SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE – KMUTT
ARC 359 ENVIRONMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
HOUSE FORM AND CULTURE – PART 1
In 1968, Amos Rapaport published House Form and Culture. In it he relates the form that housing takes to the culture in which that housing is built.
HOUSE FORM AND CULTURE
Housing forms the bulk of the built environment and yet, as architects, we spend most of energy, enthusiasm and interest on the monumental. Part of the rationale for this neglect is that most housing is done without the aid of architects. It is, by some definitions, not architecture at all. It is folk architecture, primitive or vernacular architecture. Architecture that lacks the self-consciousness of the buildings of grand design. It is useful to look at the meaning of these terms.
Primitive – buildings that are produced by societies defined as primitive by anthropologists. It does not refer to the builder’s intentions or capabilities but rather to the society in which the building was built. In other words, the builders were using their resources (materials, technology, ability, intelligence) to their fullest. This knowledge base is diffuse. There is little specialization in building which means that everyone is capable of building his own dwelling, though is work is often undertaken cooperatively. Certain forms are taken for granted and there is a strong resistance to change. As a result there is a very close relationship between the forms and the culture in which they’re embedded
Vernacular – when building tradesmen are used for construction of most dwellings, we may arbitrarily say that primitive building gives way to preindustrial vernacular. Everyone in the society knows the building types and even how to build them. The expertise of the tradesman is a matter of degree. The peasant owner is still very much a participant in the design process, not merely a consumer. Participation tends to decrease with urbanization and greater specialization. In formal terms, there is more individual variability and differentiation in the form than there is in primitive buildings. There are additional determinants in addition to the traditional form. These include family requirements, size (depending on wealth), and relation to the site and microclimate. See description (pg. 5, Rapaport)
This example sums up the characteristics of vernacular building: lack of theoretical or aesthetic pretensions; working with the site and micro-climate; respect for other people and their houses and hence for the total environment (man-made as well as natural); and working within an idiom with variations within a given order. The range of expression is limited, but this, Rapaport says, is what makes any communication possible.
Another feature of vernacular is its open-ended quality, much different from the closed, final form of most high-style design. It can accept change more readily. Tradition, though, has the force of a law honored by everyone through collective assent. It works because there is a shared image of life, an accepted model for buildings, a small number of building types, and an accepted hierarchy and hence an accepted settlement pattern. When that tradition disappears, the regulator disappears. There can be no more reliance of accepted norms.
Why does the tradition disappear?
- Complexity – more building types
- Loss of shared values – another product of urbanization? Disappearance of that spirit of cooperation which makes people respect the rights of adjoining people and their buildings, and ultimately the rights of the settlement as a whole. Cooperation is replaced by controls – codes, regulations, and zoning. This is an important distinction between traditional and modern societies. In the former there are informal controls and consensus. In the latter there is impersonality and interdependent specialization. In the former there is a moral order, in the latter a technical order.
- Originality – our culture places a premium on originality, always looking for new forms and becoming dissatisfied with the traditional forms. “This dissatisfaction is often based on nonfunctional considerations and is linked to socio-cultural factors.”
Differentiation of Space
In primitive and peasant societies there is little differentiation in the use of space. “There is no separation among man’s life, work, and religion, and very little differentiation, if any, between the sacred and the profane. As spaces become more separated and differentiated, the number of types of spaces increases. (see examples, p. 9)
THEORIES OF HOUSE FORM
Climate and the need for shelter, materials and technology, site, economics, defense, religion. All of these theories tend to be simplistic and look for a single cause that determines house form.
Climate – this theory states that primitive man was primarily concerned with shelter and that climatic considerations determined the form that shelter would take. For example, some writers have said that the courtyard house is a southern form while the hearth is a northern one. But many forms of the house have been developed within the limited number of climatic zones.
There are many instances of anticlimatic solutions for housing. The Boro of Western Amazon (p21) – new attitudes towards privacy. Sometimes status is an overriding determinant. Southern Japanese house extended to the north where they gave up their thick-walled construction for the fragile houses of their southern conquerors.
In many areas relatively comfortable houses are replacing trad. Roofs with galvanized metal largely because of status, though from a climatic point of view it doesn’t work at all.
Materials, Construction, Technology – “For thousands of years wood and stone have determined the character of buildings.” The theory that forms develop as man learns to master more complex building techniques. However even within one culture housing may be primitive while ceremonial buildings are elaborate with sophisticated roof structures. Sometimes technology may be available but not used. “The Egyptians knew the vault [but] they rarely used it, and then only where it could not be seen, since it was at odds with their image or idea of the building.” (p24-5)
Sometimes social values take precedence over technological advances. Piped water vs. well water.
Of course wood and stone can be used to create may different kinds of structures, the form of which will be determined more by the culture than the material.
Site – the theory that topography can be a form determinant. E.g. the hill towns of Italy. Of course Feng shui considers many aspects of geography in determining the orientation and shape of a building. However a cosmological basis. Siting can take on mystical importance which can lead to persistence of sites because of their traditional nature.
The choice of a good site will depend on a cultural definition.
Sometimes the form will not change even though the topography has – the Latin American courtyard house.
Defense – this has been cited to account for tight urban patterns more than to explain the form of dwellings themselves. “the compact towns in the Greek islands have been attributed to the needs of defense, lack of money (so that the houses themselves had to form the city wall), lack of arable land and the need to conserve it, and the need for shading for climatic reasons. All of these undoubtedly played a part, which means that no single cause could be possible.
Defense is handled differently in the Cameroons (see pg 32)
Economics – scarcity of resources as a determining factor in house form. However, even under conditions of scarcity there are examples of herders living among agricultural people and continuing to refuse to accept that way of life. Some will build beyond their means. (34). Even where collaboration is used it is often not used for strictly economic reasons but socio-cultural ones.
There is an economic need to store, but even this will be done differently according to a number of variables. (p36)
Even mobility, strongly motivated by economic conditions (scarcity of resources), does not result in similarity of house form.
Religion – Some have taken the view that physical determinants are not nearly as important as symbolic and religious determinants. “the sacredness of the house”. The sacredness of the threshold and portal, and hence the separation of the sacred and profane realms, can be achieved through the use of numerous and varied forms. Is a stranger allowed in the house? Some places yes, others no. Shape of the house will vary according to understanding of the cosmos. North-south orientation, circular? (p41)
PHYSICAL DETERMINISM?
Rapaport claims that physical determinants provide possibilities not imperatives. It is man – not site or climate – that decides. Mumford suggests that “man was a symbol-making animal before he was a tool-making animal.” (42). The primitive world stressed moral order over technical order. As a result most activities are ceremonial in nature and it is a people’s ceremonial life that distinguishes them rather than their material life. (the importance of ceremonial buildings as represented by the allocation of resources. So there must be more determinants in house form than simply the physical.
SOCIO-CULTURAL FACTORS
The house is an institution not just a structure. Form is modified by the physical environment (making some things impossible and encouraging others) but the socio-cultural forces are primary and the physical are secondary. Solutions are much more varied than biological needs, technical devices, and climatic conditions.
The house the village and the town express the fact that societies share certain generally accepted goals and life values. They all have symbolic value, since symbols serve a culture by making concrete its ideas and feelings.
Genre de vie – a term used by Max Sorre to include all the cultural, spiritual, material, and social aspects which affect form. The socio-cultural component of that is the sum of concepts of culture, Ethos, world view, and national character. (p48)
The house then is the physical embodiment of the ideal environment. Education helps mould the ideal man, the family transmits and guards the ethos and forms the national character through the ideal man, religion defines the ethos.
The idea of the house as a social control mechanism, so strong in traditional cultures, may no longer apply with as much force in a society with formalized and institutionalized control systems. (49) Current constraints on design are those imposed by density and population, institutionalization of controls through codes, regulations, zoning, requirements of banks and other lending institutions, insurance companies, and planning bodies.
Religion – although it is not a deterministic force, it is certainly a factor. See particularly 51. Balinese? Sacred corners (54). Fig 3.3 This comes down to the scale of furniture having religious and cosmological significance.
Family structure – Figure 3.5, 3.6. How do we define the family?
There are many factors influencing the form of the house. The more forceful the physical constraints, and the more limited the technology and command of means, the less are nonmaterial aspects able to act. But they never cease to operate. There is a scale or set of scales that we could use here. A climatic scale ranging from very severe to very benign, an economic scale from bare subsistence to affluence, a technological scale from the barest to the most sophisticated, materials from a single local material to unlimited choice. Even where the constraints are the most severe, cultural factors are still operating.
The degree of freedom in choice can be understood through the concept of criticality.
Criticality – eg. in flight, a rocket has higher criticality than an airplane because it is more severely constrained by technical requirements. Slower airplanes have more freedom in design (lower criticality) than do jets. A pedestrian path has more freedom than an expressway. The degree of choice depends on the value system.
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