was common
in the Michigan region. The style
of roof (gambrel) provided more
space for storing hay than
traditional gable roofs. From
this upper level, the hay was
thrown down a chute to the
threshing floor below.
CROSS SECTION
The middle floor of the barn
served as both a granary and
a threshing floor. It was linked
to the silo and from here feed
grain or corn could be thrown
to the ground floor, where there
were stalls for sheep and cattle
and roosts for chickens.
Rafters
Shingle roof Dormers on east
and west side
serve as loft doors
ROUND BARN
This is a section view of the
twelve-sided Leonard barn near
Pullman, Washington, in the
Palouse region, one of the
country’s largest wheat-growing
areas. Built entirely of wood in
1917, it has a giant shingle
roof with dormers on both left 1
and right. It is 60 feet (18 m)
in diameter with a 10-foot
(3-m)-high silo in the center.
in
n Ejl H1
129
I-HOUSE, CRACKER HOUSE, AND SALTBOX
These are three forms of “folk house,” defined as a particular house SEE ALSO
type that has evolved through time, constantly being adapted and > Shaker-Style
varying from place to place. The l-house came from seventeenth- Buildings,
pages 134—35
century Britain, developed in the mid-Atlantic and southern states,
and had spread across the United States by the mid-1800s. It was > Caribbean
Chattel House,
identified by Fred Kinffen, cultural geographer, in 1936, and was
pages 142-43
named the l-house because it was so common in the states of
Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa—although he was eager to point out that
it did not originate there and wasn’t restricted to that area.
All l-houses are two rooms wide, one room deep, two stories high,
and have side-facing gables with a symmetrical facade. Additional
features varied from region to region and they were variously made
out of logs, bricks, and stone. The basic form of the house would
often be extended with a rear wing or a balcony.
A cracker house, in its simplest form, was a wooden shelter built
by the early settlers in Florida and Georgia out of the abundant cedar
and cypress they found there. These were kept off the ground by
pilings made of rocks or bricks constructed from oyster shell and
lime. To cope with heat and humidity, they were oriented for shade,
had wide, covered porches, crawl spaces beneath for ventilation,
and windows to catch cross breezes.
The saltbox house, which got its name from its sloping gable roof
that resembled a wood box used to store salt in colonial times, is
formed by a one-story addition across the rear of a one-and-a-half- to
two-storey building. It was initially conceived as an easy method MATERIALS
of enlarging a house, which may have been only a single room deep * l-house—variously
made out of wood
and housed a dozen or more people. Eventually, the saltbox house
planking, bricks,
became an accepted building form, particularly in New England, and stone
where it was common before 1830, and it remained popular in other
* Cracker house-
parts of the country until the late 1800s. built entirely of
wood. Pilings made
of rocks or bricks,
constructed from
Folk houses are scattered across
oyster shell and
the United States, l-houses are lime
most commonly found in * Saltbox house—
Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa; variously made
cracker houses originated in of wood planking,
Florida and Georgia; and saltbox with brick chimney
houses in New England. stack and stone
foundations
130
l-HOUSE, CRACKER HOUSE, AND SALTBOX
l-HOUSE
This English-style l-house is
just one example of a form that
contains numerous variations
from region to region, and also
reflects the different origins
of its owners and builders.
Among these variations are
the materials from which it
was built, the number and
location of chimneys, and
the layout of the rooms.
CRACKER HOUSE
The basic form of cracker house
seen here—a simple square
cabin with a broad veranda—
was called a ‘‘single pen” house;
when extended, it became known
as a "saddlebag” or “dog-trot"
house. The raised first floor was
used to keep hunting hounds and
chickens for food; the birds also
provided a service by consuming
fleas and other pests.
SALTBOX HOUSE
The common features of the
saltbox house are a central
chimney and entrance and
double-hung sash windows.
In most saltboxes, the rear
lean-to addition was divided
into three rooms—a central
kitchen with fireplace and oven,
a room reserved for childbirth
and nursing the ill, and a pantry.
131
LOG CABIN
The quintessential and rudimentary frontier dwelling, the log cabin, SEE ALSO
dates from 1638 in Colonial America, first being constructed by > Russian Izba,
Finnish and Swedish settlers, on the site of what has now grown pages 62-3
into Wilmington, Delaware. German and Ukrainian immigrants later > Zafimaniry House,
arrived and brought their own log-building traditions. They were also pages 114-15
built by the Scots and Irish, who had no tradition of building with logs
but were skilled with stone masonry; log cabins were not widely
adopted by the English. African-American slaves were housed in log
cabins, as were some Native American tribal groups when forced
into a sedentary way of life. The Hispanic settlers of New Mexico built
them as farm buildings, often plastered with adobe.
The scale and other characteristics of the log cabin were largely
determined by the length, variety, and abundance of the available
lumber. The simplest and oldest forms of log cabin were constructed
using round logs laid on top of each other and secured at the corner
with basic notches. Inside the log cabin, in order to insulate it, the
rounded logs that protruded from the wall had to be covered over
and “chinked” to keep out drafts. The most common method was
to fill the cracks with sphagnum moss and cover the whole with
lime plaster. In some areas, scrap pieces of lumber were used to
cover the gaps. As construction methods improved, the need for
“chinking" was eliminated by a technique whereby the underside of
a log was scooped out in order to fit tightly on the rounded log below.
A number of factors kept the tradition of building log cabins alive
long after the days of the initial pioneer builders. Log construction
was used for park lodges in the National Parks, and thousands more
were built in forests and parks during the Great Depression. The log
cabin has become a symbol of the nation's pioneering spirit, and is
built into its history, folklore, myth, art, and song. MATERIALS
* Logs for main
structure
*Spaghnum moss
and lime plaster
Log cabins, both traditional to fill in gaps
and modern, can be found in between the logs
many, if not most, of the states. for insulation
* Wattle to make the

chimney
* Stone or clay to
make the hearth
132
LOG CABIN
SIMPLE LOG CABIN

Simple log cabins are generally
just one story, 6-8 logs high,
and have only a single room
("pen”), some 12-16 square feet
(3.6-5 m sq) in area. There is
one door, no windows, earthen
floors, and a fireplace at one
end of the cabin, with a wattle
chimney and a stone or clay
hearth. Roofs are generally
supported by horizontal logs
notched into the triangular¬
shaped gable wall end and
then covered with hand-cut
wood shingles.
CORNER NOTCHES
Corner notches developed as
a way of fitting the logs more
securely and tightly together.
The simplest and most widely
Dovetailing
used type is called saddle
notching, but a huge variety
of others were employed by
different cultural groups.
Saddle notching
Half dovetailing
Wood
roof tiles
CONSTRUCTION
The simple and sturdy nature of
the log cabin remains attractive
and it is still a popular building
form with a wide variety
of modern uses. Whereas
traditional log cabins would
be built of round, hand-cut
interlocking logs, they are
generally now constructed
from premachined lumber
components, but still using
interlocking corner joints.
Stone base
Round lumber for ridge
pole, rafters, and purlins
Corners interlock, using

traditional saddle notching
133
SHAKER-STYLE BUILDINGS
The vernacular style of the Shakers has been rightly celebrated and SEE ALSO
admired. Originally known as the United Society of Believers in Christ’s > 1-House, Cracker
Second Appearing, the movement was founded by Ann Lee in House, and Saltbox,
pages 130-31
Manchester, England in 1747 and spread to North America in 1774,
where, over the next century, the Shakers established and maintained
nineteen communal settlements that attracted some twenty thousand
converts. According to design writer Roger Shepherd, “There was no
art of architecture among the Shakers; no written statement of style.
But, there was certainly a definite sense of purpose in the particular
religious doctrine and social organization of this unique community,
which found expression in its building and design.”
The basic standards that defined both the buildings and their
interiors were simplicity and utility. The Shakers frowned on any kind
of decoration, and they favored pure, clean forms that were highly
functional and economical to make. The house interiors were bright
and airy, well-heated and clean, uncluttered and serene.
As they believed Christ was both male and female, the sexes
in Shaker communities were considered equal, but separate. They
were also celibate, and maintained their communities through
converts and adoptions. As the Shaker movement developed, they
began to systematize the layouts of their communities. On the main
street would be the Shaker meetinghouse, alongside other key
community buildings, such as the infirmary and schoolhouse.
Behind those buildings, running in parallel, were situated the
houses, stops, and workshops of the sisters and brethren.
What enabled the Shaker style to grow and develop was the
fact that all the unknown artisans involved were able to innovate,
providing they held to the group’s essential tenets. “This freedom to
experiment in the interest of betterment,” says Shepherd, “saved
Shaker architecture from the blight of institutionalism or stereotype."
The Shaker movement peaked

at six thousand members in
1840, but went into almost
total decline in the twentieth
century. One Shaker community MATERIALS
survives today in Sabbathday
Lake, Maine. *Wood or brick walls
* Stone foundations
134
SHAKER-STYLE BUILDINGS
Formal facade reflects the Shaker belief

in simplicity with no ornamentation
TYPICAL SHAKER HOUSE

This typical Shaker community
dwelling was built to allow for
minimum contact between men
and women. It has two entrance
doors, two staircases, and
separate halls leading to the
sleeping chambers, known as
retiring rooms. Both sexes shared
a common dining room, but ate
at separate tables. Meetinghouses
had three entrances, one for each
sex and one for the ministry.
Male entrance Female

entrance
SHAKER STYLE
Shakers made their own
furnishings, including chairs,
cupboards, tables, beds, desks,
bookcases, washstands, trunks,
benches, stools, sewing boxes,
brushes, and brooms. As in their
architecture, they discarded any
unnecessary ornament, creating
furniture of simple forms and
proportion. Rooms had white
plaster walls lined with peg
boards, on which their distinctive
ladderback chairs could be hung
when not in use.
BROTHERS’ SHOP
This is the four-story brick
Brothers’ Shop at the Mount Brick frontage
Lebanon Shaker Village in New
Lebanon, New York—the largest
and most industrious Shaker Small-pane
sash windows
community in the United States
from 1785 to 1947, and the
movement’s spiritual center in
the country. At its peak, Mount Substantial
Lebanon consisted of six hundred stone
foundation
members with hundreds of
buildings spread out over
9/2square miles (25 sq km).
135
NEW MEXICAN ADOBE HOUSE
The history of adobe building in New Mexico has its roots in a period SEE ALSO
(ad 700-1500) when the Anasazi peoples, who had previously been > Cob House,
living in semiunderground pit houses, began building single-story pages 54-55
houses on the ground, using layers of dried mud or of stones laid in > Great Mosque
adobe mortar, without windows and with flat roofs. From these of Djennb,
pages 104-5
simple structures, their culture and architectural skill developed.
They built clustered settlements of stone and adobe—the most > Yemen Tower House,
pages 78-79
extensive of which, such as Chaco Canyon, accommodated some
seven thousand people. For what were most probably ecological > Paisa House,
pages 146-47
reasons, the Anasazi culture started to collapse around 1300 and
many of the tribes moved to areas along the Rio Grande. Here, they
began building smaller dwellings using sun-hardened sand and clay.
The early Spanish settlers called these adobe structures “pueblo”
(after a Spanish word for village); the Zuni were renamed Pueblo
Indians by them because of the prevalence of these structures within
their communities. A simple adobe pueblo consisted of a log-frame
building to which the adobe compound was applied as mortar. Later,
the Pueblo Indians would be introduced by the Spanish to a method
of shaping the adobe into bricks. Producing adobe bricks is simple.
Mud (or a mud mixture) is carefully poured into a wood mold, which
is lifted off when the newly formed brick is dry enough. When ready,
the bricks are turned on their edge to complete drying. The word
adobe, meaning "mud brick,” dates back some four thousand years
to Middle Egypt. In more modern English usage, the term has come
to include a style of architecture popular in the desert climates of
North America, especially in New Mexico.
In recent years, there has been an increased interest in building
adobe homes in New Mexico and other Southern states because
they are energy efficient and use natural materials. New Mexico
Earth Adobes, which has one of the largest adobe yards in the world,
claims to have made some fifteen million adobe bricks since 1972.
MATERIALS
The first evidence of earth
dwellings in the American
* Mud for cast adobe
Southwest dates from bricks and, mixed to
the fourth century AD. a paste, for exterior
"plaster” finish
*Wood posts and

beams to make the
basic framework
136
NEW MEXICAN ADOBE HOUSE
PRE-ADOBE HOUSE
This reconstruction of a semi¬
underground pit house of the
Anasazi people is based on
remains found in southern
Colorado, dated AD 500-700.
Although the Anasazi gradually
moved into crude adobe shelters
above ground, they retained
and extended the form of
the underground pit house
to create spiritual spaces
they called kivas.
Roof with parapet, used as
Heavy beams support the outdoor room in hot weather
SIMPLE ADOBE HOUSE
The posts extending out from
the exterior walls are the ends of
wood beams, inserted to support
the immense weight of a flat
earthen roof. Round spouts were
also often placed at the base of
the parapet surrounding the roof
to drain off rainwater. This would
run into a small trench left all
around the internal edge of the
roof, immediately inside its
surrounding wall.
REVIVAL-STYLE
SPANISH HOUSE
This is a comparatively elaborate
design based around a number of The relatively complex
structure is made up
internal spaces and verandas.
of smaller units joined Covered verandas
Houses in this style were built together offer outside shade
from the mid-nineteenth century,
and modern homes often copy
their structure today. The
building complex is enclosed by
a wall with a central gate; within
it is a series of one- or two-story
units, all with flat roofs, and
linked by covered verandas.
Staircases are now internal,
and the numerous windows
are set very deep in the wall.
Window embrasures
The thick walls slope slightly
remain small
inward from the base.
137
FROM CHATTEL HOUSES TO
URUS REED HOUSES
In the mountains of southern Mexico, the Tzotzil people live
in small villages of thatehed dwellings with four-sided roofs,
while in the Amazon the Yanomami combine their individual
dwellings into one huge circular shabano. In the Caribbean,
former African slaves invented the first mobile home, the
chattel house, which could be disassembled and moved at
short notice. In the highlands of Colombia, unique buildings
combining bamboo structures with adobe and stone are
being studied for their ability to survive earthquakes. High on
Lake Titicaca in the Andes Mountains, the Urus people live
on floating islands in houses made of reed. And in southern
Chile, a unique set of wood churches has been recognized
by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.
TZOTZIL CHUKAL NA
The Tzotzil ("people of the bat”) live at an altitude of 6,500 feet SEE ALSO
(2,000 m) in the west central region of the southernmost Mexican >Sami Gamme
state of Chiapas, in a landscape characterized by pine-covered and Goatte,
pages 48-49
mountains and steep valleys. The largest indigenous group (292,000
people, according to the 2000 Mexican census) in the state, they >Toda Hut,
pages 100-1
are concentrated in ten municipios (main towns), surrounded by
small hamlets, near the city of San Cristobal. > Zulu Indlu.
pages 116-17
In the smaller communities, the most common house type is
called a chukal na, which has wattle-and-daub walls and a steep, >Abelam Spirit
House, pages
four-sided roof, thatched with grass. The house itself sits within
162-63
a fenced compound, which may contain a shelter for animals, a
granary, and a sweat house, alongside fruit trees, vines, flowers, and
crops of corn or squash.
The interior of the house has no dividing walls, but living spaces
are carefully defined according to the Tzotzil belief system. The main
symbol of the Tzotzil culture is the sun, which is called “Our Father
Heat,” and their everyday activities are arranged according to a
“thermal order of the cosmos,” in which men are hot, women are
cold, and the gods are the hottest of all.
Gary Gossen, who studied one Tzotzil community at Chamula,
writes, “The importance of heat is ever present_The daily round
of domestic life centers on the hearth, which lies near the center of
the dirt floor of nearly all houses. The working day usually begins and
ends around the fire, men and boys sitting and eating to the right of
the hearth, women and girls to the left.”
Many of the Westernized Tzotzil now live in modern houses made
of adobe brick or cement blocks roofed with tile. Most Tzotzil families
make their living by subsistence farming and by raising domestic
animals. Many Tzotzil women and girls weave and embroider textiles
MATERIALS
to sell to tourists in the cities. In recent years, many Tzotzil have
*Wood for load-
joined the guerrilla Zapatista Army of National Liberation.
bearing framework
of posts and beams,
topped by lattice of
The state of Chiapas has a wood and bamboo
humid, tropical climate in lashed together
lowland areas, and a temperate with vines
and foggy one in the mountains.
* Wattle and daub
for walls
* Grass for steep,

thatched roof
140
FROM CHATTEL HOUSES TO URUS REED HOUSES
TZOTZIL CHUKAL NA
Ceiling framework Load-bearing wood

framework
FRAMEWORK
To build this traditional single¬
room Tzotzil house, first a square
load-bearing wood framework is
created, consisting of oak or
cypress posts, notched at the top
to receive beams that are lashed
to them with vines. A lighter
lattice of thinner vertical posts
and horizontal wattles, of wood
or bamboo, is then added to it.
PYRAMID STRUCTURE
Horizontal bamboo wattles
The ceiling is made of a square
grid of light wood joists on which
a pyramidal structure of six heavy
wood rafters is built. It is held
together by three square frames
of joists at bottom, center, and
top, which are then covered with ROOF
a framework of wattle. Atop this The roof structure is then
is a small structure that serves thatched with overlapping
as a ventilation hole to enable bunches of grass, which are
smoke to escape. tied to the wattles with vines.
Smoke hole for

ventilation
Wattle structure to
cover wood framework
Pyramid of
rafters and
joists
141
CARIBBEAN CHATTEL HOUSE
The chattel houses of Barbados and other parts of the British West SEE ALSO
Indies date back to the nineteenth century, and are possibly the > Russian Izba,
world’s first mobile homes. The word “chattel” means “movable pages 62-3
property" and derives from "cattle”—at one time, this was the only > Shaker-Style
significant piece of property a man would own. When the British Buildings,
pages 134-5
finally freed the African slaves on the island in 1838, most continued
to work in the sugar plantations, often journeying between different > 1-House, Cracker
House, and Saltbox,
estates on the island. They lived on the margins of the plantation, on
pages 130-1
land they didn’t own; therefore, the houses they built were small and
designed to be easily dismantled and transported by cart to a new
site, either at the end of a growing season, or in the case of a dispute
with the plantation owner, who was their temporary landlord.
Chattel houses were built entirely of wood and assembled
without nails to make them simple to disassemble and move from
place to place. The wood was imported from the United States and
was precut in length, which is why most of the chattel houses have
similar dimensions, which range between 9x18 feet (2.8 x 5.5 m)
and 15 x 30 feet (4.6 x 9.2 m). As the family expanded and perhaps
became more settled, owners often added a couple of rear rooms, or
even another house, onto the back.
Over the years, chattel houses acquired ornamentation, with
open verandas, carved wood bannisters and trellis, decorative
bargeboards, and elaborate fretwork around the windows. For many
years, it was the tradition to paint chattel houses in beiges and
browns, a fashion that has now changed to white or brighter colors.
In recent years, a new appreciation of the importance of chattel
houses to Barbadian culture has enabled conservationists to save
many historic chattel houses from dereliction for their heritage value.
A large number still serve as family houses throughout the island.
MATERIALS
The British Wfesf Indies refers
to territories in and around *Wood for basic
the Caribbean that were structure,
colonized by the British. assembled with
wood pegs
*Wood shingles and,

later, corrugated
iron for roof
142
FROM CHATTEL HOUSES TO URUS REEO HOUSES
CARIBBEAN CHATTEL HOUSE
Shutter to roof space
TRADITIONAL
CHATTEL HOUSE
The original chattel houses were
simple two-room houses, twice
as wide as deep, with a steep
roof made of shingles (later
corrugated iron), designed to
survive the heavy rains and high
winds of the hurricane season.
They were set on limestone
blocks rather than being
anchored in the ground.
Double door Limestone blocks for foundation
JALOUSIE SHUTTERS
For windows, the old chattel
houses had shutterlike jalousies
which had three sets of hinges—
two vertical and one horizontal—
that allowed maximum flexibility
against the wind and sun.
These were colloquially known
as “jealousy shutters" because
they kept the prying eyes of
neighbors from seeing inside.
MODERN
CHATTEL HOUSE
Many of the surviving chattel
houses have been modernized
with corrugated iron roofs,
glass windows, and permanent
foundations in order to
provide comfortable and
permanent homes.
143
YANOMAMI SHABANO
The Yanomami (the word means “human being"), who live in the SEE ALSO
remote rain forests and mountains of northern Brazil and southern > Black Tents,
Venezuela, are one of the largest of South America’s relatively pages 76-77
isolated tribes. They had minimal contact with the outside world— >Abelam Spirit
through a limited number of missionaries, anthropologists, and House, pages
162-63
government agents—until the mid-1980s, when gold miners illegally
invaded their land, polluting the rivers with mercury and spreading
malaria. In 2009, Survival International estimated the population of
the Yanomami at approximately thirty-two thousand.
The semiagricultural Yanomami people hunt with bow and
curare-tipped arrows and have a reputation for being aggressive,
often staging raids on each other’s settlements. They are organized
around kin-base groups of varying size, related by marriage ties, who
live together in a structure known as a shabano—a large, ring-shape
structure enclosing a communal space.
The shabano is built in segments, each one constructed by the
man and his family who are to occupy it. These individual family
shelters (nanos) are then assembled in a ring and the gaps between
them closed and thatched, except where an entrance is required.
Finally, a defensive palisade is constructed in order to protect the
entire shabano and its inhabitants.
Each Yanomami family nano has its own hearth, with hammocks,
calabashes, and gourds hanging from the roof. Firewood is stacked
at the back to form a wall. A small shabano may have six hearths and
a diameter of 50 feet (15 m); an average shabano, accommodating
eighty people, contains fifteen hearths and measures 100 feet (30 m)
across. The largest, built to house 160 people or more, would be
200 feet (60 m) across. A shabano will last for a few years before it
becomes infested with insects and starts to leak, then it will be
burned to the ground and rebuilt.
MATERIALS
* Hardwood poles to
The Yanomami live in the construct framework
border areas between Brazil and
Venezuela, one of the remotest * Saplings to create
parts of the Amazonian region. roof-canopy frame,
bound together with
vines or lianas
* Bisha palm leaves

for roof thatch
144
FROM CHATTEL HOUSES TO URUS REEO HOUSES
YANOMAMI SHABANO
Roof-canopy frame
FRAMEWORK of saplings
The basic underlying structure

of a large shabano is made up
of a framework of hardwood
poles, planted in two rows
about 10 feet (3 m) apart.
The outer row is of short posts
approximately 5 feet (1.5 m)
high; the inner row is twice that
height. Individual family nanos
are joined together to form the
larger structure.
COMPLETED SHABANO
The shabano is completed with a
roof-canopy frame made of slender
saplings, which is cantilevered
upward toward the center at
an angle of thirty degrees. The
saplings are bound together with
vines or lianas, to which fronds Saplings bound with
145
PAISA HOUSE
Paisa (short for paisano) is the name of the people and culture SEE ALSO
of the central mountainous region of Colombia, which was first > Korowai Tree House,
colonized in 1785 by a mixture of people of Spanish descent, Native pages 160-61
Indians, and free Africans. By 1904, they had established a network >Toda Hut,
of eighty new villages, built in a striking and original manner that pages 100-1
continues to be of great interest to architects and engineers in > Ganvie Stilt Village,
Colombia and elsewhere today. pages 108-9
The layout of these villages followed the European style, with a
grid of streets and urban blocks, but, due to the difficult topographical
conditions, they were built in a unique fashion in what is called the
bahareque technique, in which the main construction material is
local guadua bamboo, combined with wood and adobe.
There are no standard types in this architecture, but rather a set
of elements that enable the building of a house to suit a wide variety
of conditions; in some settlements, buildings reached a height of
four or five floors. The use of additional elements, such as corridors
and courtyards, tiled roofs, and decorative patterns varied according
to the needs and status of-the family concerned.
In recent years, guadua bamboo construction has been replaced
by brick and concrete, but interest in the technique remains high.
A major architect in Colombia, Dicken Castro, documented the paisa
villages in the 1960s and 1970s, and others have built contemporary
guadua buildings. One of the reasons for this continued interest is
that these buildings survive earthquakes remarkably well. Workshops
have now been established to spread the knowledge of how to grow
and build with bamboo and keep these techniques alive.
An ardent advocate of bamboo construction is the Colombian
architect Oscar Hidalgo-Lopez, who has not only built many bamboo
buildings in various Latin American countries, but has also traveled MATERIALS
the world to spread his knowledge, which is enshrined in a five * Bamboo for the
hundred-page encyclopedia called Bamboo: The Gift of the Gods. basic structure
of the house and
as supporting
Colombia is dominated by the scaffolding
Andes Mountains. Its main legal * Wood for floors
export throughout the twentieth and platforms
century was coffee, which
currently accounts for twelve
* Adobe for walls,
percent of world trade by value. or concrete
* Tile and/or
bamboo roof
146
PAISA HOUSE
MOUNTAIN PAISA
This paisa house, found in the
mountainous coffee-growing
zone of Colombia, known as Eje
Cafetero, sits projecting out from
a cliff, supported by an elaborate
scaffolding, which, like the house
itself, is made of bamboo. This
long, rectangular building,
divided into several rooms,
housed the coffee workers.
Surprisingly, it is earthquake-
resistant because the bamboo
has the capacity to absorb
seismic energy and has a
high bending strength.
WINGED ROOF
The wood platform that forms
the ceiling of the living quarters
of the paisa house is used for the
slow sun-drying of coffee beans.
The roof of the house was either
constructed from movable rails
and could be slid back or, as
pictured, had two wings that
folded out for the same purpose.
MODERN PAISA
CROSS SECTION
This cross section is of a modern
two-floor Colombian bahareque "Informal”
house, made of guadua bamboo rear
combined with adobe, wood, and Adobe or
concrete. The decorated “formal” concrete walls
front part of the house faces the
street and is at ground level; the
"informal” rear-—the family’s Bamboo support
private space—is some 13 feet
(4 m) above the ground, which
slopes away beneath it.
147
URUS REED HOUSE
The ancient Urus people inhabited an extensive area around Lake SEE ALSO
Titicaca since before Inca times. They were later driven from their > Marsh Arab
lands and forced to take refuge on man-made islands, in the high Reed House,
inland lakes of Bolivia and Peru. According to 2006 statistics, an
pages 80-81
estimated 320 families survive today on forty-four floating islands.
The culture and life of the Urus traditionally revolves around the
buoyant totora reed plant (Scirpus totora), from which they construct
the islands they live on, their houses, and boats (balsas) with reed
sails. The bulb and pith of the reed provide food for both the Urus
and their animals, primarily pigs.
The island needs to be constantly replenished with fresh reeds
because cut totora rots within six months, and even faster in the
rainy season. The floating islands are built in two ways. One method
involves tying a number of balsas together to provide a framework on
which the cut reeds are piled up, the whole structure being anchored
by ropes and stone to the bottom of the lake. The other technique is
to tangle together an area of still-growing reeds and then pile cut
reeds and soil on top; the latter is mixed with animal dung, both to
add greater consistency and to act as a fertilizer.
The islands contain three main kinds of structure: the traditional
rectangular reed houses, tipi-type structures that appear to be a
modern development connected with increased tourism, and
watchtowers of various kinds. The reed houses, built by women, are
used mainly for sleeping to escape the freezing temperatures at
night. During the day, the intense sun at some 13,000 feet (4,000 m)
above sea level enables everyday life to be led in the open.
Traditionally, the Urus men fish from boats in the clear and deep
icy waters of the 3,200-square-mile (8,290-sq-km) lake, and hunt in
the bulrushes for waterbirds. The women spin, weave, cook, and
tend small gardens in which potatoes are grown.
MATERIALS
Located on the border of Peru * Floating islands of
and Bolivia, Lake Titicaca is compacted reeds
one of the highest navigable
lakes in the world (12,507 feet/ * Totora reeds, either
3,812 m above sea level) individual stems or
and the largest lake in Latin bundles
America by volume. * Reed mats, woven
in layers, for walls
148
URUS REED HOUSE
URUS REED HOUSE

Urus reed houses are rectangular
in shape with a pitched gable
roof and are constructed of
individual reed stems or bound
bundles, which may be attached
to the island itself. The walls
and roof are made of several
layers of woven reed mats to
keep out wind and rain.
MODERN REED HOUSES

AND WATCHTOWERS
These tipi-type structures and
elaborate watchtowers are not
traditional structural forms, but
are, in part, a response to the
growth in tourism, which has
affected the lifestyles of the Urus
people. New islands specifically Tipi-type reed structures
have only appeared in
designed for tourist visits have recent years
been created, and most islands
now have their own motorboats,
radios, and solar panels.
Watchtowers have
become increasingly
elaborate
A more traditional form

watchtower used as a
defensive lookout -
149
WOOD CHURCHES OF CHILOE
The remote, heavily forested Isla de Chiloe—the largest island of a SEE ALSO
scattered chain of the Chiloe Archipelago, off Chile’s southern Pacific >Wood Churches,
coast—is home to a remarkable set of wood churches, sixteen pages 64-65
of which have been recognized by UNESCO World Heritage as
“outstanding examples of the successful fusion of European and
indigenous cultural traditions to produce a unique form of wood
architecture.” This unique vernacular typology is called the Chilota
School of Religious Architecture in Wood.
This land of incessant rainfall and great natural beauty was
originally inhabited by three native tribes—the Cuncos, Huilliches,
and Chonos. The Spanish arrived on November 8, 1553, followed
shortly thereafter by Franciscan and Jesuit missionaries, who were
eager to evangelize. It was the Jesuit missionaries who first established
the churches, the work being continued by the Franciscans after the
Jesuits’ expulsion in 1767. The Jesuits’ plan to reach the scattered
indigenous population was to send groups of missionaries on annual
travels through the archipelago to convert the Indians and enlist them
to build wood chapels at every stopping point on their journey.
An amomaricaman (attorney or deacon) was selected for a year
to continue the spiritual and construction work while the priests were
away. Thus the myths, spirits, and beliefs of the indigenous people
became intertwined with the Catholic doctrine; this cultural fusion
became enshrined in the unique wood structures that the Indians
built under Jesuit instruction.
The churches were built using larch, coihue, and cypress, and
assembled using wood pegs. The majority are located close to the
coast, often with their backs to the mountains and facing south, as a
protection from the rain. An estimated three hundred churches were
MATERIALS
built during the eighteenth century, ranging from small and simple
country churches to larger and more elaborate structures. Of these, *Wood for basic
structure, using
about eighty remain in various stages of repair.
larch, coihue, and
cypress; assembled
with wood pegs
Chiloe Island is 118 miles
(190 km) long and an average * Stone foundations
of 35-40 miles (55-65 km) to support wood
wide. It is the second-largest columns
island in Chile. * Wood shingles
(tejuelas) to cover
roof; occasionally
zinc
150
WOOD CHURCHES OF CHILOE
TYPICAL CHILOE
CHURCH
Most of the churches of Chiloe
follow a characteristic pattern.
The rectangular basilica is
divided into three naves by
wood columns on stone
foundations, and roofed with
wood shingles called tejuelas.
There is a tall, symmetrical
tower, containing a belfry topped
by a cross, a roofed entrance Entrance portico
portico, and a pediment.
OLDEST CHURCH
The Iglesia Nuestra Senora de
Loreto de Achao is considered the
jewel of Chiloe's wood churches.
The oldest Jesuit church on the
island, it was built between 1730
and 1767 using native woods.
It was named a national
monument in 1951.
THREE-TOWER CHURCH
This unusual three-towered
church, the Iglesia deTenaun,
was constructed by Franciscan
friars in 1837. Its main three-
tier tower is balanced by two
smaller ones at each end of
the porch, which has squared
columns. It was later remodeled
in a neoclassical style, and its
shingle roof replaced with zinc.
151
FROM BALINESE KUREN TO
MAORI MEETINGHOUSES
The scattered islands of Oceania have each developed their
own style of vernacular buildings. They range from the octagonal
houses of the Kalinga and the umbrella-shape fale tele of
Samoa to the boat-shape dwellings of the Toraja and the
extraordinary spirit house of the Abelam. In Bali, courtyard
houses encompass an entire extended family’s dwellings. In
New Guinea, the Korowai people are still living in tree
houses. In Australasia, Maori meetinghouses are alive and
vibrant in modern times, whereas the many and various
.
Australian Aborigine shelters have virtually disappeared.

.
BALINESE KUREN
The traditional Bali house (kuren) consists of a number of individual SEE ALSO
buildings on a square plot of land, completely contained in a high- > Zulu Indlu,
wall compound, where a large family group or a number of related pages 116-17
families lives together. Such vernacular homes share a number of > Japanese Minka,
similar features designed to accommodate the climatic conditions, pages 86-87
particularly important during the hot and wet monsoon season. > Kalinga
They are largely built of lumber, of post-and-beam construction, Octagonal House,
pages 156-57
are open to the elements, and employ a variety of elaborate roof
shapes in the Javanese style. Villagers help each other to erect these
self-built structures with the occasional help of a master carpenter.
The buildings sit on stone or square brick footings, with a
masonry platform and stone bases for hardwood pilings, which are
less affected by dry rot and termites. The floors are raised off the
ground to enable breezes to cool the house from below, to keep food
and belongings away from dampness, and to protect the occupants
from malarial mosquitoes.
In the upper part of the house, lighter woods or bamboo are
used for the nonload-bearing walls, fitted together using mortise-and-
tenon joints secured with wood pegs or tied. Several windows provide
cross ventilation. The large roofs, supported on piles, have a steep
pitch with broad overhanging eaves, protecting the house from
tropical rainstorms and direct sunlight. They are usually topped with
thatch of rice straw, dried grass, sugar palm, or coconut leaves.
Traditionally, the Balinese people strive for a natural balance and
harmony in their lives and their architecture; their buildings have a
balance between male and female, negative and positive, sacred
and profane elements. All Balinese house compounds follow the MATERIALS
same fundamental plan. Traditionally, the only difference between
* Stone or brick
the houses of different castes lies in the level of workmanship, the for foundations
materials used, and the size and richness of the family temple. * Hardwood for
pilings
*Wood framework,
post-and-beam
Bali is the biggest tourist construction
destination in Indonesia and
is home to most of Indonesia's * Bamboo for the
Hindu minority. lighter upper walls
* Rice straw, dried
grass, sugar palm,
or coconut leaves
for thatch
154
FROM BALINESE KUREN TO MAORI MEETINGHOUSES
BALINESE KUREN
HOUSE AND COMPOUND

Balinese house compounds bind
together village and community
life, providing a focal point for
family groups and for shared
religious and cultural practices.
Guest pavilion
(Sakenam)
The guest pavilion
for relatives and
Ceremonial pavilion
children varies in
(Bale dangin)
size, depending Granary
The east pavilion is
on how many need (Lumbung or Jineng)
House temple the place where the
to be housed The storage area for rice
(Sanggah or merajan) life rites and death
The place to worship rituals are held-
the ancestors and
their Hindu gods-
Sleeping pavilion West pavilion

Usually constructed as (Bale dauh)
a large eight-post The west pavilion is
structure on a high base. the workhouse of the
Protective gate
The sleeping pavilion is compound and serves
and wall
attached to a terrace for a variety of purposes,
(Angkul-angkul and Kitchen
receiving guests at from meeting place
Aling-aling) (Paon)
family ceremonies to sleeping quarters
Designed to protect The kitchen is located
the whole compound, in the south of the
by deflecting malign compound because of its
influences association with Brahma
(the god of fire), whose
place is in the south
155
KALINGA OCTAGONAL HOUSE
Unique to the landlocked rice-growing province of Kalinga in the SEE ALSO
Philippines is the octagonal house, one of the earliest accounts of > Samoan Fale Tele,
which was written by the German scientist Alex Schadenberg in pages 168-69
1887, who recorded that these houses were painted on the outside >Toda Hut,
with “round designs or figures, representing men and women with pages 100-1
strongly marked genital parts.” Known locally as a binayon or > Balinese Kuren,
finaryon, the octagonal house was “well known to every traveler down pages 154-55
the Chico River," reported historian William Henry Scott in 1960. A
generation ago, wrote Scott, the octagonal house “was considered the
dwelling of the rich, and square houses less aristocratic, although
this attitude has disappeared as the wealthy have more come to
build non-Kalinga-type modern houses.”
The octagonal house is traditionally about 20 feet (6 m) long and
17 feet (5.2 m) wide. The internal structure is defined by four short
posts, sunk into the ground, that support the main rectangular living
area about 4 feet (1.2 m) above the ground. The outer octagonal
shape is defined, in turn, by eight outer posts, which stand on stones
and are tall enough to support the roof. The height from the ground
to the roof ridge is about 15 feet (4.5 m). Girders and joists pass over
these posts to support the floor laths, while grooved beams on the
eight outer posts receive the wall boards.
The living area, accessed by a ladder, is divided into three
parallel sections running front to back, the middle portion being
lower than the sides. The floor, which is covered with a bamboo mat
that can be easily rolled up and taken to the river for washing, is not
a perfect octagon because not all of the corners are floored.
The interior appears surprisingly spacious because of the exposed
structural frame of the walls and roof, although in some houses the
roof space is used as a loft or granary. The arrangement and size of
these houses are well suited to the needs of an extended family. MATERIALS
* Lumber for the

internal wood
framework; wood
Kalinga province is situated in planks for the
the Cordillera Administrative walls from floor
Region in Luzon, the level to eaves
northernmost part of the
Philippines. * Plaited bamboo for
walls from ground
to floor level
* Thatch
156
KALINGA OCTAGONAL HOUSE
OCTAGONAL HOUSE
The distinctive Kalinga house
has walls of braided bamboo
mats from ground to floor
level. The walls from floor level
to eaves are of wood boards
placed horizontally or vertically.
The building is crowned by a
thatched, hipped roof with eaves
that form a rough-edged circle.
The ground floor of the house is
used as an open working space.
FLOOR PLAN Food

storage
This plan of a typical octagonal area —
house clearly shows the interior
layout of the first-floor living area.
The main lower platform has Fireplace Raised bed area
a raised bed area to the right, and
a cooking and food storage area
on the left next to the fireplace,
which is slightly raised. The
open space on the lower left
runs from ground to roof.
Crossbeam
Grass
CROSS SECTION thatch
This cross section shows the Floor joist
internal wood framework of a
typical finaryon-style house built
in the early twentieth century.
Three floor joists, two girders, and
four posts form the foundation of
the house. Notice that the braided Logs to support
braided bamboo
bamboo walls are supported by walls
logs, which were designed to
prevent intruders or attackers
from digging under the walls. Vertical posts
157
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IVI111 m u H U U
TORAJA TONGKONAN
In the remote, mist-shrouded mountain valleys of central Sulawesi, SEE ALSO
on an island in the Indonesian archipelago formerly known as > Log Cabin,
Celebes, live the Sa’dan Toraja people, who build the extraordinary pages 132-33
ancestral houses they call tongkonan, the form of which, some >Korowai Tree House,
claim, dates back to Neolithic times. pages 160-61
The basic house is made of wood planking, assembled in tongue-
and-groove formation without nails, which sits on solid, tree-trunk
pilings, high enough to safeguard against rodents and snakes. This
construction is topped by an outsize and outlandish saddleback roof,
covered in thatch or, in modern times, with corrugated iron or zinc.
The roof is constructed of an under-roof section of bamboo poles, tied
to the rafters, over which are put overlapping layers of bamboo staves,
tied together with rattan. In some cases, the roof extends so far that a
giant post is necessary to support its extremity.
There is a great deal of speculation as to how this style developed.
One view is that tongkonan symbolize and are shaped like the boats
in which the Toraja people emigrated from Cambodia; others claim
that it was boat-building-technology, rather than symbolism, that
drove the design of the sail-like roof. Others claim the roof shape is
based on that of a buffalo’s horn, an animal that the Toraja worship
and consider a symbol of fertility and strength. They decorate the
gables of their houses with these horns as a mark of status.
In contrast to the dramatic facade, the interior of the house is
quite simple, usually consisting of three rooms—a living area,
kitchen, and sleeping quarters. The cooking is done in a large fire
pit, the smoke from which blackens the inside due to the absence of
a chimney. Both exterior and interior are highly decorated with
patterns and symbols related to the worship of ancestors in both
MATERIALS
carvings and paintings. In a village, these houses are arranged in a
row facing north, in hierarchical order, each opposite a rice barn, *Wood planking for
main structure and
which is built in a similar manner.
tree-trunk pilings
* Bamboo poles and
Sulawesi, one of the Sunda
staves, tied with
Islands of Indonesia, is the
rattan, for the
eleventh-largest island in the
under-roof area
world. Its population of fourteen * Thatch, stone tiles,
million people has been troubled wood shingles
in recent years by bombings or corrugated
SULAWESI. and violent riots between iron or zinc for
INDONESIA
Muslims and Christians. saddleback roof
158
TORAJATONGKONAN
HOUSE OF ORIGIN
The “house of origin” is the
cultural focus for the Toraja-.
its name, tongkonan, derives
from the Toja word meaning “to
sit,” which reflects its purpose.
It is a place where family
members meet to take part in
ceremonies or discuss important
affairs. It consists of three basic
elements: the wood piles, on
which sits a log-cabin-type
structure, topped by a thatched
saddleback roof.
CONSTRUCTION
Constructing a tongkonan is a
time-consuming and complex
business, requiring skilled
craftsmen. The pilings and the
framework of the cabin are
fabricated separately and taken
Roof constructed
to the building site for final from overlapping
assembly. Here, the roof is under layers of bamboo
construction, its dramatic gables staves
supported by bamboo scaffolding.
ROOF SUPPORT
This underside view of the flaring
roof shows the giant post support
decorated with buffalo horns,
symbolizing the Toraja’s sacred
animal. The highly decorated
facade is incised with geometric
designs and classic motifs of
cockerels and buffalo heads. In
accordance with the Toraja’s strict
hierarchical society, the decoration
used must be appropriate to the
owner’s social station.
159
KOROWAI TREE HOUSE
The Korowai—one of the few tree-house-dwelling peoples left in the SEE ALSO
world—live in the remote rain forests of Irian Jaya (now West Papua, > Toraja Tongkonan,
an independent province of Indonesia since 2003). They were first pages 158-59
seen by the outside world on October 4, 1978, and initial contact was > Paisa House,
made only in the 1980s. Their current population is estimated at pages 146-47
2,500. The Korowai are a people defined by their collective language > Ganvie Stilt Village,
(koluf-aup) and are organized in tight-knit clans; they live in small pages 108-9
family groups and survive as hunter-gatherers.
Their staple foods are bananas and sago—the starchy pith of the
sago palm—which is made into pancakes; the main ritual of their
community life is the sago grub feast. This is supplemented by the
domestic pigs that the women raise and the wild pigs and cassowaries
that the men hunt. Both men and women fish. They also eat snakes,
insects, forest fruits, and leaves.
Their tree houses are a practical response to their environment,
because they live in an area of about 232 square miles (600 sq km)
of low-lying swampy land between two major rivers that are prone
to flooding. They are also built for security. There are some 250
indigenous tribes in the region, and intertribal warfare is rife; head¬
hunting raids by rival tribes have been common. The Korowai also
believe the tree houses protect them from demons.
The Korowai build most of their tree houses 26^40 feet (8-12 m)
above the ground; some tree houses as high as 148 feet (45 m) have
been recorded. These elegant structures, usually built two or three
together in a clearing, are strong enough to house a family often with
their possessions and animals. They can also last for about five years
with very little maintenance.
Recent years have seen dramatic changes for the Korowai,
because many of them have been forced by the Indonesian
government to move to mixed-clan communities and live in kampong
stilt houses no more than 7 feet (2 m) above the ground.
MATERIALS
Papua, the largest province of

*Wood spars for the
Indonesia, comprises most of
floor base, covered
the western half of the island of
with bark
New Guinea and nearby islands. *Sago palm provides
shafts for wall
frames and rafters
and leaves for the
thatch
160
KOROWAI TREE HOUSE
Sago palm leaves for thatch
CONSTRUCTION
Once a suitably large wamboon
or banyan tree has been selected,
construction begins with the
floor base, which is made of
tightly packed wood spars
covered with the bark of the
nibong or dal tree, supported
by four to ten poles held firmly
in the ground and tied together
with rattan. The sago palm
provides shafts for the wall
frames and roof rafters, and Notched
leaves for the thatch on the long, pole
winged roof. Access is gained
by climbing up a notched pole.
The entire structure is built using
only stone axes and bone knives.
HIGH-LEVEL
TREE HOUSE
The height at which the Korowai
build their houses is related to the
level of threat they feel from rival
clans; when tension is lower, they
feel safe enough to build closer to
the ground. The effort involved in
building a high-level tree house
must be considerable; the
access, via a set of vertiginous
rudimentary ladders, is also
designed, the Korowai claim,
to prevent “sorcerers" from
climbing the stairs.
161
ABELAM SPIRIT HOUSE
Dramatic "spirit houses" can be found throughout the Sepik River SEE ALSO
area, which stretches far inland from the northern coast of east > Rendille Min,
Papua New Guinea. Of the many different tribal groups in the area, pages 112-13
the most enthusiastic spirit house builders are the forty-two thousand > Tzotzil Chukal Na,
Abelam people, who live in mountainous land, mainly covered by pages 140-41
tropical forests, in the Maprik district of East Sepik province. The > Yanomami Shabano,
Abelam villages are dominated by these dramatic A-frame buildings, pages 144-45
with their apexed roofs and elaborately painted facades. Measuring
up to 100 feet (30.5 m) in length, with 60-foot (18.2-m)-high
facades, these ceremonial houses are the central site of tribal life.
The Abelam call these houses korambos, consider them to be
the dwelling place of their ancestors, spirits, and gods, and use them
for male initiation ceremonies. They are aligned in relation to the
daily course of the sun. Ethnographer Anthony Forge, who lived
among the Abelam for two years in the early 1960s, counted more
than one hundred spirit houses within a 5-mile (8-km) radius of his
base village. He also recorded that the Abelam's neighbors built
fifteen in just one six-month ceremonial period.
Korambos are elaborately adorned on the inside with wood
carvings and sculptures, and on the facade with intricate patterns
painted in bright colors. The various images that adorn the building
have complex associations with the sacredness of the human body
(eyes, navels, breasts), with animals, such as flying foxes and fireflies
(believed to be the spirits of ancestors), and with the cult of the yam,
which symbolizes nourishment and fertility. Regular yams are the
staple food of the Abelam, but long ceremonial yams are grown in
secluded gardens by the so-called Big Men of the village and are
used in rituals and exchanges with rival Big Men.
MATERIALS
East Sepik, a province of Papua * Bamboo poles for
New Guinea, covers an area of main structure,
about 16,525 square miles tied with rattan
(42,800 sq km). The Sepik River
is one of the largest rivers in the *Sago palm ribs
world in terms of water flow. for the entrance
*Sago palm fronds
for thatch
162
ROM BALINESE KUREN TO MAORI MEETINGHOUSES
ABELAM SPIRIT HOUSE
Third chamber
Fourth chamber
First chamber
Second chamber
KORAMBO OR
SPIRIT HOUSE
Entrance
The elaborate facades of the
spirit houses are painted in
intricate patterns and in vivid
colors under the direction of a
master artist. Large and small
male faces and figures represent
clan ancestors. These are
connected by energetically
CROSS SECTION executed zigzag patterns.
The bamboo framework of the
To gain the power and magic korambo can be seen below.
needed to grow long yams, male
initiates undergo rituals, which
culminate in a “journey" through
the spirit house. They crawl Sloping ridge pole
through a low entrance into the
first narrow chamber, which
leads on to the second, Second layer of
bamboo poles is
containing a large wood figure. added over rafters
The large third chamber has
a 614-foot (2-m)-high figure
sitting in the center of a dark Framework of
bamboo rafters
space. In the fourth chamber, secured to ridge pole
men use sacred musical
instruments to provide the
“voice” of the spirit house.
163
ABORIGINAL SHELTER
In 1997, the most detailed study ever undertaken on Aboriginal SEE ALSO
architecture—Gunyah, Goondie& Wurley, by Australian anthropologist > Rendille Min,
Paul Memmott—was published. His findings have overturned the pages 112—13
notion that Aborigines lived only in makeshift huts or lean-tos—an > Ganvie Stilt Village,
argument used by European settlers to claim that Australia was terra pages 108-9
nullius, or empty land. It also debunked the stereotype of Aborigines >Sami Gamme
as mere “primitives"; in fact, they should be considered the world's and Goatte,
pages 48-49
first architects, because they displayed considerable ingenuity in
providing shelter and accommodation in a minimal manner— > Mongolian Ger,
pages 94-95
virtually no examples of which survive today.
> Plains Indian Tipi,
There are five hundred different Aboriginal peoples in Australia,
pages 126-27
each of which has its own language and territory and had its
own style of shelter. The technologies that were utilized in the
construction of these shelters would have included, says Memmott,
“thatching, grass plaiting, clay and mud plastering, excavated floors,
earth platforms, sand-weighted roofs, split cane ties, and the weaving
of foliage between wall rails." They served many different purposes
and varied with the seasons. Some were simple overnight shelters,
while others saw more permanent use. Their size, shape, and nature
varied depending on tribal traditions, the weather, and how many
people needed to be accommodated.
In the desert regions, when the weather was clement, simple
windbreaks were most common, providing protection from the sun
during the day and from the breezes at night. When the rains came,
domed huts with grass roofs were built. During the wet season in
various parts of northern Australia, roofed platform houses were
constructed. If the mosquitoes got too bad, igloolike domes, made of
a sapling frame and covered with paperbark, were built in order to
escape the insects’ unwelcome attention.
MATERIALS
* Round wood for

Tribal Aborigines still live a internal frame and
traditional life in remote support, along with
areas of northern, central, split cane ties
and western Australia.
* Clay and mud
plaster for walls
* Grasses and woven
foliage for roofing
164
ABORIGINAL SHELTER
DOMED HUT
This kind of domed hut, built
on a framework of lawyer cane
covered with blady grass, was
common in the rain forests of
tropical Queensland and northern
New South Wales. High enough
to stand up in, it was used
by families for extended periods
during the wet season.
PLATFORM SHELTER
Platform shelters, built as a living
and sleeping area during the rainy
season, featured a basic structure
of sapling poles, supporting a
wood platform some 6 feet (1.8 m)
above the ground, roofed with
curved sheets of eucalyptus
bark. The sloping pole was
the only access. A smoky fire
underneath the shelter helped
keep mosquitoes at bay.
"HUMPY” SHELTER
This more tentlike form of shelter,
known as a “humpy,” is made of
a framework of sticks covered
with sheets of soft paperbark that
could easily be stripped from the
trees. The softness and flexibility
of the paperbark made it extremely
useful also for sleeping mats,
to line cradles, and as bandages.
Aborigines also used the leaves
of the tree for medicinal purposes,
chewing them in order to relieve C53
headaches.
165
MAORI MEETINGHOUSE
Meetinghouses, which can be seen throughout New Zealand’s North SEE ALSO
Island, evolved from the pre-European sleeping houses of the Maori > Haida Plank House,
chiefs and came into their own from 1870 onward as a way of pages 124-25
reasserting Maori culture in reaction to colonization. In addition,
according to the anthropologist Alfred Gell, this was a period when,
unable to compete through traditional warlike means, Maoris focused
their competitive spirit “on the construction of large, elaborately
carved and painted meetinghouses, each Maori community trying ...
to outdo its neighbors and rivals." Other authorities suggest that these
buildings replaced the war canoe as a focus of group pride.
The two main types of meetinghouse—which are known as
whare nui (big house) and whare whakairo (carved and decorated
house)—both follow the same common ground plan. The size and
amount of ornamentation on the house say something about the
mana (prestige) of the extended family or tribe that built it. The
meetinghouse sits within a compound (marea), alongside other
buildings, facing an open space that is used for Maori ceremonies.
Each meetinghouse is hot onjy named after an ancestor, but the
building itself represents the body of the ancestor as well. The figure
or mask (koruru) at the junction of the eaves of the veranda
represents his face, the porch his brain (roro), the front window his
eye (mataaho). The bargeboards (maihi) that make up the eaves are
his arms, held out in welcome, and usually tipped with fingers
(raparapa). The interior of the meetinghouse is his chest (poho), the
ridge pole (taahuhu) his spine, and the rafters (heke) his ribs.
Further ancestors are depicted in the wall carvings; in modern MATERIALS
meetinghouses, photographs of recent ancestors adorn the walls in * Lumber for the wood
their stead. Meetinghouses have been constantly adapted to suit the framework
needs of succeeding generations and new ones continue to be built, * Wood clabboard
providing a focus for modern-day Maori culture. siding for the
outside walls and
the deep porch
with its carved
framework
According to the latest theories,
it is now believed Maoris arrived * Carved wood panels
in New Zealand a thousand and panels woven
years ago. from flax and reeds
for internal walls
* Thatch and
corrugated iron
for roofs
166
MAORI MEETINGHOUSE
MEETINGHOUSE
The meetinghouse is a structure
that has evolved from earlier
chiefs’ houses into a communal
building for a whanau (extended
family group) or hapu (subtribe)
to gather in. It is a large
A tekoteko, a
rectangular building, ranging carved human figure,
in length at 40-98 feet representing the ancestor
(12-30 m), typically with a of the house, whose
threatening character
gabled corrugated iron roof, deters enemies
walls of wood clapboard siding,
and a deep porch fronted by an
elaborately carved framework.
Ridge pole
Bargeboards
Corrugated iron roof,
formerly thatched
INTERIOR
In the one large space inside,
there are two significant carved
posts that support the ridge pole,
which represent Tane (Life Giver)
and HinenuitepoiDeath). The
walls have alternating wood
carved panels and patterned
panels woven by the women from
flax and reeds in geometric
designs. The rafters are painted
with elaborate patterns in black,
red, and white.
167
REN
SAMOAN FALE TELE
The fale tele or "round house” is found only on the islands of Samoa SEE ALSO
and was traditionally used as a meetinghouse. The fale is one of the >Ganvie Stilt Village,
most elegant and airy of all vernacular structures. John Chariot, in pages 108-9
Esthetics of the Samoan Fale, writes: "The fale has the still, perfect > Balinese Kuren,
beauty of a round Japanese lantern, a globe lamp, or a soap bubble. pages 154-55
But it has also a monumentality that, combined with its lightness, > Kalinga
makes it unique in the history of art.” Octagonal House,
pages 156-57
The unusual construction aspect of the fale tele is that it is totally
supported by the wood columns in the center, in a similar way to an > Aboriginal Shelter,
pages 164-65
umbrella, rather than by the posts that ring the outside. It is also
produced without using a single nail, relying instead on bindings of
coconut fiber (afa), of which an estimated 39,370 feet (12,000 m)
are required for an ordinary native house.
The fale’s sides are open to the elements, but blinds made
from woven palm leaves are used to close them off when necessary.
The floors of the fale are covered with crushed coral, overlain with
woven palm mats. The building of a fale tele was a matter of great
ceremony, and was carried out only by a member of the Samoan
guild of builders (tufunga), who used no plans, but solely relied on
his judgment and experience. Other forms of fale include Fa/e O'o,
"Small House,” and fale folau, or "Long House,” used as a residential
guesthouse and for meetings of the family. Small beach fales for
tourists are now a common sight on the Samoan islands; similar
structures would traditionally be used as food stores or for cooking.
Most low-income Samoans still live in villages in traditional fales,
some of which may have a concrete floor, corrugated-iron roof, and
latticework walls. When Samoa was hit by two major cyclones in 1990
MATERIALS
and 1991—the worst in the islands' recorded history—the fales, with
their open sides, stood up better than more modern housing.
* Wood for posts
and columns
* Stone for additional
protection
* Sugar cane or palm
The archipelago of the Samoan leaves for thatch
islands covers an area of about * Coconut fiber
1,170 square miles (3,030 sq for binding
km) of the central South Pacific.
*Palm leaves
for blinds
* Coral or pebbles
for flooring
168
SAMOAN FALE TELE
SUPPORT
The building of a fale tele begins
with three main columns
supporting a small ridge pole.
The columns are initially held
up by scaffolding, on which is
fastened the lightweight main
Scaffolding
arc of the roof.
One of the two - Main arc

curved ends of
FRAMEWORK the roof in place
Next, the two curved ends of the
roof are attached, supported by
further scaffolding, and the ring Scaffolding
of outer posts is put in place.
Three different kinds and
thicknesses of wood are used
in the construction process for
posts, rafters, and purlins.
Ring of outer posts
ROOF
The thatched domed roof, which
is supported in the center, sits on
the outer posts, which steady it
and hold it down. The thatch is
produced by the women, using
sugar cane leaves or palm fronds,
overlapped to provide a double
coating. The completed building
is ringed by stones, which add
solidity and keep insects at bay;
the size of the stone base is also
indicative of status.
169
MODERN VERNACULAR
ARCHITECTURE
By far the most numerous vernacular buildings of the modern
age are the ad hoc constructions of the millions of urban
squatters living in city environments across the developing
world. In the West, the pressure is on to develop forms and
styles of building in tune with the environment, which are
energy and water efficient, made of low-carbon and nontoxic
materials. Earthships use waste tires filled with rammed
earth for walls, and there is a long tradition of buildings made
from bottles. Virtually all the material for Ben Law’s Woodland
House in West Sussex, England, came from the wood itself
or from the surrounding area. The interest in reviving old
vernacular building skills is illustrated with the cob revival
and an African construction scheme to build vaulted roofs
without using wood supports.
j'lp FB~
i ■ ;
vs&s
mum
A U>
MODERN VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE
BRAZILIAN SQUATTER SETTLEMENTS
More than half of the world's population now lives in cities, and this SEE ALSO
is expected to rise to sixty percent in the next twenty years. Urban > Indian and Filipino
growth is most rapid in the developing world, with some cities gaining Squatter
Settlements,
five million new residents every month. By 2050, the urban
pages 174-75
population of the developing world will be 5.3 billion, of which sixty-
>Ganvie Stilt Village,
three percent will be in Asia and nearly a quarter in Africa.
pages 108-9
One out of every three people in cities of the developing world
lives in deprived and unplanned squatter settlements (also referred
to as “informal settlements” or "slums”). UN-HABITAT estimates
show that in 2005 more than half of the world's “slum” population
resided in Asia, followed by sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and
the Caribbean. According to their report, “State of the World’s Cities
2008/2009,” "In many parts of the world, these ‘invisible,’ unplanned
parts of cities are growing faster than the more visible, planned parts.
In some cities, slum dwellers constitute the majority of the urban
population ... while in others, slums are small pockets of deprivation
physically isolated from the rest of the city.” The UN measures the
degree of deprivation using the following criteria—lack of access to
improved water, lack of access to sanitation, nondurable housing,
insufficient living area, and security of tenure. Some settlements
provide better living conditions than others.
Wherever they are in the world, such settlements share similar
characteristics. They arise and grow spontaneously as people pour
in from rural areas to try to earn a living in the city and start illegally
constructing makeshift shelters, largely built from scrap materials
and urban waste. Here, dense populations live in conditions of great
poverty without any basic water supplies, sewage drainage, or power
supplies. They also live with the constant threat of eviction and the
demolition of their homes; a favorite tactic of city authorities is to
periodically move in and just flatten them. Despite these problems, MATERIALS
many such settlements create strong communities that thrive. * Scrap lumber for
walls and wood
stilts
Rio de Janeiro is the second- * Corrugated iron for
largest city of Brazil and South walls and roofs
America. It was the capital of
Brazil until 1960, when Brazilia * Urban waste
took its place. * Masonry
* Concrete pillars
* Concrete tiles
172
BRAZILIAN SQUATTER SETTLEMENTS
FAVELAS
Among the oldest of squatter
settlements and the best-known
are the favelas of Rio de Janeiro.
Today, one-quarter of the city’s
urban population—about 2.5
million people—live in more
than seven hundred favelas, and
their number is growing at an
annual rate of 7.5 percent.
People who live there are known
as favelados. The vast, chaotic,
and changing face of the favelas
is made up of thousands of
similar fragile shacks on stilts,
many of which are built on
slopes that have an eighty
percent gradient or more. This
style of building has a practical
purpose, and has evolved to cope
with the heavy summer rains of
the region. The shacks survive
because the water, which washes
away many conventionally built
structures, simply forks around
the stilts, leaving the shacks
intact. New favelados first
establish their claim by building
a small, lightweight, makeshift
one-room shack out of scrap
materials and urban waste,
which sits on a floor of wood
boards, supported by stilts
firmly anchored in the rock bed.
In the next stage, the favelados
gradually extend their shack by
building covered verandas around
it. They then replace all the
scavenged materials with more
durable ones: wood stilts become
concrete pillars, makeshift walls
are replaced by masonry,
ramshackle roofing by concrete
tiles. In a final step, the facade
is decorated with ornamentation
and painted in a color that
reflects the favelados' place
of origin.
173
INDIAN AND FILIPINO
SQUATTER SETTLEMENTS SEE ALSO
> Brazilian Squatter
The most famous squatter settlement in the world, mainly as a result Settlements,
of it being used as the location for the Oscar-winning movie Slumdog pages 172-73
Millionaire, is Dharavi, Asia’s largest slum, on the edge of the city of
Mumbai in India. Here, an estimated six hundred thousand to one
million people are crammed into its 430 acres (174 hectares). This
density creates huge practical problems—a single toilet may be
shared by several hundred people, and the area is wracked by
waterborne diseases—but, says U.S. reporter Bill Dureya, ”it is also
the engine of its vitality,” because more or less every building doubles
up as both a residence and a business premises. Economists have
estimated that Dharavi's fifteen thousand single-room industries
annually generate goods that are worth more than $700 million.
More than nineteen million people live in the rapidly expanding
city of Mumbai, and the land on which Dharavi sits is a prime site for
redevelopment. But the inhabitants of Dharavi have resisted many
attempts by successive governments to move them into modern
high-rise buildings with better facilities. Despite the hazards and
problems of living in such an environment, they don’t like the idea of
having to pay extra to live in one place and work in another.
Meanwhile, in the Philippines, a five-year survey has been made
of the architecture of informal settlements in Manila, resulting in a
book titled The Evolution of Informality as a Dominant Pattern in
Philippine Cities. The thinking behind it was that the solutions to
dealing with Manila’s numerous urban problems were more likely
to come from observations of the squatter settlements rather than
from the thinking of Manila’s elite. Photographer Neal Oshima, who
documented these communities for the survey, says, “I wonder if
these [communities] aren’t an optimistic glimmer of the future of the
human species on earth.”
MATERIALS
INDIA THE PHILIPPINES Manila is ranked as
the city with the ★ Scrap lumber
second-highest ★ Scrap metal roofs
population density
in the world. ★ Urban waste
Mumbai is ranked ★ Masonry
seventh highest.
★ Concrete
174
INDIAN AND FILIPINO SQUATTER SETTLEMENTS
DHARAVI
The inhabitants of Dharavi live
mainly in ramshackle two-story
buildings of brick, concrete, and
scrap lumber with metal roofs,
all parts of which are slightly
askew. Bill Dureya says the
experience of walking through
Dharavi's narrow alleyways is
like “navigating a city after a
mild earthquake." Yet in 2009,
Prince Charles complimented
Dharavi for its “underlying,
intuitive grammar of design”
and the “timeless quality and
resilience of vernacular
settlements,” The residents
of Dharavi have created their
own world the way they want
it to be, largely unfettered by
controls and regulations. It has
grown informally and constantly
changes to suit people's needs,
rather than to conform with
governmental plans.
MANILA
This is a multistory dwelling
in Pineda, Metro Manila, in the
Philippines. Photographer Neil
Oshima found that most of the
squatters in Manila, living in
their flimsy dwellings made of
discarded materials, were there by
choice, despite the poor sanitation,
lack of basic facilities, and the
risks of flash fires and the threat
of violent eviction. He says, ‘the
architectural solutions were often
surprising in their use of materials
and space, often redefining the
limits of human habitation.”
175
EARTHSHIPS
The earthship is a form of architecture that embraces elements of SEE ALSO
both the vernacular and technological, and points the way toward > Indian and Filipino
a sustainable future. It is a vernacular response to an era of mass Squatter
Settlements,
production and consumerism. Its creator, Mike Reynolds, calls his
pages 174-75
work “biotecture”—aimed at creating buildings that are in tune with
> Bottle Buildings,
the natural world. An earthship is a passive solar home made out of
pages 178-79
recycled and natural materials. It gets its power from the sun and
wind, and contains and reuses its own waste water. They are energy
efficient and have a low-carbon footprint.
Reynolds, whose work has become internationally recognized
through the documentary film Garbage Warrior, began developing
the Earthship concept in the 1970s. He settled on the rammed-earth
tire concept because the basic building block of this new structure
as scrap tires are ubiquitous, available locally to all, and this method
of converting them into a building material is simple and affordable.
One of the basic principles of Reynold’s Earthship Biotecture
thinking is that “A sustainable home must make use of indigenous
materials, those occurring naturally in the local area. For thousands
and thousands of years, housing was built from found materials such
as rock, earth, reeds, and logs. Today, there are mountains of
by-products of our civilization that are already made and delivered to
all areas. These are the natural resources of the modern humanity.”
The earthship gets most of its power from solar panels and a wind
rotor. The roof is designed to capture rainwater and snow melt, which
are then channeled through silt catches into cisterns. This water is
then used and reused several times—for drinking water, for bathing
and washing dishes, and for the flush toilet. Water from sinks and the
shower can also be channelled into what Reynolds calls "earthship
wetlands”—planters that can be used to grow fresh produce
throughout the year.
Earthships are spreading around the MATERIALS

world. They already exist in Europe,
Canada, twenty-five U.S. states, * Recycled steel-belt
the Caribbean, Brazil, and Nicaragua, car tires, filled with
as well as in Australia and New Zealand. earth for walls
* Recycled bottles
and cans cemented
AUSTRALIA AND
to make interior
NEW ZEALAND
walls
176
EARTHSHIPS
Wall of recycled tires

ready to receive
exterior render
RECYCLED TIRES
The main building blocks of
an earthship are recycled steel-
belt rubber car tires, which are
rammed full of earth and used
as “bricks" to form the walls of
the house. These bricks and the
resulting bearing walls they
form are virtually indestructible
and fireproof.
Walls made of recycled materials reflect

the organic lines of the interior space
INTERNAL WALLS
The earthship’s internal walls are
created using aluminum cans
and glass/plastic bottles set in
a cement matrix. Both internal
and external walls can be shaped
to suit the builder’s requirements.
COMPLETED EARTHSHIP
An example of a finished
earthship. The basic principles
of earthship construction can be
adapted and customized to suit
a wide variety of climates and
individual living styles, and have
been built around the world.
Earthship structures have also
been used in disaster relief.
177
BOTTLE BUILDINGS
The poorest peoples of the world have been building houses out of SEE ALSO
scrap and garbage as a matter of survival for many years, but in the > Earthships,
Western world it was in the 1960s and 1970s that these ideas really pages 176-77
began to percolate into modern architectural thought. One of the
seminal steps in this regard came in 1963 with the Heineken “World
Bottle" (WOBO), an idea inspired by a journey that beer brewer
Alfred Heineken made to the Caribbean, where he observed beaches
littered with bottles in a society that had a shortage of affordable
building materials. On his return, in collaboration with the Dutch
architect John Habraken, he devised “the brick that holds beer.”
One production run produced one hundred thousand bottles,
which were used to build a small shed on Heineken's estate in the
Netherlands, but the idea then stalled. Interest was later revived by its
inclusion in the seminal book Garbage Housing by Martin Pawley,
which argued that designing consumer items that, once discarded,
could have another use would help address the world’s housing crisis.
Bottle houses and structures can now be found in many parts of
the world. In the United States, one of the most famous bottle houses
is the three-room L-shaped Bottle House built in six months in 1905
by seventy-six-year-old saloon owner Tom Kelly in Rhyolite, Nevada,
out of fifty-one thousand beer, whiskey, soda, and medicine bottles
and adobe. Once a thriving gold-mining center, Rhyolite has now
become a ghost town, where Kelly’s Bottle House is one of the last
buildings standing.
The most impressive bottle structure in the world was built by
Buddhist monks from Thailand’s Sisaket province, about 370 miles
(600 km) northeast of Bangkok. They collected one million bottles, a
mixture of green Heineken and brown local Chang beer, to build the
Wat Pa Maha Chedi Kaew temple and its associated buildings,
including the crematorium. Alfred Heineken would be delighted.
NORTH AMERICA THAILAND Bottle houses are

found in numerous
countries of the
world. Many in the
United States are
well-known tourist
MATERIALS
attractions. Bottle
walls are part of * Bottles
many eco-houses.
* Mortar
178
BOTTLE BUILDINGS
BOTTLE WALL
A wall of Heineken World Bottles
(WOBO)—“the brick that holds
beer.” The WOBO came in
13M-inch (350-mm) and 20-inch
(500-mm) versions and was
designed to lie horizontally
and interlock in a fashion that
echoed traditional brick-and-
mortar construction.
Horizontally laid bottles cemented to form walls
KELLY’S BOTTLE HOUSE

Kelly’s Bottle House in Rhyolite,
Nevada, was built in 1905 out
of bottles because lumber was
scarce at the time. The bottle
house was restored and reroofed
by Paramount Pictures in 1925
for a movie and was then given
to the Beatty Improvement
Association for maintenance
as an historical site.
Bottles arranged as tiles to form roof covering
BEER-BOTTLE TEMPLE
The Wat Pa Maha Chedi Kaew
temple In Thailand must be the
world’s most unusual bottle
building. Here are depicted
the main building, a detail
of the roof, and a close-up
view, which shows how a
wall of bottles is constructed.
Bottles bonded to form walls, set in square-form pattern
179
NATURAL BUILDING
In a small country like Britain, where land prices are at a premium SEE ALSO
and planning laws restrictive, building a modern vernacular building >Cruck-Frame
is filled with difficulties, even more so if it’s situated in a woodland. Buildings,
pages 52-53
Yet that is what permaculturalist and woodland owner Ben Law has
achieved with his Woodland House in Prickly Nut Wood, West
Sussex. He also captured the imagination of the nation when it was
featured on the television program Grand Designs.
The form of the house is an A-frame building of four cruck
roundwood frames made of sweet chestnut coppice with two roofed
verandas and decking on three sides. The whole structure sits on
stilts, which, like the traditional cruck frames, are set on foundations
of forty-two Yorkshire stone slabs.
The walls of the house are made of a “box’’ of two larch frames,
which are filled with small straw bales. The outside studwork frame
is finished with oak and chestnut clapboarding. In between this and
the straw is a breathable membrane to provide extra insulation and
waterproofing. The roof is made of larch joists with sweet chestnut
rafters, overlaid with a waterproof membrane and covered with ten
thousand wood shingles. The veranda roofs are covered with a man¬
made composite material, which is made of bitumen-saturated
organic fibers. The inside of the house is open plan, with just three
internal doors. The window frames are made of ash, the windows
double glazed; the floors are of larch and oak.
The house collects'and stores rainwater, pipes waste water out
into a series of reed beds for purification, has a compost toilet, and
is powered by an array of solar panels and three small wind turbines.
Heating is provided by an open fire, and hot water by a back boiler
behind a wood-fired range. This beautiful handmade building is
MATERIALS
virtually entirely constructed from local materials and was built with
* Cruck roundwood
the help of volunteer labor.
frames of chestnut
* Yorkshire stone
slabs
Britain has a rich historical * Larch frames filled

heritage of vernacular buildings, with straw bales
but land prices and planning * Oak and chestnut
laws make building them clapboarding
today difficult.
* Waterproof
membrane
* Wood roof shingles
180
NATURAL BUILDING
WOODLAND HOUSE
The completed Woodland House
has a strong connection with
traditional building that
reinforces the building’s
environmental integrity. This
is an example of a modern
vernacular design that really
does point the way to a more
sustainable future. In his book,
The Woodland House, Ben Law
says his house was designed
after ten years of observing and
getting to know the site he was
going to build in and the
requirements that the house
would need to serve.
Ridge board supporting rafters
WOOD FRAMEWORK
This interior view of the
Woodland House shows the
internal wood framework and
the underside of the roof with
its larch joists and sweet
chestnut rafters.
Wood framing supporting straw

Wattle-and-daub interior wall bales
INTERNAL WALLS
These views show the inside
of the straw-bale wall and the
internal plastering. The bales
are first splattered with a
coating of thick lime plaster,
which fireproofs them and keeps
away mice. This is then covered
with two layers of a mixture
of sharp sand and lime putty,
the first of which contains cow
and horse hair. The walls are
painted with lime wash using
natural pigments.
181
VERNACULAR REVIVALS
The revival of the cob house—a building with thick walls made of an SEE ALSO
earth-base material of clay, sand, gravel, and subsoil mixed with > Cob House,
straw and water—is happening in many parts of the world. This form pages 54-55
of house offers an attractive low-cost, low-impact, energy-efficient
alternative to conventional homes.
In Devon, England, where cob houses are a traditional vernacular
form, the revival began when local builder Kevin McCabe built the
first cob residence in the county since seventy years earlier. Another
notable project in Britain was Cobtun House in Warwickshire,
designed by Associated Architects, which in 2005 won the Royal
Institute of British Architects Sustainable Building of the Year Award.
The Oregon-base Cob Cottage Co. started North America's cob
revival, which has spread to British Columbia and points farther
east since the early 1990s, fueled by rising lumber costs and the
sustainable building trend. A Canadian showcase for the revival
of cob building is the One United Resource Ecovillage—a 25-acre
(10-hectare) sustainable community for forty people on Vancouver
Island—due to be completed by 2010.
In West Africa, the Voute Nubienne association is attempting
to tackle the problems of house building in the Sahel region by
introducing a simplified version of an ancient architectural technique,
traditionally used in Sudan and central Asia, that has been adapted
to provide protection during the short but heavy rain seasons of
sub-Saharan Africa. This technique of earth architecture, known as
la Voute Nubienne, or VN, makes it possible to build houses with
vaulted roofs without having to use wood shuttering as a support. It
uses basic, readily available local materials rather than imported
materials and lumber, and can be built using simple, easily learned
procedures. The vaults are built of good-quality earth bricks with
mortar made of the same earth.
UK AFRICA An estimated two

billion people
worldwide already live
in earth buildings.
Environmental
pressures are
MATERIALS
triggering a rise
in rammed-earth * Cob
construction.
* Earth bricks
182
VERNACULAR REVIVALS
MODERN DEVON
COB HOUSE
This is Keepel Gate, a two-story,
four-bedroom thatched cob house
built by Devon builder Kevin
McCabe. The house was
constructed using traditional
methods: the only exceptions
were that he used a tractor to
mix the cob and added sand
or shillet (a gravel of crushed
shale) to reduce the shrinkage.
PACIFIC NORTHWEST
STYLE
This is an example of a Pacific
Northwest-style cob house, a form
of building that is ideally suited
to what is called the "Wet Coast,”
provided the building has deep
overhangs and gutters to protect
the earthen walls as well as a
high, impervious foundation.
Like a ceramic flowerpot, cob
absorbs moisture in the air
without weakening, and releases
it again when it bakes in the sun.
Vaults built without

NUBIAN VAULT using wood supports Mud-brick construction
BUILDING
This lateral cross section of an
earthen building employs Nubian
vault technology. The wall on the
right shows the underlying
construction of mud or laterite
bricks; on the left, the wall is
covered with a final rendering
of mud or cement. The roof is
waterproofed using locally
manufactured plastic sheeting
covered with a rendering of
enriched mud mortar. Mud or cement rendering
183
GLOSSARY
Adobe Cross brace
An ancient term for ‘‘mud brick," dating back some A crossbeam used to span an arch, to provide
four thousand years to Middle Egypt. In modern English additional stability.
usage, the term also refers to a style of architecture
popular in the desert climates of North America. Cruck
An /l-shaped wood frame made by splitting a large tree
A-frame trunk or branch down the middle and fastening
A building constructed with steeply angled sides that the two halves (known as “blades”) together at the top
meet at the top in the shape of a letter A with a ‘‘collar’’ or tie beam, so that the curve on each
mirrors the other.
Bargeboard
A decorative board that covers the projecting rafter Dry-stone
of the gable end. A building method in which structures are built from
stones without the use of mortar or clay.
Box framing
Type of wood-frame structure where roof trusses Finial
are supported on a frame of posts, tie beams, and A sculptured ornament at the tip of a spire or gable.
wall plates.
Fired-earth brick
Clapboarding A molded, rectangular block of clay that is fired in a
The cladding of a building with long thin wood boards kiln and used as a building material.
that overlap each other, either vertically or horizontally.
Gable
Cob The triangular wall at the end of a pitched roof.
An earth-based building material consisting of
subsoil, clay, sand, and gravel, mixed with straw Gambrel
and water and used to build the walls of a house. A two-sided roof with a double slope on each side,
the lower part being steeper.
Composite
A complex material in which two or more distinct Girder
substances are combined to produce structural A beam made of steel, wood, or reinforced concrete,
or functional properties that are not present in any used as a main horizontal support in a building.
individual component.
Granary
Coppice A storehouse for threshed grain.
A grove, copse, or thicket of small trees, especially
ones that are regularly pruned to provide a ready Hip
supply of poles and firewood. A type of roof with no gables, where all sides of the
roof form a gentle slope to the walls.
Corbel
A piece of stone jutting out of a wall to provide Joist
additional support. In addition, a technique of building Parallel planks or beams that hold up the planks
with stone whereby each successive layer is angled of a floor or the laths of a ceiling.
slightly inward, thus creating a dome.
184
GLOSSARY
Lath Render
A thin strip of wood, nailed in rows to a supporting To cover a masonry surface with a first coat of plaster.
frame, that acts as a substructure for shingles,
slates, or tiles. Ridge beam/pole
The highest horizontal beam at the ridge of a roof
Load-bearing to which the rafters are attached; the horizontal pole
Structural elements, typically walls, that function at the top of a tent.
as support for roofs and floors.
Ring beam
Masonry A beam that runs around the base of a dome to prevent
Construction using stone, brick, or concrete. it from spreading.
Mortar Rubble
A masonry product composed of cement and sand. Rough stone, broken brick, and masonry, typically used
When water is mixed with mortar, its binding element, for infill and foundations.
the cement, is activated.
Shingle
Mortise and tenon A thin oblong piece of material, usually wood or slate,
A method of joining two pieces of wood whereby a that is laid in overlapping rows to cover the roof or the
projection (tenon) on the end of one piece of wood fits sides of a building.
into a corresponding slot (mortise) on the other.
Thatch
Palisade Plant stalks or foliage used for covering roofs,
A strong fence made of stakes or pales that forms including straw, reeds, palm fronds, heather, and
a defensive barrier or fortification. ferns, usually tied down with rope or braided straw.
Piling Tongue and groove

A column of wood, steel, or concrete that is driven into A joint made by a tongue on one edge of a board fitting
the ground to provide support for a structure. into a corresponding groove on another.
Planking Truss
A long flat piece of lumber that is thicker than a board; A rigid structural framework of wood that provides
laying, covering, or furnishing with planks. support-tor purlins.
Purlin Turf
One of several horizontal wood components supporting A section of grass-covered earth, cut out and used as
the rafters of a roof. a building material for covering walls and roofs from
ancient times. It provides insulation and is fireproof.
Rafter
A sloping beam that supports a pitched roof. Wattle and daub
A building material consisting of interwoven rods,
Rammed earth twigs, or laths, plastered with mud or clay; a form of
A method of construction whereby walls are built by wall construction or material used as infill between
compacting an earth mixture into a framework of the members of a wood-frame wall.
slats, called a "form," to create an earth brick.
185
RESOURCES
FURTHER READING The Mediterranean and Middle East
“Climatic responsive architecture in hot and dry
General regions of Iran,” A. A'zami, S.H. Yasrebi, A. Salehipoor
Atlas of Vernacular Architecture of the World, (International Conference “Passive and Low Energy
Marcel Vellinga, Paul Oliver, Alexander Bridge Cooling for the Built Environment,"'May 2005,
(Routledge, 2007) Santorini, Greece)
Built By Hand: Vernacular Buildings Around the World, La Tente Noire, C. G. Feilberg
Bill and Athena Steen, Eiko Komatsu; photos by Yoshio (Gyldendalske Boghandel Nordisk Forlag, 1944)
Komatsu (Gibbs Smith, 2003)
“Malta Troglodytica; Ghar il-Kbir,” A. Luttrell in
Dwellings, Paul Oliver (Phaidon 2003) Heritage, (Vol. 2,1979, pp. 461-4)
Earth Architecture, Ronald Rael

(Princeton Architectural Press, 2008)
Asia
China's Old Dwellings, Ronald G. Knapp
The Encyclopaedia of Vernacular Architecture, (University of Hawaii Press, 2000)
Editor Paul Oliver (Cambridge University Press, 1998)
Chinese Earth-Sheltered Dwellings: Indigenous
Home Work: Handbuilt Shelter, Lloyd Kahn Lessons for Modern Urban Design, Gideon S. Golany
(Shelter Publications, 2004) (University of Hawaii Press, 1992)
Shelter, Editor Lloyd Kahn (Shelter Publications, 1973)
The Complete Yurt Handbook, Paul King
Traditional Buildings, Allen G. Noble (I.B. Tauris, 2007) (Eco-Logic Books / Worldly Goods, 2001)
Vernacular Architecture in the Twenty-First Century Japanese Folkhouses, Norman F. Carver, Jr.
Lindsay Asquith, Marcel Vellinga (Taylor & Francis, (Documan Press Ltd., 1984)
2006)
Japan’s Folk Architecture, Chuji Kawashima
(Kodansha International, 1986)
Europe and Eurasia
Architecture In Wood: A World History, Steps to Water: The Ancient Stepwells of India,
Will Pryce (Thames & Hudson, 2005) Morna Livingston (Princeton Architectural Press, 2002)
The Changing World: The Lapps, Arthur Spence What is Japanese Architecture?: A Survey of Traditional
(David & Charles, 1978) Japanese Architecture, Kazuo Nishi, Kazuo Hozumi,
H. Mack Horton (Kodansha International, 1996)
Discovering Timber-Framed Buildings,
Richard Harris (Shire Publications, 1993)
Sub-Saharan Africa
The Dutch Windmill, Frederick Stokhuyzen
(C.A.J. van Dishoeck-Bussum-Holland, 1962) After Kinship, Janet Carsten
(Cambridge University Press, 2004)
"House Traditions in the Outer Hebrides: The Black
House and the Beehive Hut,” Werner Kissling in Man, The Anatomy of Architecture, Suzanne Preston Blier
(Vol. 44, Nov-Dec. 1944, pp. 134-140 / Royal (University of Chicago Press, 1994)
Anthropological Society of Great Britain) From Cameroon to Paris: Mousgoum In and
Russian Folk Art, Alison Hilton Out of Africa, Steven Nelson (University of Chicago
(Indiana University Press, 1995) Press, 2007)
The Wooden Churches of Eastern Europe: “Indlu: the domed dwelling of the Zulu,”
An Introductory Survey, David Buxton Barrie E. Biermann in Shelter in Africa,
(Cambridge University Press, 1981) Editor Paul Oliver (Barrie & Jenkins, 1971)
186
RESOURCES
“Lacustrine Villages in South Benin as Refuges from The Korowai of Irian Jaya: Their Language in Its
the Slave Trade,” Elisee Soumonni in Fighting the Cultural Context, Gerrit J. van Enk, Lourens de Vries
Slave Trade, Editor Sylviane A. Diouf (Oxford University Press, 1997)
(James Currey Publishers, 2003) Treehouses, Paul Henderson, Adam Mornement

“The Resurrection of the House amongst the (Frances Lincoln, 2005)
Zafimaniry,” Maurice Bloch in Material Culture:
Critical Concepts in the Social Sciences, Modern Vernacular Architecture
Victor Buchli (Taylor & Francis, 2004) The Woodland House, Ben Law
(2nd edition. Permanent Publications, 2009)
North America
Ancient Architecture of the Southwest,
William N. Morgan (University of Texas Press, 1994) WEB SITES
20 Amazingly Unique Architectural Designs of Houses
Classic Cracker: Florida’s Wood-Frame Vernacular
from Around the World
Architecture, Ronald W. Haase (Pineapple Press, 1992)
http://tinyurl.com/lsy5ze
The Indian Tipi: Its History, Construction, and Use,
Earth Architecture
Reginald Laubin (University of Oklahoma Press, 2001)
www.eartharchitecture.org
Kentucky Folk Architecture, William Lynwood
Green Home Building
Montell, Michael Lynn Morse (University of Kentucky
www.greenhomebuilding.com
Press, 1995)
The International Vernacular Architecture Unit
Native American Architecture, Peter Nabokov, www.brookes.ac.uk/schools/be/oisd/act/ivau/index.htm
Robert Easton (Oxford University Press, 1989)
Vernacular Architecture Forum
Tipi: Home of the Nomadic Buffalo Hunters, www.vernaculararchitectureforum.org
Paul Goble, Rodney Frey (World Wisdom Books, 2007)
Vernacular Designs
www.greatbuildings.com/architects/Vernacular.html
Latin America
Empire of the Senses: The Sensual Culture Reader,
David Howes (Berg Publishers, 2005) This book has drawn on the work of the following authors
in The Encylopedia of Vernacular Architecture.
Joseph L. Aranha, Dierdrie Brown, Tara Michele Cahn,
Australasia and Oceania Miles Danby, Philip Drew, Patrick Dujarric, Michael W.
Artistic Heritage in a Changing Pacific,
Earls, Andus Emge, Rosario Encarnacion-Tan, Fauzia
Editors Philip J. C. Dark, Roger G. Rose
Farneti, Lorenzo Fonseca, Gulliermo Vasquez De Velasco
(University of Hawaii Press, 1993)
De La Fuente, Anders Grum, Ingebjprg Hage, Lynne
The Continuum Encyclopedia of Native Art: Worldview, Hancock, John Raymond Harrison, Brigitta Hauser-
Symbolism, and Culture in Africa, Oceania, and Schaublin, Molly Lee, David Lung, Helen Mulligan,
North America, Hope B. Werness (Continuum William A. Noble, Tohru Ogawa, Paul Oliver, Anthony
International Publishing Group, 2000) Quiney, Gregory A. Reinhardt, Alberto Saldarriaga Roa,
Susan Roaf, David G. Saile, Reimar Schefold, Anastasie
Gunyah, Goondie & Wurley, Paul Memmott
Sulistyawati, Colin Taylor, William P. Thompson,
(University of Queensland Press, 2007)
Fernando Varanda, John Michael Vlach, Anthony G.
Introduction to Balinese Architecture, Vogt, James Walton, James P. Warfield, Stephen White.
Julian Davison (Periplus Editions, 1993)
187
INDEX
Batammaliba roundhouse 27, Chiapas, Mexico.- Tzotzil chukal na
A
110-11 31,140-41
A frame 184
Beach, Marco 98 Chiloe wood churches 14,150-51
Abelam spirit house 34,162-63
Alberobelio, Italy 22,70-71 Bedouin black tents 33,76-77 China
Aboriginal shelter 164-65 bee houses (ulnjaki) 66-67 tulou 42,92-93
adobe constructions 24,28, 82, Benin, West Africa yaodonglA, 90-91
136-37,184 Batammaliba roundhouse 27, chukal na 31,140-41
Africa, Sub-Saharan 54 110-11 churches, wood
Batammaliba roundhouse 27, stilt village, Ganvie 30,108-9 Chilob 14,150-51
110-11 binayon 156 European 10, 64-65
Ganvie stilt village 30,108-9 Black Houses, Hebridean 22, 50-51 clay buildings 24-29
Great Mosque of Djenne 27, black tents 33,76-77 cob houses 24,54-55,182,183,184
104-5 Blier, Suzanne Preston 110 Colombia: Paisa house 34,146-47
Mousgoum tolekll, 106-7 bottle buildings 39,178-79 coppice 184
Ndebele painted house 28, box framing 52,184 corbel 184
118-19 Boyko churches 64,65 cracker house 130,131
Rendille min 33,112-13 Brazilian squatter settlements Creighton, James H. 126
Voute Nubienne (VN) 182,183 172-73 crossbrace 184
Zafimaniry house 11,114-15 Britain cruck-frame buildings 9,52-53,
Zulu indlu 31,116-17 cob houses 24, 54-55,182,183 180-81,184
America see Latin America; North cruck-frame buildings 52-53,
America 180-81
Anasazi peoples 136,137 Hebridean Black Houses 22,50-51 D

Andalusia: cave houses 20, 72,73 Derinkuyu, Cappadocia, Turkey
Associated Architects: Cobtun 74,75
House, Warwickshire 182 c desert towns, Iranian 24,82-83
Australia: Aboriginal shelter 164-65 Cappadocian cave dwellings 18, Dharavi squatter settlement, India
72, 74-75 39,174,175
Caribbean chattel house 13,142-43 Djenne, Great Mosque of 27,104-5
B cave dwellings dry-stone 184
bahareque technique 146,147 Mediterranean 20,72-73 Dureya, Bill 174,175
Balinese kuren 14,154-55 Turkey 18,72, 74-75
Baluch, the 76 yaodongU, 90-91

bamboo 34-35,146 Chabra, Tarun 100 E
Barbados 142-43 Chariot, John 168 earth buildings 24-29
bargeboards 184 chattel houses 13,142-43 earthships 39,176-77
barns, North American 13,128-29 Chengqilou, China 93 Emeneau, M. B. 100
basket house {koshel) 16, 62 chiance (chiancarelle) 70
188
INDEX
Hancock, Massachusetts 128 J

F
Faegre, Torvald 76 hayracks (kozolecs) 10,66-67 jalousie shutters 143
Hebridean Black Houses 22, 50-51 Jan§i, Anton 66
fairy chimneys 18,74,75
fate tele 32,168-69 Heineken, Alfred 178 Japan
Henry VIII, King of England 52 machiya 11,45, 86,88-89
favelas 173
Hidalgo-Lopex, Oscar 146 mlnka 11, 86-87
finaryon 156
hip roof 184 noka 86
finial 184
hollow-post mills 14, 58, 59 joists 184
Finland 48,64
fired-earth brick 184 Hutsul churches 64,65 Junkichi, Mukai 86
Frobenius, Leo 110

Fujian tulouM, 92-93 I
Fuller, Buckminster 117 l-house 130,131 K
igloos 40,122-23 Kalinga octagonal house 156-57
India Kashan, Iran: “Borujerdis” House 83
Dharavi squatter settlement 39, Kaymakly, Turkey 74
G
174,175 Kelly, Tom: Bottle House 178,179
gable 184
stepped ponds and stepwells Kinffen, Fred 130
gambrel 184
21,98-99 Knapp, Ronald G. 90
gamme 48-49
Toda huts 35,100-1 korambos 34,162-63
Ganvid, Benin 30,108-9
indlu 31,116-17 Korowai tree house 32,160-61
gassho-zukuri minkaU, 87
Indonesia Aos/7e/ (basket house) 16,62
ger33, 94-95
Abelam spirit house 34,162-63 kozolecs (hayracks) 10,66-67
Germany: Hallenhaus house barns
Balinese kuren 14,154-55 Kurds 76
9, 56-57
Korowai treehouse 32,160-61 kuren 14,154-55
Gide, Andre 106
Samoan fale tele 32, 168-69
girder 184
Toraja tongkonan3b, 158-59
Go-ra dwelling 97
goatte 48-49
Inuit igloo 122-33 L
Iranian desert towns 24, 82-83 laths 184
Gokayama, Japan 86
Iraq: Marsh Arab reed houses 36, Latin America
Gossen, Gary 140
80-81 Caribbean chattel house 13,
granary 184
Italy 142-43
Grum, Anders 112
Sassi of Matera 20,72,73 Chilob wood churches 150-51
guadua bamboo 146
trullo stone houses 22,70-71 Paisa house 34,146-47
izba 16,62-63 Tzotzil chukal na 31,140-41
H Urus reed house 36,148-49
Habraken, John 178 Yanomami shabano30,144-45
Haida plank house 13,124-25 Law, Ben: Woodland House 180-81
Hallenhaus house barn 9, 56-57 Lee, Ann 134
189
INDEX
Lemko churches 10, 64, 65 N paper mills 58

Lhasa buildings 96-97 Native American tipi33,126-27 Papua, New Guinea: Abelam spirit
Livingstone, Morna 98 natural building 180-81 house 34,162-63
load-bearing structure 185 Ndebele painted house 28,118-19 Pawley, Martin: Garbage Housing
log cabins, North American 17,44, Nelson, Steven 106 178
132-33 Netherlands Philippines
Luttrel, A. T. 72 Halienhaus house barn 9, 56-57 Kalinga octagonal house 156-57
windmills 6,14, 58-61 Manila squatter settlement 174,
New Mexico: adobe house 28, 175

M 136-37 pilings 185
machiya 11,45, 86, 88-89 New Zealand: Maori meetinghouse Plains Indian tipi33,126-27
Maclennan, Donald John 50 14,166-67 plank houses 13,124-25
McCabe, Kevin: cob house 182,183 noka 86 planking 185
Madagascar: Zafimaniry house 11, North America 54 poles, posts, and covering 30-33
114-15 barns 13,128-29 post-and-truss system 56
Mali: Great Mosque of Djenne 27, cob houses 182, 183 post mills 58,59
104-5 cracker house 130,131 Pryce, Will 57
Manila squatter settlement 174, Haida plank house 13,124-25 pueblos 136
175 l-house 130,131 purlins 185
Maori meetinghouse 14,166-67 Inuit igloo 122-23
Marsh Arab reed houses 36,80-81 log cabins 17,44,132-33
masonry 185 New Mexican adobe house 28, Q
Memmott, Paul 164 136-37 Queen Charlotte Islands: Haida
min 33,112-13 Plains Indian tipi 33,126-27 plank houses 13,124-25
minka 11, 86-87 saltbox house 130,131
Mohr, Nancy L. 128 Shaker buildings 17,128,134-35
Mongolian ^er33, 94-95 Nubian vault technology 182,183 R
mortar 185 rafters 185
mortise-and-tenon joint 185 rammed earth 185
Mousgoum tolekll,106-7 0 recycled materials 38-39
mosques: Great Mosque of Djenne Oliver, Paul 42,109 reeds 36-37
27,104-5 Oshima, Neal 174,175 Marsh Arab reed house 36, 80-81
Mount Lebanon Shaker Village, New Urus reed house 36,148-49
Lebanon, New York 135 render 185
mudhifs 36, 81 P Rendille min 33,112-13
Pacific Northwest style 183 Reynolds, Mike 176-77
Paisa house 34,146-47 ridge beam/pole 185
palisade 185 ring beam 185
190
INDEX
Rio de Janeiro: favelas 173 T w

rubble 185 tepees see tipis Washington, George 128
Russia 48, 64 temples Wat Pa Maha Chedi Kaew Temple,
izba 16, 62-63 Tibetan 96,97 Thailand 39,178,179
Wat Pa Maha Chedi Kaew, wattle and daub 185
Thailand 39,178,179 weatherboarding 185
s tenon 185 West Papua: Korowai tree house
saltbox house 130,131 tents 33, 76-77 32,160-61
Sami, the: gamme/goatteM-AI Thailand: Wat Pa Maha Chedi Kaew wind catchers 82,83
Samoan faletele32,168-69 Temple 39,178,179 windmills 6,14,58-61
Sass/of Matera, Italy 20,72,73 thatch 185 wip mills 58, 59
sawmills 58 Tibet: Lhasa buildings 96-97 wood 9-17
Schadenberg, Alex 156 tipis 33,126-27
Scott, William Henry 156 Toda huts 35,100-1
shabano30,144-45 Togo: Batammaliba roundhouse 27, Y
Shaker buildings 17,128,134-35 110-11 Yadz, Iran 82,83
Shepherd, Roger 134 toiekZl, 106-7 Yanomami shabano 30,144-45
shingles 185 tongue and groove 185 yaoiongll, 90-91
Shirakawa-go, Japan 86 Toraja tongkonan 35,158-59 Yemen tower houses 28, 78-79
Slovenia tower houses, Yemen 28, 78-97 Yuruks 76
bee houses (ulnjaki) 66-67 tower windmills 60-61
hayracks (kozolecs) 10,66-67 tree houses 32,160-61
smock mills 58, 59 trullo stone houses 22,70-71 z
snow 40 truss 185 Zafimaniry house 11,114-15
sod 185 tulou 42,92-3 Zulu /Mu 31,116-17
Spain: Andalusian cave houses Turkey: cave dwellings 18,72,74-75
20, 72,73 Tzotzil chukalnail, 140-41
Spanish revival style 137
squatter settlements
Brazil 172-73 u
Dharavi, India 39,174,175 ulnjaki (bee house) 66-67
Manila, Philippines 174,175 Urus reed house 36,148-49
stepped ponds 21, 98,99
stepwells 21, 98, 99
stilt village, Ganvie, Benin 30,108-9 V
stone 18-23 Voute Nubienne, La (VN) 182,183
Sulawesi: Toraja tongkonanZb,
158-59
191
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
AUTHOR ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Making a book like this is the product of many minds and hands, and the author would
like to thank the following: consultant Anthony Reid for bringing his expert knowledge
and experience to bear on a book that has been enriched by his valuable contributions-,
illustrator Coral Mula for handling a complex task with great skill, her work adding
immeasurably to the value of this volume; Caroline Earle and Michael Whitehead, for
handling the book's production in such a scrupulous, professional, and positive manner;
to Jason Hook and Sophie Collins for giving me the opportunity to explore this fascinating
subject; and Sarah Clowes for making the valuable introductions that started me off on
this interesting journey.
PICTURE CREDITS
The publisher would like to thank the following individuals and organizations for their
kind permission to reproduce the images in this book. Every effort has been made to
acknowledge the pictures, however, we apologize if there are any unintentional omissions.
Alamy/Hemis: lib; Danita Delimont: 12; China Images: 25; GeoffMarshall: 32b; Images
of Africa Photobank: 33c; Stuart Forster India: 35b.
© Art in All of Us: /Anthony Asael: 26
Corbis: /Anders Rymam 32t; Albrecht G. Schaefer: 34t; Bo Zaunders: 34b; Nik Wheeler:
36t; Rungroj/epa: 37, 38.
Getty Images: /Peter Adams: front cover.
Fotolia:/Richard Majlinden 9b; Anatoly Repin: 10t; jpskenm lit; Jeff Gynane: 13t;
rolafoto: 14b; Michael Shake: 17t; Paco Ayala: 20b; Jeremy Richards: 21t; PixAchi: 22c;
Jan Reinke: 27c; Bernardo Ertl: 28t; travellingtwo: 33b; Fioreiino: 35t; MJPHOTO: 138-39.
iStockphotO: 7, 9t; Branko Habjam 10b; Phil Augustavo: 13b; Margo van Leeuwem 15;
Ariadne Van Zandbergem 16t; Rich Woodfim 17b; 20t; Ints Tomsons: 21b; Stephen
Finn: 22t; Mustafa Can: 24b; Ines Gesell: 27t; 27b; Cliff Parnell: 31t; Alberto L.
Pomares G.: 39t; Hilary Fox: 39b; Joseph Bergevin: 44; Nitin Sanil: 45r; Bruno
Buongiorno: 451; Sean Randall: 68-69; 84-85; Alan Tobey: 102-3; Jason Doucette:
120-21; MJPHOTO: 170-71.
Jupiter Images: 2, 8,11c, 14t, 14c, 16b, 16c, 181,18tr, 19, 22b, 23, 24t, 28b, 29,
30b, 33tl, 33tr, 36b, 40t, 40b, 41, 43,46-47,152-53.
Photolibrary: 30t.
©Jose V. Resino: 31b.
192
OHN MAY is a journalist who has been published in
umerous newspapers and international magazines.
Much of his work since the 1970s, which includes the official
istory of Greenpeace, has been devoted to environmental
and nuclear issues. John currently blogs at “The Generalist."
ANTHONY REID has been teaching and lecturing on

vernacular environment since 2001. His wide-ranging
research on vernacular architecture has taken him
around the world.
Also available from Rizzoli

1001 BUILDINGS YOU MUST SEE BEFORE YOU DIE
Edited by Mark Irving
ISBN: 978-0-7893-1564-9
HOWTO READ BUILDINGS

by Carol Davidson Cragoe
ISBN: 978-0-8478-3112-8
RUSTIC: COUNTRY HOUSES, RURAL DWELLINGS, WOODED RETREATS

by Bret Morgan
ISBN: 978-0-8478-3300-9
Published by
Rizzoli International Publications, Inc.
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New York, NY 10010
www.rizzoliusa.com
Printed in China
BUILDINGS WITHOUT ARCHITECTS _j
takes you on a journey around the world of vernacular architecture.
This information-packed, visual guide introduces the wealth of local
structures worldwide, accompanied by an expert narrative exploring
cultural approaches and key aspects of construction.
Profiles of each building feature beautiful single-tone illustrations,

including diagrams and cross-sections.
A stunning color gallery at the beginning of the book showcases

the traditional media used to construct these buildings.
A final chapter on modern vernacular architecture shows how this

fascinating area is of great contemporary relevance.
U.S. $22.50 CAN. $27.95
ISBN 978-0-8478-3361-0
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WITHOUT

Buildings Without Architects is a wonderfully

The variety and ingenuity of the world’s vernacular

Unlike modern buildings that rely on industrially

New York Paris London Milan

This book was conceived,

© 2010 Ivy Press Limited

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

Library of Congress Control Number: 2009936367

creative director Peter Bridgewater

Printed and bound in China

3 1223 09438 4733

FROM DUTCH WINDMILLS TO FROM THE PLAINS TIPI TO

provided a ready source of construction material for many kinds of vernacular

above The striking gable end

right Giant cruck frames—made

left This Slovenian hayrack,

right A fine example of an urban

right These beautiful hand¬

left A strikingly carved totem

RIGHT This unusual twelve-sided

left The imposing facade of

left A view of two of the many

right A large traditional hollow-

mngffi? ••••'• -v-v'

right An elegant wood building

LEFT, ABOVE, AND right Three views

right A Spanish cave house to

right The strange and wonderful

left, below, and right Three views

above This pretty pink thatched

left An overhead view of one

right The facade of a row

right The extraordinary earthen

RIGHT AND below The imposing

left A partial view of the adobe

right These remarkable tower

construction method is also used by nomadic peoples to create lightweight shelters

that can easily be erected and disassembled.

LEFT An aerial view of a

below One of the stilt houses

LEFT The distinctive four-sided

below This fale tele, a type

above RIGHT The Mongolian ger ls

center right The min, the

right Various forms of the

set to provide a valuable sustainable building resource for the future.

right The dramatic shape of the

right These paisa houses,

left The curved roof of the

above The impressive cathedral¬

RIGHT A reed builder cuts off

left A traditional rectangular

important trends in modern vernacular architecture. In the squatter cities of the

immigrants. In the West, increasing use of discarded materials is driven by new

imperatives to create low-energy, low-carbon buildings.

RIGHT Earthships are passive

left The Wat Pa Maha Chedi

as a temporary shelter for hunters and can be built in a matter of hours.