Vernacular Architecture

Built to Meet Needs

Building traditions differ widely across the world, but there are requirements that are common, mainly the provision of shelter for families. It is not known how many dwellings exist today; estimates range between 800 million and 1 billion structures that accommodate the global population of 6 billion people. Of these, [Page 1445]over three-fourths are vernacular, built by the owners or by skilled members of their communities, whose traditions in building have been passed from generation to generation.

A compound of earth-built huts with conical, thatched roofs in northern Ghana.

Paul Oliver; used with permission.

Caves may have provided the earliest dwellings, evidence of occupancy in Spain and France dating from Paleolithic times. Today, some 50 million people live in caves, particularly in China, but also in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. Other peoples who hunted game and gathered fruits lived in the forests where they made temporary shelters of branches and leaves, as the Orang Asli of Malaysia and the East African Hadza still do. Adapting to local conditions, peoples such as the Evenki of Siberia made their huts of wood from the taiga (boreal forest), and the seal-hunting Inuit of northern Canada built domes of snow blocks.

Traveling in more arid regions, many tribes camped under tents made from strips of woven goat hair; such “black tents” are still used by the Bedouin of Arabia. Desert nomads move with flocks of camels or goats, often by prearranged routes so that the sparse vegetation is not overgrazed and can recover. In more fertile regions such as the grasslands of Central Asia, the Kyrgyz and Mongols live in the yurt or ger, a dome raised on a cylinder of lattices covered with large felts that are tied in place. After a stay of weeks, they dismantle the dome and move to new pastures where the women, who make all the components, rapidly re-erect them. As the examples of nomads indicate, the kind of dwelling used by a culture is partly conditioned by the economy by which its makers subsist.

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