House

I

INTRODUCTION

House, a dwelling place for human habitation. Whether a crude hut or an elaborate mansion, and whatever its degree of intrinsic architectural interest, a house provides shelter and acts as a focal point for day-to-day living.

The physical characteristics of a house depend on climate and terrain, available building materials, technical skill, and such cultural determinants as the social status and economic resources of the owner or owners. In rural areas until modern times, people and animals were often housed together; today's houses frequently include storage, work, and guest areas, with several separate spaces for different activities. Houses can be wholly below ground level, dug out of the earth, or can be partly below and partly above the ground; most contemporary houses are built above ground (over cellars in cold climates). The primary structural materials employed are wood, earth, brick, and stone, with concrete and steel increasingly used, especially for city dwellings; many of these materials are also used in combination. Choice of material depends on prevalent style, individual taste, and availability. Depending on climate and available fuels, provisions may be made for heating. In modern industrialized areas, running water and interior toilets are common. Whatever its size and conveniences, a house both contains and stands for the basic human social unit.

II

HOUSES OF TRIBAL SOCIETIES

In tribal societies the house tends to consist of a single space, one room serving all activities. It is usually built directly against neighbouring structures and is often close to the tribal meetinghouse or religious building as well. The shape of such a house may be repeated through an entire village, creating fascinating patterns, as in the Dogon district of the Sudan or the settlements of Zambian herders. Such houses are often of simple geometric shapes—circular, with conical roofs, for example. Building materials are those available locally. If mud and clay are available, they are used to fill the spaces between pieces of wood or are made into bricks (usually sun-dried). Even huge reeds are used in the construction of dwellings, as by the marsh Arabs of southern Iraq. In rainy areas most tribal houses have interior hearths.

III

HOUSES OF THE ANCIENT WORLD

In ancient Egypt ordinary people dwelt in plain, mud-brick houses of rectangular plan. Excavations indicate that workers' houses had two to four rooms all on one floor and were densely packed into a gridlike pattern, with narrow alleys running between long rows of these quarters; the foremen had bigger houses. Throughout the Middle East much depended on the materials available. Where clay was found, beehive-shaped, single-room structures were common. Where stone but no timber was available, even the roofs were made of long strips of stone. These traditions continued well into modern times.

Except for the fairly elaborate chieftains' houses called “megarons”, Greek dwellings remained simple through Classical times. A passageway led from the street into an open court off which three or four rooms were set, the whole being fairly small in scale. Roman houses, as seen, for example, at Pompeii, also stood at the street's edge. Past a vestibule was an open space called the atrium, from which the sleeping rooms were reached; a colonnaded garden was often laid out behind the house. In ancient Rome most people lived in the equivalent of blocks of flats, three to five storeys high, each flat having three to six rooms; some were like tenements, others were elaborate. At ground level were rows of small shops. The rich had huge villas outside the cities that were composed of living quarters and pleasure pavilions.

IV

HOUSES OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE

This comparative sophistication in housing disappeared during the so-called Dark Ages in Europe. Although many people lived in castles and primitive manors, many also dwelt in simple, cramped, unsanitary dwellings huddled within the walls of towns and small cities. The countryside was unsafe, and agriculture and population both declined; the prosperous farms of Classical antiquity disappeared. Slowly, after ad 1000, conditions improved, first around the great monasteries and then in the expanding cities. The rise of a prosperous mercantile class resulted in the construction of large town houses and in due time country manors. Comparatively peaceful conditions brought some improvement in housing for farm serfs, but the living conditions of the poor town-dweller continued, on the whole, to be miserable. By the end of the Middle Ages the concept of the palace had evolved from the idea of the grand town house. These palaces were elaborate dwellings for high-ranking ecclesiastics, merchant princes, or ruling families; they might occupy a whole block and contain, in addition to ceremonial and private apartments, quarters for large numbers of retainers and various other people.

V

FROM THE RENAISSANCE TO THE 19TH CENTURY

The palace was perfected during the Renaissance and remains one of architecture's most enduring images, a dignified, large-scale city element that has been adapted and repeated ever since. Palaces were first built in Florence, Italy, and then throughout the Western world. In France the concept of the palace was combined with that of the late medieval castle to produce the French country château—the setting, with its gardens and fountains, of aristocratic life from the 16th century onwards. In England the lord's manor became the squire's hall, the centre of an estate that often included villages composed of the reasonably comfortable, thatched houses of local farmers. Meanwhile, in the towns and cities, some attempts were made to improve the housing of ordinary folk by building more or less uniform dwellings; on the whole, however, standards remained below those of Antiquity for a long time.

VI

19TH-CENTURY HOUSING

The Industrial Revolution brought some relief to the urban poor in the form of reasonably well-built rows of small houses for workers, especially in England, although these often degenerated into slums. The middle class in most Western countries, able to buy land and to build, rapidly acquired fairly comfortable large houses, the styles of which depended largely on local tradition. New means of transport, and the desire of the middle classes to own a plot of land, produced suburbs, where the majority of independently sited family houses are found today. The Industrial Revolution also spawned the dream of having one's own house irrespective of social or economic status. By the late 19th century the construction of houses had become a major architectural subject, studied by major architects. Books with drawings of both simple and elaborate houses were perennially popular, and domestic architecture was discussed in the new architectural journals as well. Houses became, for many, symbols of status. Cottages and bungalows, small one-storey dwellings each on its own plot of land, proliferated. Large ornate houses became fairly common, built in densely arranged groups in the older cities, standing alone in the newer towns and the suburbs. The popularity of distinctive styles of domestic architecture rose and waned. The technology for the supply of, for example, heat and water improved rapidly. Once the lift had been developed, tall apartment houses became an increasingly practical option, particularly in the United States after 1865. Workers' suburbs appeared and building speculators thrived. The role of the estate agent quickly became a fullblown profession, and houses began to change hands more frequently as families became more mobile.

VII

20TH-CENTURY HOUSING

Houses whose design broke with historical architectural styles were slow to be accepted. As early as 1889 the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright built a house embodying new concepts of spatial flow from one room to another. He and others, both in Europe and in the United States, soon moved towards a domestic architectural style of metric forms and simplified surfaces largely free of decoration. Contemporary changes in painting and sculpture were allied to this movement, and by the 1920s modern architecture, though by no means universally accepted, had arrived. Glass, steel, and concrete reinforced with steel gave architects many new design options, and by the mid-20th century the modern house was commonplace. Glass boxes, freely curving styles, and stark, austere geometric forms were all possible; but at the same time traditional styles persisted.

VIII

HOUSES OF THE FAR EAST

House types in India vary greatly according to region, climate, and local tradition. In villages, courtyard houses as well as simple, single-roomed dwellings are to be seen; in cities, densely populated tenements are found as well. Palaces abound in all areas; many are fortified, and some that are open to the land have multiple outbuildings such as pleasure pavilions. European influence is mostly limited to certain areas in the major cities. In China, the courtyard house, built of wood and having a tile roof, has persisted for many centuries. Walled in, it is a microcosm of Chinese social traditions. Rows of single-room dwellings, each with a tiny court or garden, are also found. At the other end of the scale are the imperial palace compounds, of which the Forbidden City in Beijing is the outstanding example. The various buildings of these compounds, laid out to form a vast, symmetrical complex, are a symbolic summary of the celestial claims of the emperors and the society they governed. In Japan, the traditional house is an elongated and somewhat rambling affair, made of wood and roofed with tile; if space is available, a garden, however small, is included. Good proportions in design and elegant simplicity of form are always evident. Western architectural influence has perhaps been greater in Japan than in the rest of South East Asia, although Japanese architects have themselves been in the forefront of the modern movement in architecture.