Lecture12 Living Spaces A Sr
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The document summarizes different types of traditional living spaces from around the world. It describes the vale houses of Fiji which have high-pitched roofs to withstand storms. The interior is divided into public and private zones. It also describes Tswana houses from Botswana which comprise several circular huts within a central enclosed yard, with different huts serving functions like sleeping, cooking, and storage. Floor plans and interior furnishings of the huts are also outlined. Key factors that influence dwelling forms like family structure, gender roles, and social interaction are discussed.
Lecture12 Living Spaces A Sr
- 1. Lecture 12 Living Spaces 1
- 2. Chapter 7 Living Spaces The way people live defines the dwelling form. A dwelling reflects the socio-cultural forces, including religious beliefs, family and clan structure, social organization, way of gaining livelihood, and social relation between individuals. The forms of primitive and vernacular buildings are less the result of individual desires that of the aims and desires of the unified group for an ideal environment. The factors that affect a dwelling space can be as below: 1. Basic needs 2. Family structure 3. Position of women 4. Privacy 5. Social interaction
- 3. Basic needs : Each social group has specific habits and the living space is formed accordingly. For example the Igloo dwellers accept strong smells of skins inside. Allowance and restriction of light into the house could be a reason in certain African tribes. Eating habits such as who eats first in the family or eating together, washing habits, purity and cleanliness, sitting type and sleeping habits will also change the way the living space is built.
- 4. Family Structure : Joint family, Conjugal family and nucleated family will have the spaces define accordingly. Monogamy or polygamy and the way the hierarchy of the members of the family are treated define the dwelling spaces.
- 5. Position of Women : The separation of women and their status in the family will shape the spaces of kitchens, work areas and rest. Matriarchal family where mother is head of the family or patriarchal where father is head will obviously make the spaces different.
- 6. Privacy : The importance and unimportance of privacy has an effect in the way of forming the divisions in a dwelling. Separation or combining of spaces is direct result of privacy requirements. Common bathing, acceptable nudity in tribes are unacceptable to a westerner. In same way veiling and complete privacy for women as in the Islamic society will have the dwelling in a different form.
- 7. Social Interaction : The meeting of the people is also a basic need. The way people interact with each other, at a place of worship, bath, street, café or house affects the form of the habitat. Hierarchy of spaces for receiving the guest will affect the reception areas and the entrance locations.
- 8. Vale houses of Waitabu village in Fiji islands: With the hot and humid climate and moderate rainfall the dwellings are built with high pitched roofs that can take the winds affectively. When there is a cyclone or hurricane the roof is lifted off and the family takes refuge under it wherever it falls. Wealth is measured in whales’ teeth, which are also used for gifts. Community work is an obligation. When a new vale , or dwelling is needed it is built by the young men of the tokatoka or lineage group, assisted sometimes by other members of their metaqali , the larger exogamous kin group.
- 9. Construction of a Vale house: A raised yavu , or dwelling site is traditional to a family and remains its sole property. The corner posts are inserted into the yavu, on which rest of the wall plates, to form a box frame. On this are raised the principal rafters and the ridge pole, significantly called the ‘rat scrambler’. Vertical bamboo splines bound with coir to horizontal bundles or reeds, line the inside walls, which have an outside layer of woven coconut fronds. Bush vines are used to lash the members but interior exposed fixings are decorative and elaborately lashed with sennit. Vale houses of Waitabu village in Fiji islands
- 10. Spaces of a Vale house: The main entrance in the gable wall facing the sea opens onto the interior space, which is notionally divided into four zones, two for public, and two for private in the long dimension. - First of these is the female area, formerly used for cooking. - Beyond this is the men’s section, of somewhat higher status, where the household head sits at the top right, with any guest opposite him. The pandanus eating-mat spans both areas Beyond this there is a change of level, marked by a plinth and by entrance doors on either side and seldom used except by the family head and special guests. At the back is the loqi , the totally private zone where the members of the family sleep and household are kept. Vale houses A fire was kept burning in the vale to keep away malignant spirits and witchcraft. Spatially the house was divided by custom in ways that are commonly found, differentiating the area occupied by the men from that occupied by the women and children, giving a place of importance to the household head.
- 11. Tswana houses of Botswana. The Tswana dwelling may comprise three or four huts within a yard which is bound by a hedge of rubber plants or poles. This is a carefully maintained and swept area of beaten earth, lolwapa (lelapa), with its opening facing the main entrance to the yard. It acts as a forecourt where guests may be received; an apron to the main sleeping but whose entrance faces it. Other huts may also open on to the lolwapa or be dispersed within the yard. Subdivision of a circular hut, though not infrequent, can create rather inconvenient and often unventilated spaces; the alternative, common in much of Africa, is to build huts for particular functions within a defined compound constitutes the dwelling.
- 12. Tswana huts are circular in plan and built of mud often of wet brick. The main hut may be occupied by the parents, or the mother with her young children. Older children or unmarried daughters may sleep in other huts, can be built as the need arises. Absentee sons may also build a hut within the yard. In the yard an open kitchen is usually to be found, with nearby storage spaces for spare building materials, grass feed, chicken pens, a small kraal for calves, a vegetable plot, and perhaps a covered granary with deeply shaded eaves. Any trees are retained for their shade. Additional structures in the compound may include a pit latrine within a wooden structure. Inside, the huts are furnished with wooden beds, a platform for storing sorghum sacks, wooden or cardboard boxes for additional items, a shelf or two for the cups, buckets, pottery or plastic bowls that make up the domestic utensils and, if they can afford them, a table, one or two chairs, and even a small wardrobe. Tswana houses of Botswana.
- 13. END