Hope you guys are doing well, imagine you go somewhere in the south of India and before you, you see a legendary temple tower that is 216ft in height with 14 stories you may ask yourself why is it the vimana(tower) is higher than the gopuram(entrance tower) that too in the Dravidian architecture..? you must be wondering and confused at the same time, we are speaking about one of the oldest temple in India which is built by King Raja Raja I during the time of 1003-1010AD, which means the temple is 1000 year old, Brihadeeswara temple which is also a Unesco announced world heritage site located in the south Indian state of Tamilnadu.
What is so special about the architecture of the temple is that every basic construction require a deep foundation in the south Indian architecture style, but this temple is different both in the architecture from base to the outlook, the temple has a long(flat) foundation rather than deep foundation, the size of the temple shorten from lower to the final edge of the temple, the engineer who built this temple called as Kunjara Mallan and it is believe that he and his assistant did all the blueprint and entire construction of the temple, in today’s date lot of legendary architectures are wondering with the structure of the temple till date, the temple been built with the help of elephants and horses along with Ten thousand plus soldiers and people, the lingam in this temple is also one of biggest in entire world and the size of the lingam is bigger than the gate itself.. if you ever wondering and have an affection toward the love for architecture do visit this temple once and be amazed by the thousand-year-old traditional Dravidian architecture…
The structure of the temple has about three main entrance gopurams(towers) Keralanthakam, Rasarasan, and Tianukkam after crossing all this you can able to see the legendary shrine of Tanjore big temple also called Peruvudayar temple(which means having large size lingam), the beauty is that the entire temple is made out of a single type of stones alone and there are no woods you can found in the temple’s structure after thousand years even today the temple is shining with its amazing architectural and rich heritage site..
India is a country of cocktail traditions and culture scattered among the nation, if we look around India we find many wonders and get amazed by nature and people along with foods, but can you imagine an entire state full of adventures and mysteries, Nagaland welcomes you with its tradition and adventures.
From tattoos to keeping skulls in the living room may be seen as a creepy thing in Nagaland, but the stories which are behind every single thing they carry, and the history which tells us beautiful tales to listen to is a never-ending imagination that you can come across below.
Even in the present day, we can see many people live in traditional lifestyle ways and the architecture also represents the way they live and live, as one of the seven sisters of northeastern India, Nagaland presents most in a hilly region and most people are hill dwellers.
If you think about the peoples ofNagaland, about sixteen official tribes such as Angamies, Tangas, and Chakesangs are living in the Nagaland state of India which is the highest tribal living population in India, with agriculture as the major economic element with animal husbandry and weaving Nagaland still stands as one of rich state in their tradition and rich ethnic cultural values.
The culture and tradition of Nagaland
Unlike other Indian states, Nagaland has its own tradition, some of the horrifying histories will make us even shiver.
Headhunting is one of the major traditional ways of solving problems between tribal communities, the so-called Koyanks are well-skilled head hunters and they practiced headhunting till 1960, the head hunters fight with a long-handed hunting knife, and after killing the opponent Koyanks bring the skull back as their trophy and hung it in their walls.
Even today most of the animal skulls are being hung in front of the houses in Nagaland’s remote village.
The Architecture of Nagaland
Nagaland has its own architectural style and follows vernacular architecture which suits its region, as being in the hill region they built houses that help them to sustain the cold.
Most of the houses are built with the help of bamboo, thatch, and wood, as we know vernacular architecture uses the available materials around the region.
Being in the hilly region is a competitive task during the rainy season and at times of earthquakes, peoples of Nagaland have an artistic sense by nature and they even built houses to protect themselves from all forms of natural calamities.
When it comes to architecture and style, the people(tribes) of Nagaland follow only two major patterns building houses as a group and scattering with a fence.
The Sema Architecture
Nagaland people are so connected with nature from birth to the end of the beautiful life they live, with forests, mountains, and animals they always live a happy life with nature, even the house they build is completely natural in the type of vernacular architecture, they use bamboos, timber, thatch to build houses, the Sema architecture is only followed in the state of Nagaland and some places of Assam and Myanmar.
Sema architecture is built in a rectangle shape with a broader beginning and lessen end, a high rooftop in the entrance is the approach method by the Naga tribes and a sloping roof made of thatch helps them to keep warm inside the house to beat the cold and also helped them in the rainy season by allowing the water to flow rather than staying in the roof.
As cold is a very common thing in hill regions, the Naga people used to place the cooking fire in the center of the house to keep the house warm all the time, how can they think such an artistic and also advanced with the resources available within.
The Sema interior
The Interior may be for modern architecture but the tribes of Nagaland followed the interior designs from ancient days:
The Akishekhoh: or front room where the rice pounding tables were kept.
The Abidelabo: a narrow room between the Akishekhoh and the Amiphokiboh (hearth room) where the unmarried girls of the household sleep.
The Akuzu-Abo: where the head of the family (father) and his wife sleep.
The Azhi-Bo: the liquor room where rice beer is stored in bamboo jugs.
Koyank Architecture is another important thing to notice while reading about the architecture of Nagaland, Koyank is one of the very important tribal communities around the Naga people and is also famous for their bravery and headhunting skills.
Koyank builds their houses similar to the Sema architecture but bigger when compared to the normal Sema architecture, Koyank people also use skulls to design their houses to their bravery.
When speaking about the Sema architecture, naga tribes don’t usually have windows in their home rather they have a small rear veranda called Machang to enjoy nature from inside the house, mostly in the rainy season to feel the smell of petrichor, of all the wonders of peoples of Nagaland being connected with nature, is heartwarming one to consider.
The Naga Heritage Village and Art Craft
After knowing and wondering about the lifestyle and architecture of Nagaland and its people, something is too mesmerizing to look at, the naga heritage village, a place where we can feel the heaven of tradition and explore the artistry of Nagaland.
The Naga heritage village is nomenclature to keep the tradition and culture of Nagaland securely and to teach the next generation the life of their ancestors and to make people jealous of them.
Every year the first week of December, all the magic and lights along with people of different tribal communities in Nagaland unite in the so-called heritage village(Kisama) near Kohima, to revive and protect the rich tradition and culture of Nagaland and to display the tradition to the people of the world. You can expect naga foods, traditional dances, wood arts and crafts, and architectural homes in the heritage village.
The Naga Art and Crafts
Apart from all the architecture Nagaland is a place of art and craft, like the soul and body we cannot even imagine separating the art and craft from the Naga people, and each of the crafts represents a symbol of nature and accordance.
Textile is another wonder in Naga, specifically the Naga shawls, each tribal community in Nagaland wears different kinds of shawls and they also follow certain rules in wearing shawls, head hunting warriors wear shawl made of 96 designs called Rongkhim shawl, while some other warriors wear a shawl with about 64 designs.
The design of textiles is of nature and each represents the connection with nature, The reoccurring motives of Naga textiles, especially shawls are some geometric patterns and some everyday objects like Mithun, elephants, tigers, human heads, weapons, etc. Mithun symbolizes the wealth of the owner, elephants, and tigers indicate the valor of the man, and human heads indicate success in headhunting wars. Again, in a Naga society, cowries are symbols of martial achievements and no ordinary man is allowed to use them in their attire.
The productivity mind of the Nagaland people can be found in the crafts they made from bamboo, cane, and wood, some of the popular crafts made of wood and other available natural resources are baskets, hats, armlets, necklaces, mats, shields, and other decorative items.
Conclusion
Like the smell of petrichor in between the long summer days, the architecture, culture, and lifestyle along with the art and crafts of Nagaland must make you light in the heart field and give a thirst to travel and explore nature and the lives of people in Nagaland, even in the modern world with advanced technology, some people at the northeastern corner ofIndiaholds the value of life and nature along, apart from all the amazing things, the longevity of the culture and tradition does matters and holds our identity and display our life to the world, do respect those who hold the value and lives by it.
India is of traditional country and following the rich ethnic culture and its traditions to date, Northeastern India is one of the unique traditions in India and has their own identity in case of traditions and the way they live, we are going to explore more the traditional architecture of Assam(the wonder of Northeastern India), Assam is the home of many wonders from amazing tea gardens, mighty Brahmaputra river, one-horned rhinos, and the royal tribal communities, Assam is also a home of architecture which we can even see today in some parts of the state, with various styles of architecture concerned to the region, it has a lot of stories to tell and we are going to explore it with patience and eagerness to know something new.
Architecture in Assam
Assam is one of many wonders in India, It has some untold story of architecture that we all are craving, Assam being one of the seven sisters of Northeastern India has some different styles of architecture called the Assam type buildings, but Assam has more architecture styles rather than the Assam type buildings.
Assam is one such state that follows the vernacular architecture to date, vernacular architecture- is houses built with all the available resources around the locality, vernacular architecture is also effectively proven to survive with the climate of the region.
In Assam, the architecture of houses is based on the climate people face and protects them from the calamities of nature.
Architecture in Assam Before the British
Before the British advent in India, Assam the home of nature and wonders have houses made of bamboo, timber, and thatch, the Assam traditional architecture so-called Ahom didn’t involve bricks and stones in their architecture until early 1700, bamboo and timber(woods) are used to construct buildings in Assam because it suits well for their climate.
Architecture in Assam After the British
The British changed the entire architectural style of India and in Assam, its impact even changed their tradition of constructing, The Assamese followed the vernacular architecture (mostly used wood, timbers, and bamboo) but the British implemented constructing the building with the help of bricks and stones for their longevity.
Types of Architecture style in Assam
Assam has four styles of architecture at the longest of its history. Vernacular architecture is the core tradition of Assam, they built with the help of available resources around them.
Ikra House
Ikra house commonly referred to as the “Assam type house” is common throughout Northeast India. The majority of such houses are used for residential purposes. Typically these houses are built with lightweight locally available materials like bamboo, wooden planks, thatch, etc. Such houses have a proper system of bamboo/wooden beam-column and fulfill the earthquake safety requirements of rectangularity and simplicity. Ikra houses are single-story structures consisting of brick or stone masonry walls up to about 1 m above the plinth. This masonry supports the walls consisting of bamboo woven together with a wooden frame and plastered with cement or mud plaster. The roof generally consists of GI sheets supported on wood/bamboo trusses, which laterally connect the parallel walls. The bamboo superstructure is connected to the masonry foundation walls using steel angles, and flats with bolts and nails. There were no reports of any significant damages to Ikra structures during past earthquakes.
Ikra house suited well with the climate and nature of Assam during all seasons, and it also cost less when compared with the modern housing architecture style of constructing with bricks, steel, and concrete.
Bamboo House
Today we see a house made of bamboo only in fancy resorts with premium services and high costs, but the Assamese used bamboo housing architecture for their purpose of living in accordance with nature, bamboo helped the Assam people more during the monsoon.
In the bamboo housing system, for the main structural member bamboo is used. The brick wall is used for modeling. And it is rigidly connected with a plinth as well as with bamboo. In this system, the wall is made of bamboo strips and it is plastered with mud. The houses are detailed out to combat the heavy monsoons. The roof of the house is built on local grass and can last up to 10 years before it is replaced again. The stilted part of the house is for protection against gentle floods. But even today we can use bamboo as our core construction material because it has more advantages than we can imagine.
Tensile strength
Bamboo has a higher tensile strength than steel because its fibers run axially.
Fire Resistance
The capability of bamboo to resist fire is very high and it can withstand temperatures up to 4000 C. This is due to the presence of high values of silicate acid and water.
Elasticity
Bamboo is widely preferred in earthquake-prone regions due to its elastic features.
Weight of bamboo
Bamboo due to its low weight is easily displaced or installed making it much easier for transport and construction. Unlike other building materials like cement and asbestos, bamboo poses no danger to health, They are cost-effective and easy to use, and they are especially in great demand in earthquake-prone areas.
Mud House
Even today in some parts of India rarely we can able to see mud houses, houses made of mud and cow dunk coated with grasses(straw) as their roof, mud house architecture is used to protect against the heat from the climate, it is a proven technique from the ancient time to sustain during the high summer vacations.
Mudhouses can be built with materials like clay, cow dunk, soil, silt, and grasses for roofs. Today we are using houses made of concrete cement which is made of chemicals mostly, materials like this don’t help our environment, mud is breathable and also helps to sustain the heat inside the house.
Chang House
The raised stilt house is common in the Himalayan region, it is used for constructing houses in the hilly regions, we can able to see a change in concept houses in upper Assam on the banks of Brahmaputra, the Mishing tribal community of Assam used to live in the chang concept houses as it is their traditional way of living, most of the Chang houses are built in rivers, forest, and vegetation regions.
It is even believed that the chang concept houses are first introduced by the mongoloid and the Mishing tribal people believe that they are the descendants of mongoloids. All the above four major architectural styles of Assam are of vernacular architecture and each architectural style is used to sustain through climate changes and weather of the region.
Present-day Assam Architecture
Today most of the Assam buildings are of bricks and stones with less wood, timber, and bamboo which is completely the other side of their traditional architectural style, the British impacted Assam by building houses with the help of bricks and stones, but even before the British advent in India, even Mughal emperors loved the way of buildings with bricks for their strength and longevity, but when we look back at the history the usage of bricks used in Assam in mid-1700 when king Rudra Singha of Ahom kingdom built the mighty Talatal Ghar in the Sivasagar, It is the first Assam architecture build with the help of bricks along with their traditional home architecture style.
The Kareng Ghar the so-called Garhgaon Palace is also a living example of the Ahom architecture style built by the Sunenphaa (Parramatta Singha) which is 15km away from the Sivsagar.
The Assam Bungalows
After the advent of the British in Assam, they Built a variety of buildings with newer architectural styles to the Assamese, it is called the British bungalow then and the Assam bungalow today, used for the administrative functions of the British government, the people of Assam also used the same pattern of architecture for their buildings, today is called the Assam bungalows.
Conclusion: the fading traditional architecture
Even though we speak of the pride of our traditions, traditional architecture and all, we are less concerned about the culture, and traditions that are fading in front of our eyes, all of the things that our ancestors used are effective for nature and also to the human body, living along the nature is the way our ancestors taught and it is also proven that they lived happy lives when compared with us.
The vernacular architecture style of Assam is one such example of living along with nature and to sustain through the region we live, every architecture around us holds history and benefits of its own and we do not care or learn from it, do use more things which are good for us and the nature around us.
God created so many beautiful things in the world, some are even beyond the human imagination and some places make us believe that there are still miracles left in this world, Majuli Asam is one such miracle.
We heard that Assam is famous for many things from tea gardens and silks, chilis with rhinos and wild water buffalo and other such miracles, but did you know that Assam is also a place which has the biggest river island in the world??.
We are going to explore the magic of Majuli – the largest river island in the world, Majuli Assam is formed by the river Brahmaputra in the south and Subansiri in the north, even the government of India announced it as a district, Majuli the name itself is a magic of itself, means a land in the midst of two river.
Being the cultural capital of Assam, Majuli has a history of about the 16th century and is home to many tribal communities still living like Deoris, Sonowal Kacharis, and Mishings, with wonders in each part of the island, it is a lust for every traveler and those who seek adventure, of all the famous things in Majuli you must explore the Tengapania(the heaven of architecture), with unique Ahom Architecture structured buildings.
You may imagine Majuli Assam like Venice, with every house(mostly) containing boats to travel during monsoons, now imagine you’re traveling in a single rowboat with yourself alone and the sailor alone in the middle of beautiful lands and people with much love, that’s Majuli and unfortunately the god’s gift is disappearing slowly by slowly through every flood it faces.
You should plan your next travel to the northeastern magic of Majuli and you should travel in the winter to feel the soothing peace and unsung poems that you never heardif you want to feel the rich culture of Majuli, you should go to November, that’s when the famous Raas Leela festival is celebrated, a festival of music, dance, and theatre.
In your heart you may start imagining clicking photos around one of the most beautiful islands in the world, you can actually buy by boat alone, as Majuli Assam is an island the only way of transportation is by boat from Jorhat which is 20km away from it.
Majuli mask is another famous thing that you can actually buy as a memory of the island, with the machinery lifestyle around us from sunrise to sunset we actually need some time to spend with nature, Majuli is one such place of wonders, tradition, and rich culture.
As Majuli Assam is the Assamese Neo-Vaishnavite hub you should also visit the famous Satras during the festival season of Raas Leela and Ali-Aye-Ligang( festival of food and beverage), rather than an ordinary refreshment from the machined life, the trip to Majuli will be your lifelong memory and a place to learn various things from human connection to the Indian traditions.
“One should feel the magic of nature, while nature is alive and young”, Majuli is at the end of its young age, it may not exist after 20 years due to natural calamity, visit when both you and Majuli are alive and be mesmerized by its magic show.
If you look a little deeper into the world, this world is full of magic and wonders with various versions and various shapes, architecture is one such shape of magic in the world.
Imagine you love to wake up in the morning and plan to go Beech and see the sunrise and you’re living on the 13th floor, unfortunately, the list isn’t working so you have to walk the entire 13 floors and you feel exhausted when you reach the first floor, practically you give up the plan of going to beach and see the sunrise, it is in the case of high rise building, on the other hand, you’re living in the same 13th floor and see the amazing view of all the lights in the city from the balcony, see in a low rise building it is not possible.
Majorly there are only two types of architecture that dominate all others: Low rise building and High rise building, a building that defines the advancement of urbanization and a simple way of living with lesser technology.
High-rise buildings, with taller and lighter a structure built with steel, and glass as the major material, majorly used for office buildings, hotels, and houses in the latest world, on the other side low rise building with shorter and thicker structures built with bricks majorly and woods along, build majorly for houses and government buildings.
As buildings define the way people live, high-rise buildings define the modern lifestyle whether low-rise define the ordinary lifestyle, we feel more secure and feel the touch of nature in the low-rise buildings with lesser no lifts at all and always having the connection with the ground making it a more flexible way of living and independent.
Low-rise buildings allow us to live with people like a community and also make us more engaged with the lifestyle of ordinary people and society unlike getting caged inside the 13th floor in our apartment building, it gives us more security and helps us be connected with the world.
High-rise buildings which are the modern definition of the high tech cities and also define the lavish way of lifestyle with tall buildings, high rise building or architecture gave us a new solution to living in a lesser place, it made something possible which isn’t before, with better ventilation and lesser noise from the society, high rise buildings indeed give us peace from the world of machines and traffic lights, in a city with millions of population we can only find the calm in the bedroom which located about 13floor above from the ground, even though the cost is higher than the low rise buildings, the amount of privacy and peace we get in the high rise building is more and it satisfies the soul.
Again the world is full of magic and wonders, architecture is one such thing it defines the way we live, of all the magic behind the buildings you come across in the morning, do think of the hard work people have gone through to make the magic possible…
Imagine you’re standing on the balcony with a cup of coffee in your newly bought flat which is on the 44th floor facing the beautiful view of the blued ocean, isn’t it just amazing?…
All of the above is possible only if someone built a building with more than 44 towers and how is it possible, where it all began? you’re right we are talking about the high rise buildings, architecture is itself an art but majorly painted with technology and giving new solutions to new problems.
The high rise building is an art and a solution for the highly-dense populated cities, in the late 1800s real urbanization began like a boom and people needed more space to live in very little space, a city can contain only limited space and also needed to contain a number of people, this was the problem faced by the architectures and engineers in the 18th century, how they found a solution ?.
High rise building or skyscraper was the solution to make it possible and they created a whole new impact in the field of architecture, by the years humans faced various problems, and people like engineers, mathematicians, architects, and scientist are finding newer solution day by day.
The massive rise in the high-rise building started when the iconic “home insurance building, Chicago”, built in 1884-85, that day the world saw the magic of architecture and then the world saw the same magic every single day, during the invention of high rise building method, they(architects) faced many problems, as the building becomes taller and lighter they began having issues with winds and earthquakes, they used steels more to make the building stronger and implemented elevators to transport materials.
The usage of steel reinforcing wire(rebar), cast iron, and aluminum made it possible to build high-rise buildings and glass played a major role in exteriors and proven to be successful and easily adaptable.
High-rise buildings adopted the method of building vertically with the help of reinforced concrete, steel bars(rebar), and curtain walls(aluminum with glass) to withstand, instruments like elevators the introduction of cranes(early 500bc) also played a very important role in structuring the high rise buildings.
Today, we have thousands of skyscrapers around the world, which are mainly used for office building purposes but today modern urbanization is defined by the type of building the city(place) has, even though there are thousands of cities in the world still new York stands as the top of all, one of the reason is the number of skyscrapers it has (new york have number of skyscraper in the world).
The high-rise building is not just the magic of architecture but also the magic of the entire world and urbanization, it recreated the way people used to live and also gave a solution to get more space in less space, today a city is defined by the buildings(architectures) it has, for your knowledge Burj Khalifa(828m), Dubai is the world’s tallest building it is also proven magic of architecture and the identity of high rise building, Jeddah tower (in progress), Saudi Arabia is going to be at the height of Burj Khalifa.
In the world of architecture, new innovations are going to be ordinary as creative problem solving is the basic qualification for being an architect, magic is going to happen every single and you’re going to witness it too in the shape of architecture…
The history of the building goes back to about 9000 BC to 5000 BC when the Neolithic building began, by the years the world had seen many forms of architecture, and the way of constructing buildings evolved largely, the low-rise structure is one such revolution of architecture.
Whatever is not the high rise building is called low rise building or simple building which are majorly used methods to build a house in our neighborhood.
A usual high-rise building is a building with more than seven stories, which is mainly used for office building purposes, a small height building which is smaller in height and thicker in size used mainly for schools, houses, and other purposes. Normally a low-rise structure has a larger floor range with wider square meters and lesser height which is lower than 7 stories, we had the method of low-rise structure from our ancient culture in forts and other buildings, which hold a strong foundation and also thicker walls.
Rise structure closer to the ground, Masonry brick blocks are used more in constructing height structure along with steel but not with glass, low rise structure doesn’t use glass in their architecture.
Even if the design of the building is completely made of bricks and concretes, we feel more usual with low-rise buildings, both traditional and modern architecture play important roles in low-rise architecture, traditional architecture defines the building with the resources available around the place of the building, bamboos and woods used to build houses and buildings in the early days and then bricks and rocks transferred it, today steels and glasses are used majorly for its way of creativity and proven strength.
In modern architecture, the usage of steel and glass architecture redefined the way of building houses and other constructions, even in low-rise architecture glass is used with a limited range, mainly for the decoration and the outlook of the building.
Even today in rural places, even in more towns low-rise architecture is used vastly for constructing buildings, it has its own purposes of simplifying living and having more spaces for fewer people, the low-rise is also considered as the freedom of building.
Here once again the magic of architecture with a different version, the version of freedom, we feel more independent in low-rise buildings and also feel friendly as we live along with it every single day for more than decades.
Normal machines and equipment like bricks, steel, and wood used to build low-rise buildings at lesser cost, from church to temples and other religious architecture also come under rise structure as it is lower in height and more in size, the world is defined by the architecture, cities, and towns differentiated by the type of building it has, the low rise building also defines it is where the simple people live, with lesser technology and wider happiness, with more winds and more exposure to nature the low rise architecture gave a way to live with nature and made us feel fresh all the time…
Have you ever imagined waking up in the morning and sketching all day on a project you like and living a life of wonderful, yeah we are talking about the life of architects.
We all know that architecture is one of the coolest professions to come by from sketching the idea of a building and giving every minute detail of the architecture and delivering it with the exact imagination, yeah now you cut that cool from the list, what actually architecture do?
Life of an architect from waking up in the morning with a cup of coffee or tea along with scolds from mom, and getting ready to the studio to work on a project which committed a month-long, with loads and loads of creativity in mind and delivering it in paper by hand it is a hell of a job to do on, one who has the peak of creativity can do it well.
From getting requirements from contractors and making all the possible imagination into design after speaking with our colleagues in the studio, in the end making the contractors understand the design is also a heck of the job, yeah it’s not easy though.
The studio is where architect birds fly without limit, where all their creativity and imagination dance along on the paper or desktops, after studying various kinds of architectural styles around the world it is also hard to choose the right architecture for the right project.
From working on various projects like banks, prisons, temples, and churches architecture takes you to an entirely new dimension by touching and tasting all the flavors of life and society, it is also loads of a job to coordinate with the contractors and clients and acting a bridge in between them involves lots of roles and responsibilities.
Life of an Architect
Architects not just sketch designs for buildings they do create unique solutions for unique problems, you may think what can architecture do rather than designing the same process again and again, but it’s not the case, in reality, they do look the world in a different dimensions, they look the entire world as designs and think how to make it a little better than the existing one, they are creating better space for peoples from both in and out, if you go on a walk in your city or town and look at every building you come across, each tells a unique story of design and architecture write scripts for it.
Now come back to the workplace, no it’s called the studio that’s where the creativity gets alive again and again every single day, architects are all artists and they do art to make the world a better one, clients and contractors are not artists nor artistic minded and it is a hard level game for architects to work about, to convince the art(design) to the clients and contractors, from working about 60 to above work for a project is an easy to do thing and that’s what every architect does in their every single project, it isn’t just about taking the pencil and sketch it down, it takes time to get the right design in mind and patience to get it done accurately in the paper or laptop screen, the next time you come across an amazingly designed building do think about the architecture and all the thing he had gone through to make it possible…
While we’re speaking about modernism and modern architecture in Reddit and Quora, there is something that we’re forgetting in real-life of architecture.
Vernacular architecture is the name used to describe the architecture of self, building houses with all the available materials around the close proximity site, it uses energy efficiency in the surroundings, in early 1800’s the vernacular architecture became popular of building houses for themselves without the help of the architects, this type of architecture helps to build houses or other buildings according to the climate of the place.
We have different types of houses in the country, Bhutan has different houses of store all the needs of the family in the house, from cattle on the ground floor to crops on the upper floor, the same type followed in more parts of India about 80-100 years ago, this type of building houses which suits for the place of living is called vernacular architecture. Vernacular architecture is a result of factors like size, material, climate, skill, warehouses, bhuna houses, Assam-type houses, and Pawluk houses are some examples of vernacular architecture.
Today we’re buying cement and sand from hundreds and thousands of miles apart but the vernacular architecture is completely based on using materials like sand, wood, the stone which are available in the surroundings of the place.
We don’t need the same kind of houses in every climate like we build different types of houses in mountain regions and another type of house in non-mountain regions, this is vernacular architecture.
“Buildings without architecture”, is a common and simplified term to represent vernacular architecture, the people who live in mountain region knows what kind of houses they to survive in the place they are if they get a highly qualified architecture from somewhere who doesn’t live more than three days in summer occasion, we don’t get the type of house we need to survive in the region we live, this is the concept of vernacular architecture.
Apart from all the technical terms and simplified versions of building, vernacular architecture connects humans with the nature that surrounds them, still, some parts of the countryside have houses with vernacular architecture side, even before architecture became a business, this architecture without architects became famous, go around the countryside near you and the house will have at least one tree which seeded by the family itself and have enough spaces to live by.
If you see bamboo houses in the forest regions don’t go and ask them why don’t have concrete as it’ll last longer than bamboo, they don’t need cement, they do need the bamboo house because it is perfect for the place and climate where they live. When we see some kind of houses like house made of wood, our mind automatically travels to the snowy mountain regions like Kashmir or the Himalayas and tell us that wood houses are majorly used in cold mountain regions, this is the magic of vernacular architecture, the style and structure of the house itself tells at which part this kinds of houses build and used according to their regions and climate.
Everything in this world is created from nature and everything has connections to the nature we live in, some of the methods our ancestors used to have a major purpose and when we forget to follow them, we’re wrong.
While we are astonished by nature, and architectural pictures from Instagram, and Pinterest we do really forget what we have near us too. If you look deeper into the history and art of India it’ll take you into an unimaginable world and tells you tales that you never heard.
India is one of the world’s largest populated countries and has different religions mixed like a cocktail, India is famous for many things but when it comes to its identity of India we always look back and see the architecture which left us to be proud of, every architecture or temples around you tell history and India have many like this, did you know that India has more than ten architectures which date back to at least 1000 years, with various architecture style, design, structure, and pattern, India is a mixture of various beautiful elements.
From the Ellora cave in Maharashtra to the shore temple in Tamil Nadu, Indian architecture stands straight and proud by holding its history strongly, many of the world’s architects still wonder how they built such amazing architecture only with human power. All the temples and architecture tell us how well and civilized our forefathers lived and how they respected art and tradition with equality in nature and human beings. India had majorly three major types of social architecture styles cave architecture, rock architecture, and temple architecture.
Cave architecture dates back to about the age of civilization and still some of them are alive like Ellora caves in Maharashtra, and the shore temple in TamilNadu, cave architecture is building a temple or any other in the cave, by adding various structures and designs it looks a bit of royal and more of the arts that lived thousands of year back.
Rock architecture is one of the famous architecture used to build temples all over India and it was spread by Buddhist monks, more than ten temples like Brihadeeswara temple in Tanjore, Tamil Nadu, Meenakshi temple, Madurai, Tamilnadu are still stood as historical proof of the architecture style used, temples are built with a single material like rock is called rock architecture and it also called as a pure construction or temple as only one of material used to build the entire temple.
Various kings at various times followed the pattern and style of rock architecture and you can see this architecture in almost all the states of India. Temple architecture is the style used to build temples alone, like towers(entrance), and towers (main shrine), temple architecture also used more art to make the temple look astonishing.
India is a country of spirituality because it holds all the spiritual histories and architecture still alive today, a country with a vast amount of religions and languages but still shines in the field of architecture because of the magic and the culture along with love for art made it so, What we do least is to protect it like our home rather than damaging it and writing our names in the walls of famous architectures around the country, let us try to hold our history and spread the proudness with a smile in face and heart.
