VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE

Lecture 6
SOCIAL ORGANIZATION, CULTURAL ATTRIBUTES
AND ARCHITECTURE
 Daily practices:

 Study of daily routines of people is very helpful to

understand their way of life and hence their
architecture to facilitate those activities.

 There are certain activities in day to day life

which the people cannot verbalize but is taking
place everyday.
 Lifestyle or daily practices of males, females and the
children of the house varies. How they adjust themselves
inside and outside their house helps the outsider to make
out their role in the household.

 Household tasks are divided up according to the gender and

the age group. For example in a Tharu family all the
members take part in daily works of the household.

 Tasks are allocated according to sex age and following a

certain hierarchy.

 Young men do the agricultural works such as ploughing,

getting the rice fields ready etc. while the father is
responsible for looking after the animals castles milking
cows etc and the mother is in charge of the kitchen and food
stocks.
 Daily routine varies from place to place, society to society.

 There are differences in the daily routines of rural, urban or

suburban societies.

 Similarly there exist differences in the daily routines of Rural

African, Rural Nepalese society, differences in the daily
routines or urban American and urban Indian society.
 In kathmandu houses along the streets had windows
which were specially designed to help view the
activities on the street.

 Similarly, men met at the community rest houses in

the evening for chit chats.

 Women met in communal taps and socialize.

 Different people may use different parts of the house

at different hours of the day.
 More elite the household, more the differentiation in
the use of domestic spaces.

 E.G. in the industrialized countries sleeping, eating,

cooking may be attributed to the different parts of the
house whereas in the peasant households there is less
differentiation by activity.
 The organization of space interrelates with deeper concepts
of social values concerning gender relations, age relations
and other forms of status relations, as well as more abstract
values such as beliefs about privacy and community.

 All the societies have certain societal hierarchy which is

accorded to certain person in a house or a certain family in
the community.

 For example, higher status given to men in traditional

Nepali family.
 Changes in the daily practices have come about with
the change in activities. For example, piped water
supply changed the way women met in the communal
water taps.

 Television introduced entertainment in the comfort of

a house rather than attending community plays.

 Education brought about the major change in the daily

practices and the lifestyles of the people.
BEHAVIORAL PATTERNS OF THE OCCUPANTS

 Vernacular built environment exist to contain,

support and guide behavior. To understand the
built environment behavior of the occupants
should be understood.

 Behavior includes perception of the people, their

actions, social interactions, etc.
 When considering the behavior, it should be understood
that behavior cannot be considered only in a house, but that
a larger system at various scales must be considered, since
people do not live in single spaces or even single buildings
but move around a cultural landscape.

 Differences in behavior patterns of different vernacular

environment results due to the differences in activities.

 The activities refer to lifestyle, culture order and sequences.

What are these orders and how they are linked etc.
Variations in theses activities lead to variations in the
settings.
 Setting is an atmosphere, which remind people of
certain situation and appropriate behavior for that
setting. For example when one visits a temple, a
tendency to pray emerges or when a person enters a
hospital he tends to be more silent.

 A setting may be defined by allocating certain rituals or

functions to it. E.G. Mela at Godavari happens once in 12
years and people go to that particular place for worship
for a particular time frame. Thus the ritual allocated for
that place defines a certain atmosphere for a certain
time.

 Setting may not be limited to the buildings and the built

spaces only. However, it could just be the buildings or
related spaces and the whole system.
 Since the system of activities are different in different
places no two settings are the same, thus we cannot
assume that any two units are equivalent.

 Rather than identifying the extent of activity it is

necessary to gradually identify the extent of system of
settings. The activities which are distributed in spaces
varies among different periods and among different
cultures.
FAMILY OCCUPATION AND ECONOMY
 Agriculture is still the basic economy in Nepal. However in
major cities there have been changes in the economy from
agriculture to service oriented. In most of the urban areas
across the world the economy has shifted from agriculture
to industrial to service oriented.

 Major occupation of the people in the hill regions in Nepal

is agriculture. Although there are people such as Majhis,
Kumals, Curates who are popular for their second income
sources, their primary source of income is agriculture. Even
though there are specialized professions such as carpenters,
sarkis, damais, they all agriculture on small plots of land
they have.
 Agricultural occupation adds up different forms to a
residence.Affluent villagers in the central hilly regions
construct a “dhansar”, which is a granary.This is a
house like structure with cattle shed on the lower floor
and granary on the top.

 Less affluent families will have smaller granaries or

not even a separate granary.

 In many preindustrial societies, exchange of labor is

commonly conducted without a monetary transactions.
Community help during house building is reciporcated
by food consumption during the period of collaborative
work.
 Environment determines the economic activities too as the
environment is highly responsible for food production,
consumption, building activities, etc.

 How to utilize the available means with the help of the

information and knowledge is about economy.

 Every activity from cultivation of land or the construction of

any building explicitly involves the allocation of available
means including the use, modification and reuse of
materials goods and the investment of human labor and
time.

 Collection of resources not only depends on their

availability and proximity to he habitat but also on the
culture predispositions of the population especially with
respect to their diet.
 SOCIAL STRUCTURE
 Social structure primarily refer to the orderly and patterned relationships
between elements of society which are recurring in a permanent form.

 Social structure also relates to the interrelationships between various

components of a society.

 Different variables form the framework of social structure, which are

politics, religious, economic standard of a household, social hierarchy in
terms of caste etc.

 Social structure corresponds to a particular society at a particular place

and particular time.

 These social structures thus implicate needs of a particular group and

illustrate the type of private and public building in use
FEW ELEMENTS OF THE DAILY ITINERARY IN
DOMESTIC SPACE IN HILLY REGIONS OF NEPAL
 The waterspout of the fountain

 Chain of the daily activities start with the water

fountain. For women fountain is meeting point
which makes their contact with the outside
world. Women reach the water fountain to collect
water early in the morning while later during the
day she may visit it for washing clothes.
THE MILLS (GHATTA)

 This is another place for collectively activity although

it may be far away from the house. Visiting the mills is
not a gender specific job. Usually corn and spices for
festivals are taken to the mills to be grounded.
KITCHEN GARDEN
 Kitchen garden is the entry to the private territory of a
family or a household. Close to the house kitchen
garden is for the purpose of growing vegetable for daily
consumption. Usually the women or the elderly males
take care of the kitchen garden.
GOTH
 Usually the goths are the separate structures
sometimes near sometimes a bit farther from the
house. Cattle are kept on the ground of the goth
at night. Cattle breeding play an important role
in the domestic economy of the region. Milk nad
milk product from he cattle sometimes provide a
good income. Women spend a lot of their time to
the upkeep of cattle.
AGAN
 It is the center of all activities. Almost anyone
can eneter the agan of a house whether they are
untouchables or the higher caste people. Most of
the domestic economic activities are carried out
in agan. Small kids and animals like goats play
in again.even the religious activities are
performed in agan.
VERANDAH

 It is also a place for social interactions. It is

aplace for sitting or receiving guests. Like
courtyards there is no caste restrictions in the
verandahs too. The people who are not allowed to
enter the house are kept in the verandahs.
MULDHOKA

 It has a great symbolic importance and entering

it means penetrating into the family intimacy.
Purifying the space near to this muldhoka is like
purifying the whole
THANK YOU...