Vernacular

houses – India - Hut - Bhite bari, West Bengal

LOCATION AND CONSTRUCTION DETAILS:

- Located in villages of West Bengal

- Made up of Mud walls and Hay pitched roof

- Timber / bamboo is used to make the structural frame

- In many villages , the walls are also made of mats and the materials of roofs can be terracotta tiles .

Centro Lak'a Uta, Bolivia

DETAILS:

- The concept of the house developed out of the project developedfrom a house in Ladakh where the traditional Tibetaian houses were built with passive solar tromble walls and experimented with timber free construction .

CONSTRUCTION TECHNIQUE & MATERIALS :

- ROOF – Straw or metal sheeting , over hanging straw roofs hepls in protecting the earth wall.

- WALL – The earth blocks shade the interior while trapping hot day time sun which is gently radiated to the homes at night

- On a sunny day the house acts as a tromble wall , black wall sealed with plexiglass collects the suns warmth during the hot days & then delivers it into the house during evening.

- It is therefore important that the houses offer a cool refuge from the harsh sun during an Altiplano day and also from the extreme cold at night.

- FOUNDATION – Stone & Clay

- This vernacular is completely earth with parabolic roofs.

- In the Altiplano it rains very heavily so it is necessary to protect the earth with something.

- Hence the straw roofs shown on the pictures below.

- Vernacular/Indigenous architecture in the Altiplano area has been either a square adobe brick building with a metal sheet roof held down with rocks or a circular dwelling with a conical roof.

- The Aymara live in rectangular dwellings , surroundingone or more courts with thatched roofs .

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CONCEPT :

- In addition traditional ways of living have been considered and acted upon.

- The Aymara people who live on the Altiplano do not like the idea of living in a compartmentalised box such as a Western home.

- They have different buildings for different things. Bathroom one building, sleeping in another, cooking either outside or nowadays more commonly indoors in a separate building.

- Most of their activities are agricultural based so they are based outside between their various buildings as a kind of additional living area.