Architecture (84)

School is back in session, and Shelter Publications has a book that’s popular among elementary teachers and school librarians. Showcasing diverse housing styles around the globe and offering a glimpse into different cultures, Wonderful Houses Around the World, by Yoshio Komatsu with drawings by Akira Nishiyama, was first released in 1997 in Japan. Katy Bridges and Naoko Amemiya translated it into English for its US release by Shelter Publications in 2004. 

The book features clear illustrations of the insides of different homes, where family members are performing everyday tasks. Each illustration includes captions that tell where the house is found, how the surroundings influence its design, what life is like for the family, and how the homes are furnished. This offers a fascinating look at various cultures and promotes understanding and appreciation for lifestyles around the world.

Why This Book is Valuable in Education

Wonderful Houses Around the World is beneficial to the classroom, as it promotes cultural understanding and global awareness, introduces basic architectural concepts, displays side-by-side comparisons of building exteriors and interiors, and encourages critical thinking about living spaces and cultural adaptations. Learning about different cultures is helpful to understanding other people; it increases empathy and curiosity, and it enhances an appreciation for diversity in living conditions.

The book aligns with several educational standards: as social studies curriculum by understanding diverse cultures and societies, in STEM education by introducing engineering and design concepts, and in art education by showing different architectural styles. The photographs and drawings are great for comparing a variety of art forms as well.

Examples of Classroom Use

The book can be integrated into the classroom with a geography lesson, mapping the locations of featured houses. An art project could include the creation of models or drawings of unique houses; a writing exercise could imagine life in different types of homes. Projects and activities could include virtual “world tour” presentations by students, a comparative analysis of housing in different climates, or a design challenge to dream up houses for specific environments.

Testimonial

“Clear, color photo spreads and explanatory paragraphs introduce 10 ‘wonderful houses’ from a variety of cultural backgrounds. A circular tulou in China, a felt yurt in Mongolia, an underground home in Tunisia, and an earthen ‘castle’ in Togo are among the featured domiciles. Each picture has a full-spread color diagram of a structural cutaway with captions that describe architectural details and/or furnishings and indicate the makeup of the family/families in residence. The author’s personal comments enliven the terse text, and his three-sentence introduction mentions his enthusiasm for ‘interesting’ domestic design.”

—Patricia Manning

School Library Journal

Integrating Wonderful Houses Around the World into classroom activities gives kids a lot more than just a peek inside homes. Students learn lessons in social studies, STEM, art, and character building. Teachers will enjoy putting together projects and activities based around this book. True to Shelter Publications’ tagline, “Shelter is more than a roof overhead,” this book—with its thoughtfully created text, photos, and illustrations—offers a rich experience that goes beyond traditional learning.

Tiny Homes Get All the Attention, but Small Homes Are What America Needs in a Housing Crisis 

The climate for building is so different in this country now than it was in the 1960s and ‘70s. It’s hard to believe that there was a time when people of moderate means could build their own homes, but that’s what it was like 50 or 60 years ago. You didn’t need a ton of money to survive during the year it might take to build your house.

Now, everything is ridiculous:

• Materials costs have skyrocketed.
• Bureaucrats have pushed fees into the stratosphere.
• Just plain living is so expensive.

And although I’ve generally been telling people that fixing up an old house in a city or a town is a good way to create a home nowadays, there are still people out there who want to build a house from scratch on a piece of land. And to you, brave souls in this day and age, here’s some advice.

To view the full post, check out Lloyd’s Substack post HERE. He goes on to talk about stud frame construction, rectangular design, how to waste less in/with your new home, and the relationship between the kitchen and the garden. He also provides links to two books: Shelter II and Small Homes.

Hi Lloyd,

I’ve been fascinated by handmade houses for years. I came across a book in the ’70s called The Wood Butcher’s Art. I now teach in a traditional school in India, and teach my students about such houses. With their help I made a house here in West Bengal from mostly local timber and I thought you might be interested. We have several of your books which are very inspiring. The boys made several models based on a reading of some of your books. If you are interested I can send more photos. The house was inspired by my travels in Cambodia, Thailand, and Assam.

I teach in a traditional school in West Bengal, India. We have international students and I wanted to show them that you can build a great house out of local renewable materials. The trees for the frame and most of the floors was all local. Many students came and helped me build the house. It took about two years. I wanted to use shingles for the roof, but we can’t get cedar here. So I had to invest quite a bit to make teak shingles, which were used historically in tropical places like Hawaii or Mauritius. The walls are made from ‘Slipstraw’ but we used the abundant eucalyptus sawdust that we generated instead of straw. We finished the walls with a lime sand plaster. It came out so well we had no need to paint. The wood was finished with a mix of local beeswax and pine turpentine.

The Bhaktivedanta Academy Gurukula, a traditional Vedic school with international students in West Bengal, India is helping to construct a series of houses for teachers. The boys of the academy spend a couple of hours each day learning basic construction methods based on age-old building traditions and using mostly local materials. The school’s oxen and horse also assist in the process. The boys are from all over the world: Russia, Ukraine, China, Taiwan, New Zealand, Australia, different parts of India, Ecuador, Argentina, Peru, Chile, Hungary, Bulgaria, etc. Before starting to build the boys spent several lessons studying your books, Builders of the Pacific Coast, Shelter 1-2, etc.

–Greg Clark

Sasha making pegs

Driftwood Shacks: Anonymous Architecture Along the California Coast to be released in March 2019

• From @shelterpub’s Instagram post

We have just received early copies from the printer of Driftwood Shacks: Anonymous Architecture Along the California Coast. With an additional 30 pages, due to be released in March 2019. Photo by @lloyd.kahn

• From @shelterpub’s Instagram post

Photo by Lloyd Kahn

Lots of nice details here: gable at left, three-sided pop-out on lower right, nicely fitted roofs over windows in two gables. Non-sagging eave lines indicate sound foundation. Why don’t architects come up with such simple, practical, time-tested designs these days? This place looks lived-in.

• From lloydkahn.com

I often see barns or farm buildings that are effortlessly perfectly proportioned. The architecture of practicality, economy, and local conditions. This is on Highway One in Mendocino county near Manchester.

• From www.lloydkahn.com

This is 10′ by 10′. Rafters made of four 1″ by 4″ by ⅜″ redwood bender board, 16′ long, bent, glued and clamped together. Roof sheathing is 1 × 6 redwood fence boards from Home Depot. Siding is ⅜″ rough-sawn exterior DF plywood. Eventually I’ll panel the inside with used fence boards. Flooring is used yellow pine T&G from Heritage Salvage in Petaluma. Windows (used) from Urban Ore in Berkeley.

Billy Cummings has done most of the work here, including cutting and fitting double-wall polycarbonate greenhouse glazing under the curved eaves.

Next step is to build a sliding door for one half of the end wall shown here so a bed can be rolled out onto the deck for nighttime star gazing. Jay Nelson built a sliding door for his shop that gave me the idea.

Note: A curved roof is infinitely more time-consuming (in many ways) as compared with, say, a shed roof or a gable roof. BUT the space underneath is wonderful and something I highly recommend for tiny homes. If you take the time to build a roof like this, it will give you a feeling of spaciousness and avoid the claustrophobia of small spaces. Curved roofs are the secret to the good feeling in Gypsy wagons (vardos).

• From www.lloydkahn.com