house form&culture

8/6/2019 House Form&Culture

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House Form and Culture

Tucson AZ, UA Student Union, March 4, 2008


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HOUSE FORM + CULTURE

Factors Impacting House Form

Climate

Materials, Construction, and Technology

Site

Defense

Economics

Religion

Cultural


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HOUSE FORM + CULTURE

Amos Rapoports Hypothesis:

House form is not simply the result of physical forces or any single causal

factor, but is the consequence of a whole range of socio-cultural factors seenin their broadest terms. Form is in turn modified by climatic conditions and bymethods of construction, materials available, and the technology. Rapoportnotes the socio-cultural forces as primaryand all other forces as secondaryormodifying.


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Lewis Mumford, Art and Technics:

Mumford argues that man was a symbol-making animal before he was a

tool-making animal...and furthermore that man reached specialization in myth,religion, and ritual before he did in material aspects of culture, and that ritualexactitude came before exactitude in work (or construction technique).


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Anasazi cave


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Cave paintings at Altamira


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Stonehenge, Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England (~2800bc)


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Cappadocia, Turkey cave dwellings + hillside housing


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Climate

Imperatives of climate as determinants of form for shelter


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Papago ceremonial arbor (ramada)


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Athabascan - summer hut


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Materials, Construction, and Technology

Evolution of form gives way to various materials and techniques available

i.e. the progressive development of the cave, to the circular hut, to therectangular hut in its various forms.


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Eskimo winter igloo


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Navajo Hogan


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Uru dwelling, Peru - reeds


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Marsh Arab dwellings, Iran - reeds


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Marsh Arab dwellings, Iran - reeds


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Arab tents - sticks + felt


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Mongolian yurt - sticks + felt


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Yagua dwelling, Amazon - wood + thatch


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Masai dwelling, Africa - wood + thatch


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Masai dwelling, Africa - wood + thatch (+ mud)


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Santorini, Greece - barrel vault roofs (stone...concrete)


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Site

Influence of site on house form hilly terrain, ecological determinism, lack ofland, etc.


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Navajo individual houses


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Pueblo clustered dwellings


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Hillside dwellings


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Defense

Tight settlement patterns as a form resulting from defense-needs


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Masai - connected house walls


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Mousgoum - wall connecting houses


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Economics

Exerts constraints on house development, but does not account for houseform


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Arab tent - Nomadic


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Native American teepee - Nomadic


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Gecekondu(illegally-built hillside dwellings), Ankara


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Jakarta squatters, Indonesia


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Religion

Antiphysical determinism (neglecting material factors) - attributes form ofhouses to religious or spiritual views and beliefs; orientation, plan and spatial

arrangements may be affected by religious beliefs; raised on stilts orunderground can also be attributed to religion


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Zulu - Africa


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Farmstead (Hogaku) - Japan


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Cultural

Socio-cultural forces may include religious beliefs, family and clan structure,social organization, way of gaining livelihood, and social relations between

individuals. Social organization may reflect the varying relationships betweenor varying needs of genders or different age-groups.


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Bowerbird


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Bowerbird


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Batammaliba, Africa - male joining wall


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Batammaliba, Africa - titatisacred ceremony


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Post-Industrial Culture in Housing


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Snout Houses


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Tract Mansions


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Mansion Subsidy


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Manufactured Housing


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Ramada House Judith Chafee

house form&culture

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