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Himanshi Gupta-1900472-Vernacular Architecture Forms

The Toda people live in small, barrel-vaulted huts called Toda Huts in the Nilgiri Hills of southern India. Each hut has a tiny 3 foot wide by 3 foot tall entranceway for protection from weather and animals. The huts are decorated with rock paintings and have small platforms outside the door for sitting. Toda temples have a similar shape to the huts but with variations like being cylindrical with a conical roof. Traditional huts are still used today but some Toda have moved to concrete houses due to modern influences.

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68 views15 pages

Himanshi Gupta-1900472-Vernacular Architecture Forms

The Toda people live in small, barrel-vaulted huts called Toda Huts in the Nilgiri Hills of southern India. Each hut has a tiny 3 foot wide by 3 foot tall entranceway for protection from weather and animals. The huts are decorated with rock paintings and have small platforms outside the door for sitting. Toda temples have a similar shape to the huts but with variations like being cylindrical with a conical roof. Traditional huts are still used today but some Toda have moved to concrete houses due to modern influences.

Uploaded by

Himanshi gupta
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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The Toda people are a small tribal community who live far

away from Nilgiri plateau in the hill country of Southern


India.

They reside in small Toda Huts also referred to as Todas


Hamlets. These structures, set at a distance of around 5.6
km from the mainland of Ooty, are an original representation
of Toda community still in existence.

The curious structure does not have windows and the semi
barrel shape huts are so small that people need to bend over
to enter from the main door.

Each hut has only a tiny entrance at the front—about 3 feet


(90 cm) wide, 3 feet (90 cm) tall. The unusually small
entrance serves as a means of protection from the weather as
well as the sudden attack of wild animals.

The front portion of the hut is decorated with the Toda art
forms, a kind of rock mural painting. On each side of the
doorway is a raised platform, equivalent to a verandah or
thinna (built–in-seat), a semi-private area where people sit and
talk.
Toda mund (hamlet) and barrel-vaulted houses in the Nilgiri Hills in Tamil Nadu,
1869.
Toda temples are constructed in a circular pit lined with
stones and are quite similar in appearance and construction
to Toda huts.
The temples called paluvarsh have the same shape with slight
differences. The other type, called poovarsh, are cylindrical
with a long conical roof. This is considered more sacred than
paluvarsh as the main festivals of Toda are conducted here.

While the ceremonies take place, only one priest is present inside the
temple, others have to sit outside the structure.

Although many Toda have abandoned their traditional


distinctive huts for concrete houses, a movement has gained
momentum to build traditional huts. The forced interaction
with other peoples with technology has caused a lot of
changes in the lifestyle of the Toda.

During the last decade, forty new huts have been built and
many Toda sacred dairies have been renovated. Each has a
narrow stone pit around it and the tiny door is held shut with
a heavy stone.

Only the priest may enter it. It is used for storage of the
sacred of buffalo mil
Toda dogles in Nilgiris.

Mayan house
How to build a Mayan house
We thought it would be interesting to show you how Mayan
houses are built. Even if you come to the Riviera Maya and do
not see an actual Maya house, you probably will see parts of
your hotel built in traditional ways. This type of house design
has lasted centuries in the southern Mexico area and
especially the Yucatan Peninsula. Mayan homes are very
efficient and sustainable.

There is some variation to the Maya house. First of all there


is usually a stone base and the wood sticks for the walls.
Sometimes the walls are made using a plaster of clay and
straw. Some Mayan house have stone walls. the roofs can be
one of two types of thatch. One type is a grass and the other
a palm, which is much more durable.
The shape and size can be attributed to two main factors.
When you do a thatched roof, if you had a square house, the
roof would have four corners. Thatch does not match up that
well and it would be a problem for leaks in the house. When
you have an oval house the roof thatch is in a continuous
circle and overlapping.

So why are Maya houses not round then? Well the use of
hammocks for one would need both sides of the house for
hanging. That means you would not be able to walk around
the house without ducking a hammock. An oval shaped house
allows the doorway to enter one side and exit the other side
for good air flow. Hammocks can be hung on wither end of
the house.

One other theory why the houses are oval is for wind. A
plastered Maya house would stand up better to strong winds
because there is not a flat side taking the full force. Rather,
the wind would move around the house. This could be
important in an area where there are hurricanes.
The house is
first started
by making a
rock foundation in the shape of an oval. Supporting wood
post are added for the upright structure and then smaller
trees are nailed to the frame. The smaller trees come from
the fields where they are cut with machetes.

A traditional Mayan house that is still used today.


In some cases mud clay mixed with grass is added to the walls
to make a plaster. This would make the house more enclosed
like the example below.

Stucco covered Mayan house.


On the northern tip of the Yucatan Peninsula you tend to see
more Mayan houses built with wood planks. This is just
because the planks are more available there event though
termites are prevalent all over the peninsula.
Toba people lived in
permanent villages, unlike some of the other Batak tribes
whose settlements were more transient because of the slash-
and-burn agriculture they practiced. Batak Toba cultivated
rice and vegetables.The houses are usually found in groups
of ten or less. The word for house in the Toba language
is jabu.

Because of frequent conflicts between tribes in the past,


houses are positioned in easily defendable positions.
Toba Batak houses and residents

Houses were usually constructed standing next to each


other in a row. Opposite the houses, there was a row of small
rice granaries called sopo. The street running between
the jabu and the sopo was called alaman.
A jabu – Toba Batak
Batak Toba House, Lake Toba
Jabu are built in three sections. The lowest section is the
area beneath the house raised on wooden pillars that prevent
flooding and dampness. The pillars traditionally rested on
flat stones and nowadays stand on concrete. Some of the
pillars support horizontal beams known as labe-labe, which
run the length of the house at head height and support the
roof. This lower section was used as a shelter for the
animals overnight.
The middle section is where the families lived. In the past,
there were usually several families to a single house. This
area was divided, and depending on age or who married first,
for example, each of the families occupied a different room in
the house. The living area wasn’t very big and was poorly lit:
there are four small windows on each side of the house. Most
of the people’s activities were outdoors so the jabu was used
primarily for sleeping. Ladders were used for access to the
living area, although nowadays people use stairs, which are
more convenient.

Batak House – Traditional Building


The third section is the attic, separated from the living
section by a wooden ceiling. The attic was used mostly for
storing family valuables and sometimes ancestral shrines. The
large roof, shaped like a saddle, dominates the structure. In
the past, it was usually built using palm fiber thatch. Today,
many houses have turned to metal zinc roofs which are far
more durable in the humid climate.
Bhungas are closely linked to the identity of Kutch desert
areas. They are single cylindrical structures put close to
each other to form a house. In common terminology, each
bhunga would be equivalent to a room in a house.

As per one story, after the 1819 earthquake, all building


craftsmen from Sindh and Kutch region got together to
discuss the damage caused to the houses in the region by
the earthquake. After a series of discussions, they came up
with the circular house-form design of bhungas which is in
practice since then.1 Even after the earthquake of 2001, it
was observed that most of the bhunga houses survived the
earthquake despite being very close to the epicentre of the
earthquake, while many other constructions failed.

Housing/ Settlement Typology


The villages in Banni and Pachham, as in other desert areas
of Rajasthan, are conglomerations of different vandhs.
Each vandh is constituted of a few vaases. A Vaas is a
united-family unit where entire family is staying and sharing
one or more common open space/s.

A vaas starts by a single family by constructing a large


plinth on an empty plot. This plinth usually covers the
future expansion of the vaas. In the beginning
a randhaniu for cooking and two bhungas for living/
sleeping, are constructed. Sometimes an open pavilion is
also added as a sitting area or for receiving guests. All
the structures in a vaas share a common plinth. As the
family grows, more bhungas are added surrounding the
intial units. This units are added depending on the
requirement of the family in random fashion, yet forming
central spaces for each small family unit. Along with
the bhunga, there is a rectangular hut, often smaller and
less important and is called choki. There are size variations
in chokis, the larger ones being used for living space and
smaller ones for cooking space

Usually it is seen that human settlements are formed by


building houses next to each other, but in desert areas of
Kutch (and also Rajasthan), the vaases are located at
farther distance from each other. This can be attributed to
the scarcity of water, pasture and other resources. A
family needs certain area and resources within its reach in
order to survive, and hence to avoid sharing the scarce
resources, the other family would start its vaas at a
distance. Most of their daily activities happen in

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